Socialism As It Is Part 31

"The National Council elects from the twenty-two members of the permanent Executive Committee the five party secretaries, whose functions are paid. It conducts the general propaganda, oversees the execution of party decisions, prepares for the Congresses, oversees the party press and the group in Parliament, and has the right to undertake all measures which the situation at the moment demands."[206]

We see that the Socialist members of the national legislatures, both in Germany and France, are under the most rigid control, and we cannot doubt that if such control becomes impossible on account of legislation enacted by hostile governments, an entirely new form of organization will be devised by which the members of the Socialist Party can regain this power. Either this will be done, or the "Socialist" Party which continues to exist in a form dictated by its enemies, will be Socialist in name only, and Socialists will reorganize--probably along the lines I have suggested.

It would seem, then, that neither by an attack from without or from within is the revolutionary character of Socialism or the essential unity of the Socialist organization to be destroyed.

The departure from the Party of individuals or factions that had not recognized its true nature, and were only there by some misunderstanding or by local or temporary circ.u.mstances is a necessary part of the process of growth. On the contrary, the Party is damaged only in case these individuals and factions remain in the organization and become a majority. The failure of those who represent the Party's fundamental principles to maintain control, might easily prove fatal; with the subordination of its principles the movement would disintegrate from within. In fact, the possibility of the deliberate wrecking of the Party in such circ.u.mstances, by enemies within its own ranks, has been pointed out and greatly feared by Liebknecht and other representative Socialists. This tendency, however, seems to be subsiding in those countries in which the movement is most highly developed, such as Germany and France.

FOOTNOTES:

[196] Quoted by Chairman Singer at the Congress of 1909.

[197] Quoted by _Vorwaerts_ (Berlin), Sept. 24, 1909.

[198] The proceedings of most of the German Party Congresses may be obtained through the _Vorwaerts_ (Berlin), those of the International and American Congresses from the Secretary of the Socialist Party, 180 Was.h.i.+ngton St., Chicago, Ill.

[199] Kautsky, "Der Aufstand in Baden," in the _Neue Zeit_, 1910, p.

624.

[200] The _Socialist Review_, April, 1909.

[201] The _Atlantic Monthly_, July, 1911.

[202] The _New York Call_, Jan. 6 and 8, 1912.

[203] The _New York Call_, Jan. 9, 1912.

[204] The _Socialist Review_ (London), April, 1909.

[205] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," 1911 edition, pp. 114-116.

[206] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," 1911 edition, pp. 14-15.

PART III

SOCIALISM IN ACTION

CHAPTER I

SOCIALISM AND THE "CLa.s.s STRUGGLE"

Socialists have always taught that Socialism can develop only out of the full maturity of capitalism, and so favor the normal advance of capitalist industry and government and the reforms of capitalist collectivism--on their constructive side. But if capitalism in its highest form of "State Socialism" is the only foundation upon which the Socialism can be built, it is at the same time that form of capitalism which will prevail when Socialism reaches maturity and is ready for decisive action; and it is, therefore, the very enemy against which the Socialist hosts will have been drilled and the Socialist tactics evolved.

The older capitalism, which professed to oppose all industrial activities of the government, must disappear, but it is not the object of attack, for the capitalists themselves will abandon it without Socialist intervention in any form. Socialists have urged on this evolution from the older to the newer capitalism by taking the field against the reactionaries, but they do not, as a rule, claim that by this action they are doing any more for Socialism than they are for progressive capitalism.

Socialism can only do what capitalism, after it has reached its culmination in State capitalism, leaves undone; namely, to take effective measures to establish equal opportunity and abolish cla.s.s government. To accomplish this, Socialists realize they must reckon with the resistance of every element of society that enjoys superior opportunities or profits from capitalist government, and they must know just which these elements are. It must be decided which of the non-privileged cla.s.ses are to be permanently relied upon in the fight for this great change, to what point each will be ready to go, and of what effective action it is capable. Next, the cla.s.ses upon which it is decided to rely must be brought together and organized. And, finally, the individual members of these cla.s.ses must be developed, by education and social struggles, until they are able to overcome the resistance of the cla.s.ses now in control of industry and government.

The popular conviction that the very _existence_ of social cla.s.ses is in complete contradiction with the principles of democracy, no amount of contrary teaching has been able to blot out. What has not been so clearly seen is the active and constant _resistance_ of the privileged cla.s.ses to popular government and industrial democracy, _i.e._ the cla.s.s struggle.

"We have long rested comfortably in this country on the a.s.sumption,"

says Senator La Follette, "that because our form of government was democratic, it was therefore automatically producing democratic results.

Now there is nothing mysteriously potent about the forms and names of democratic inst.i.tutions that should make them self-operative. Tyranny and oppression are just as possible under democratic forms as under any other. We are slowly realizing that democracy is a life, and involves continual struggle."[207]

Senator La Follette fails only to note that this struggle to make democracy a reality is not a struggle in the heart of the individual, but between groups of individuals, that these groups are not formed by differences of temperament or opinion, but by economic interests, and that nearly every group falls into one of two great cla.s.ses, those whose interests are with and those whose interests are against the capitalists and capitalist government.

