Socialism As It Is Part 8

Brandeis: "Far from attacking the present relations.h.i.+p between employer and employee, automatic compensation specifically recognizes it. The backbone of the present so-called 'capitalism'; namely, the hiring of the unpropertied cla.s.s by the propertied cla.s.s to do work for wages, is not caused by automatic compensation to lose a single vertebra, and automatic compensation has nothing whatever to do with Socialism except that it is accomplished under the supervision of the State." If compulsory insurance against accidents "has nothing whatever to do with Socialism," neither have compulsory insurance against sickness, against old age, against certain phases of unemployment.

The social reformers propose a labor policy that is _for_ the people whether they like it or not; the only "rights" it gives them are "the right to live" and "the right to work." Its first object is to produce more efficient and profitable laborers, its second to have the government take control of organized charity, to which aspect I must now turn. Most of the labor reforms, enacted to secure for the laborer "what for the Nation's sake even the poorest of its subjects should have,"

have been urged more strongly by philanthropists and political economists than by representatives of the workers. In America "the minimum wage," for example, is being worked up by a special committee consisting almost exclusively of this cla.s.s, while workmen's compensation has been indorsed by the most varied political and social elements, from the chief organ of American philanthropists, and Theodore Roosevelt, to the Hearst newspapers.

With "the national efficiency" in view, Mr. Webb asks the British government to take up the policy of a "national minimum," including not only a minimum below which wages are not to fall, but also a similar minimum of leisure, sanitation, and education.[67] Mr. Edward Devine, editor of the leading philanthropic and reform journal in America, the _Survey_, outlines an identical policy and also insists like Mr. Webb that the Socialist can lay no exclusive claim to it.

"The social economist [_i.e._ reformer]," writes Mr. Devine, "is sometimes confused with the Utopian [_i.e._ Socialist]. They are, however, very distinct types of reformers. The Utopian dreams of ideals. The social economist seeks to establish the normal.... The social worker is primarily concerned, _not_ with the lifting of humanity to a higher level, but with eradicating the maladjustments and abnormalities, the needless inequalities, which prevent our realizing our own reasonable standards."

Speaking in the name of American reformers in general, Mr. Devine demands for the lower levels of society "normal standards" of life, which are equivalent to Mr. Webb's national minimum, and definitely denies the applicability of "the question-begging epithet of Socialism which is hurled at all the reformers engaged in such work."

"Whether it belongs to the Socialist program," Mr. Devine objects, "is a question so far as we can see of interest only to the Socialists. Our advocacy of such laws as we enumerate has no Socialist origin." He claims that the "expenditures legitimately directed towards the removal of adverse social conditions, are not uneconomic and unproductive," and that "they do not represent a mere indulgence of altruistic sentiment,"

but are "investments"; of which prison reforms and the expenditures for the prevention of tuberculosis are examples.[68]

Another phrase for the proposed saving of the national labor resources and the introduction of minimum standards in its philanthropic aspect is "the abolition of poverty." When he speaks of this as a definite and by no means a distant reform, the reformer refers to _that extreme form of poverty_, so widely prevalent to-day, which results in the physical deterioration and the industrial inefficiency of a large part of the population.

This sort of poverty is a burden on industry and the capitalists, and Mr. Lloyd George was widely applauded when he said that it can and must be done away with. He has calculated, too, that this abolition can be accomplished _at half the cost of the annual increase in armaments_.

"This is a War Budget," said Mr. Lloyd George in presenting the reform program of 1910. "It is for waging implacable war against poverty and squalidness. I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has pa.s.sed away we shall have advanced a great step toward the time when poverty, and the wretchedness and the human degradation which always follows in its camp, will be as remote from the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests."

Mr. H. G. Wells, who has been a leading figure in the British reform world and in the Fabian Society for many years, speaks on this reform movement not merely as a keen outside observer. As an advocate of more radical measures, he argues that there is nothing Socialistic about "the national minimum." This "philanthropic administrative Socialism," as Mr.

Wells calls it, is very remote, he says, from the spirit of his own.[69]

Yet, critical as Mr. Wells is, he also advocates a policy that could be summed up in the single phrase, "industrial efficiency." "The advent of a strongly Socialistic government would mean no immediate revolutionary changes at all," he says. "There would be no doubt an educational movement to increase the economic value and productivity of the average citizen of the next generation, and legislation _upon the lines laid down by the principle of the 'minimum wage'_ to check the waste of our national resources by destructive employment. Also a s.h.i.+fting of the burden of taxation of enterprise to rent would begin." (My italics.) The Liberals who are already setting these reforms on foot disclaim any connection whatever with Socialism, but Mr. Wells argues that they do not realize the real nature of their policy.

The establishment of this paternal "State Socialism," whether based on a philanthropic "national minimum" or a scientific policy of "industrial efficiency," many other "Socialists" besides those of Great Britain consider to be the chief task of Socialism itself in our generation.

Among the latter was the late Edmond Kelly, a member of the Socialist party in this country at the time of his death, who, in his posthumous work, "Twentieth Century Socialism," has summed up his political faith in much the same way as the anti-Socialist reformer might have done. He says that three of the four chief objects of Socialism are the organization of society, first "to prevent that overwork and unemployment which lead to drunkenness, pauperism, prost.i.tution, and crime"; second, "to preserve the resources of the country"; and third, "to produce with the greatest economy, with the greatest efficiency."[70] Yet Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller, as well as Mr.

Roosevelt, agree to all three of these policies. They are precisely what the leading Socialists have called "State Socialism."