Why is the sinister role of the upper cla.s.ses not universally grasped?

Because the ideas and teachings of former generations still survive, however much contradicted by present developments. At the time of the American and French Revolutions and for nearly a century afterwards, when political democracy was first securing a world-wide acceptance _as an ideal_, it was looked upon as a creed which had only to be mentally accepted in order to be forthwith applied to life. The only forces of resistance were thought to be due to the ignorance or possibly to the unregenerate moral character of the unconverted. The democratic faith was accepted and propagated by the French and others almost exactly as religion had been. As late as the middle of the last century this conception of democracy, due to the wide diffusion of small and in many localities approximately equal farms and small businesses, continued to prevail.

About the middle of the nineteenth century the first advance was made.

It became recognized with the coming of railroads and steams.h.i.+ps that society could never become fixed as a Utopia or in any other form, but must always be subject to change,--and the ideal of social evolution gained a considerable acceptance even before the evolution theory had been generally applied to biology. It was seen that if the ideal of democracy was to become a reality, a certain degree of intellectual and material development was required,--but it was thought that this development was at hand. It was a period when wealth was rapidly becoming more equally distributed, when plenty of free land remained, and when it was commonly supposed that universal free trade and universal peace were about to dawn upon the nations, and equal opportunity, if not yet achieved, was not far away. The obstacles in the way of progress were not the resistance of privileged cla.s.ses, but the time and labor required for mankind to conquer the world and nature.

With the establishment of so-called democratic and const.i.tutional republics in the place of monarchies and landlord aristocracies, and the abolition of slavery in the United States, all systematic opposition to social progress, except in the minds of a few perverted or criminal individuals, was supposed to be at an end.

A generation or two ago, then, though it was now recognized that the golden age could not be attained immediately by merely converting the majority to a wise and beneficent social system (as had been proposed in the first half of the century), yet it was thought that, with the advance of science and the conquest of nature, and without any serious civil strife, "equality of opportunity" was being gradually and rapidly brought to all mankind. This state of mind has survived and is still that of the majority to-day, when the conditions that have given rise to it have disappeared.

Not all previous history has a greater economic change to show than the latter half of the nineteenth century, which converted all the leading countries from nations of small capitalists into nations of hired employees. Even such a far-sighted and broad-minded statesman as Lincoln, for example, had no idea of the future of his country, and regarded the slaveowners and their supporters as the only cla.s.ses that dreamed that we could ever become a nation of "hired laborers" (the capitalism of to-day), any more than we could remain in part a nation of "bought laborers." Lincoln puts a society based on hired labor in the same cla.s.s with a society based on owned labor, on the ground that both lead to an effort "to place capital on an equal footing, if not above labor in the structure of the government." This effort, marked by the proposal of "the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of the right to partic.i.p.ate in the selection of public officers except the legislative" (so similar to tendencies prevailing to-day), he calls "returning despotism." And so inevitable did it seem to Lincoln that a nation based on hired labor would evolve a despotic government, that he fell back on the fact that the population was composed chiefly not of laborers, but of small capitalists, and would probably remain so const.i.tuted, as the only convincing ground that our political democracy would last. In a word, our greatest statesman recognized that our political democracy and liberty were based on the wide distribution of the land and other forms of capital. (See Lincoln's Message of December 3, 1861.) If Lincoln foresaw no cla.s.s struggle between "hired labor" and the "returning despotism," this was only because he mistakenly expected that the nation would continue to consist chiefly of small capitalists. Yet his conclusions and those of his contemporaries, so clearly limited to conditions that have pa.s.sed away, are taught like a gospel to the children in our public schools to-day.

The present generation, however, is slowly realizing, through the development of organized capitalism in industry and government, and the increase of hired laborers, that it is not nature alone that civilization must contend against, not merely ignorance or poverty or the backwardness of material development, but, more important than all these, the systematic opposition of the employing and governing cla.s.ses to every program of improvement, except that which promises still further to increase their own wealth and power.

The Socialist view of the evolution of society is that the central fact of history is this struggle of cla.s.ses for political and economic power.

The governing cla.s.s of any society or period, Marx taught, consists of the economic exploiters, the governed cla.s.s of the economically exploited. The governing cla.s.s becomes more and more firmly established in power, until it begins to stagnate, but the machinery of production continues to evolve, and falls gradually into the hands of some exploited element which is able to use this economic advantage as a means for overthrowing its rulers. Marx felt that with the vast revolution in society marked by modern science and modern machinery, the time is fast approaching when the exploited cla.s.ses of to-day will be able to overthrow the present ruling cla.s.s, the capitalists, and at the same time establish an industrial democracy, where all cla.s.s oppression will be brought to an end.