A part of the working people, also, are disposed to subordinate their own conceptions of what is just, in spite of their own better judgment, to an exclusive longing for an immediate trial of this kind of State benevolence. This is expressed in the widely used phrase, "every man to have the right to work and live,"--employed editorially, for example, by Mr. Berger, now Socialist Congressman. What is demanded by this principle is _not a greater proportion of the national income or an increasing share of the control over the national government, but the "State Socialist" remedies, employment, and the minimum wage_. In its origin this is the begging on the part of the economically lowest element, a cla.s.s which Henry George well remarks has been degraded by poverty until it considers that "the chance to labor is a boon."

Some years ago the munic.i.p.al platform of the Milwaukee Socialists said that it must be borne in mind "that the famine-stricken is better served with a piece of bread than with the most brilliant program of the future" and that "in view of the hopelessness of an immediate radical betterment in the position of the working cla.s.s" it is necessary to emphasize the importance of attaining "the next best."[71] Here again was admitted complete dependence on those who own the bread and have the disposition of "the next best" in political reforms. When capitalism is a little better organized, the working people will be guaranteed "the next best": steady work and the food, conditions, and training necessary to make that work efficient--just as surely as valuable slaves were given these rights by intelligent masters or as valuable horses even are given care and kindly treatment to-day.

"A Socialist Social Worker" has published anonymously in the _Survey_ a letter which presents in a few words the whole Socialist position as to this type of reform. The writer claims that the very fact that he is a social worker shows that even as a Socialist he welcomes "every addition to the standard of living that may be wrested or argued from the Capitalist cla.s.s," since all Socialists recognize that "no undernourished cla.s.s ever won a fight against economic exploitation, but that the more is given the more will be demanded and secured." But he does not feel that the material betterments have any closer relation to Socialism.

"The new feudalism," he says, "will care for and conserve the powers of the human industrial tool as the lord of the manor looked after the human agricultural implement...." Here is the essential point: the efficiency of the human industrial tool is to be improved with or without his consent.

"Unrestrained Capitalism," says the same writer in explanation of his prediction, "has. .h.i.therto invariably meant the physical deterioration of the working cla.s.s and the marginal disintegration of society--the loosening of social ties and the pus.h.i.+ng of marginal members of society over the brink into poverty, pauperism, vagrancy, drunkenness, prost.i.tution, wife desertion and crime, _but this deterioration is not the main indictment against capitalism_, and will be remedied by the wiser capitalists themselves. The main indictment of capitalism is that it selfishly and stupidly blocks the road of orderly and continuous progress for the race."

The proposal of the social reformers, as far as the workers are concerned aims to put an end to this deterioration, to standardize industry or to establish a minimum of wages, leisure, health, and industrial efficiency. The writer says that the Socialists aim at something more than this.

"The criterion of social justice in every civilized community," he writes, "is, and always has been, not how large or how intense is the misery of the social debtor cla.s.s, but what is done with the social surplus of industry? It was formerly used to build pyramids, to create a landed or ecclesiastical or literary aristocracy, to conduct wars, or to provide the means of a sensuous life for the majority of a privileged cla.s.s, and the means of dilettantism for the minority of it. _The difference between the near Socialist and the true Socialist is princ.i.p.ally that the main attention of the former is given to the negative side of the social problem--the condition of the submerged cla.s.ses, while that of the latter is given to the positive side of the problem--the wonderful development, power, and life that would come to that race and the individual if a wise and social use were to be made of the surplus of industry._"

FOOTNOTES:

[46] "Fabianism and Empire," p. 62.

[47] Articles by Hyman Strunsky on Welfare Work, _The Coming Nation_, 1910.

[48] do, do.

[49] Lloyd George, _op. cit._, p. 93.

[50] Lloyd George, _op. cit._, p. 81.

[51] Winston Churchill, _op. cit._, p. 101.

[52] John A. Hobson, "The Crisis of Liberalism," p. 3.

[53] Professor Simon Patten, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July, 1908.

[54] Speech of President Hadley before the Brooklyn Inst.i.tute of Art and Sciences (1909).

[55] A more democratic and truthful view of the German educational system is that of Dr. Abraham Flexner (see the _New York Times_, October 1, 1911). He says that the Germans have to solve the following kind of an educational problem:--

"What sort of educational program can we devise that will subserve all the various national policies--that will enable Germany to be a great scientific nation, that will enable it to carry on an aggressive colonial and industrial policy, and yet not throw us into the arms of democracy? Their present educational system is their highly effective reply.

"Our problem is a very different one," Dr. Flexner remarks. "Our historic educational problem has been and is quite independent of any position we might be able to achieve in the world. That problem has always been: How can we frame conditions in which individuals can realize the best that is in them?"

Dr. Flexner is then reported to have quoted the following from a Springfield Republican editorial:--

"Germany could readily train her ma.s.ses with a view to industrial efficiency, whereas our industrial efficiency is only one of the efficiencies we care about; the American wishes to develop in many other ways, and to have his educational system help him to do it."

[56] _New York Times_, Nov. 12, 1911.

[57] F. H. Streightoff, "The Standard of Living among the Industrial People of America."

[58] Interview with Sir Joseph Ward, New York, April 15, 1911.

[59] Winston Churchill, _op. cit._, p. 325.

[60] Winston Churchill, _op. cit._, p. 186.

[61] Winston Churchill, _op. cit._, pp. 240, 243.

[62] Winston Churchill, _op. cit._, pp. 250, 252.

[63] Lloyd George, _op. cit._, pp. 68-69.

[64] Winston Churchill, _op. cit._, p. 197.

[65] Winston Churchill, _op. cit._, p. 197.