However his predictions may turn out in the future, Marx's view of the past is rapidly gaining ground and is possibly accepted by the majority of those most competent to speak on these questions to-day, including many leading economists and sociologists and prominent figures in practical political life. Winston Churchill, for example, says that "the differences between cla.s.s and cla.s.s have been even aggravated in the pa.s.sage of years," that while "the richer cla.s.ses [are] ever growing in wealth and in numbers, and ever declining in responsibility, the very poor remain plunged or plunging even deeper into helpless, hopeless misery." This being the case, he predicts "a savage strife between cla.s.s and cla.s.s," unless the most radical measures are taken to check the tendency. Nor are his statements mere rhetoric, for he shows statistically "that the increase of income a.s.sessable to income tax is at the very least more than ten times greater than the increase which has taken place in the same period in the wages of those trades which come within the Board of Trade returns."[208] In other words, the income of the well-to-do cla.s.ses (which increased nearly half a billion pounds, that is, almost doubled, in ten years) is growing ten times more rapidly than that even of the organized and better paid workmen, who alone are considered in the Board of Trade returns.

Here is a situation which is world-wide. The position of the working cla.s.s, or certain parts of it, may be improving; the income of the employing and capitalist cla.s.s is certainly increasing _many fold_ more rapidly. Here is the financial expression of the growing _divergence_ of cla.s.ses which Marx had in mind, a divergence that we have no reason whatever for supposing will be checked, as Mr. Churchill suggests, even by his most "Socialistic" reforms, short of surrendering the political and economic power to those who suffer from this condition.

At the German Socialist Congress at Hanover in 1899, Bebel said that even if the income of the working cla.s.s was increasing, or even if the purchasing power of total wages was becoming greater, the income of the nation as a whole was increasing much more rapidly and that of the capitalist cla.s.s at a still more rapid rate. The great Socialist statesman laid emphasis on the essential point that capitalists are absorbing continually a greater and a greater proportion of the national income.

The cla.s.s struggle, says Kautsky, rests not upon the fact that the misery of the proletariat is growing greater, but on _its need to annihilate a pressure that it feels more and more keenly_.

"The cla.s.s struggle," he writes, "becomes more bitter the longer it lasts. The more capable of struggle the opponents become in and through the struggle itself, _the more important become the differences in their conditions of life, the more the capitalists raise themselves above the proletariat by the ever growing exploitation_."[209]

This feature of present-day (capitalistic) progress, Socialists view as the very essence of social injustice, no matter whether there is a slight and continuous or even a considerable progress of the working cla.s.s. The question for them is not whether from time to time something more falls to the workingman, but what proportion he gets of the total product. It would never occur to any one to try to tell a business man that he ought not to sell any more goods because his profits were already increasing "fast enough." It is as absurd to tell the workingman that the moderate advance he is making either through slight improvements as to wages and hours, or through political and social reforms, ought to blind him to all the possibilities of modern civilization from which he is still shut off, and which will remain out of his reach for generations, unless his share in the income of society is rapidly increased to the point that he (and other non-capitalist producers) receive the total product.

The conflict of cla.s.s interests is not a mere theory, but a widely recognized reality, and the worst accusation that can be made against Socialists is not that they are trying to create a war of cla.s.ses where none exists, but that some of them at times interpret the conflict in a narrow or violent sense (I shall discuss the truth or untruth of this criticism in later chapters). Yet Mr. Roosevelt voices the opinion of many when he calls the view that the maximum of progress is to be secured only after a struggle between the cla.s.ses, the "most mischievous of Socialist theses," says that an appeal to cla.s.s interest is not "legitimate," and that the Socialists hope "in one shape or another to profit at the expense of the other citizens of the Republic."[210]

"There is no greater need to-day," said Mr. Roosevelt in his Sorbonne lecture, "than the need to keep ever in mind the fact that the cleavage between right and wrong, between good citizens.h.i.+p and bad citizens.h.i.+p, runs at right angles to, not parallel to, the lines of cleavage between cla.s.s and cla.s.s, between occupation and occupation. Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by his position instead of judging him by his conduct in that position."

This is as much as to say that there are only individuals, but no cla.s.s, which it is better to have outside than inside of a progressive majority. The Socialist view is the exact opposite. It holds that _the very foundation of Socialism as a method_ (which is its only aspect of practical importance) is that the Socialist movement a.s.sumes a position so militant and radical that every privileged cla.s.s will voluntarily remain on the outside; and events are showing the wisdom and even the necessity of these tactics. Socialists would say, "Ruin looks us in the face if, in politics, we judge the men who occupy a certain position (the members of a certain cla.s.s) by their conduct as individuals, instead of judging them by the fact that they occupy a certain position and are members of a certain cla.s.s."

Again, to the Chamber of Commerce at New Haven, Mr. Roosevelt expressed a view which, to judge by their actions, is that of all non-Socialist reformers: "I am a radical," he said, "who most earnestly desires to see a radical platform carried out by conservatives. I wish to see great industrial reforms carried out, not by the men who will profit by them, but by the men who will lose by them; by such men as you are around me."