Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles Part 10

Heretofore, pa.s.sage from the lower cla.s.s to the cla.s.s above has been comparatively easy, and it has blinded people to the existing cla.s.s antagonisms, though, as Mr. Ghent justly observes, it should no more be taken to disprove the existence of cla.s.ses than the fact that so many thousands of Germans come to this country to settle is taken to disprove the existence of the German Empire.[127] The stereotyping of cla.s.ses is undeniable. That a few men pa.s.s from one cla.s.s to another is no disproof of this. The cla.s.ses exist and the tendency is for them to remain permanently fixed, as a whole, in our social life.

But pa.s.sage from the lower cla.s.s to the upper tends to become, if not absolutely impossible and unthinkable, at least practically impossible, and as difficult and rare as the transition from pauperism to princedom in the Old World is. A romantic European princess may marry a penurious coachman, and so provide the world with a nine days' sensation, but such cases are no rarer in the royal courts of Europe than in our own plutoaristocratic court circles. Has there ever been a king in modern times with anything like the power of Mr. Rockefeller? Is any feature of royal recognition withheld from Mr. Morgan when he goes abroad in state, an uncrowned king, fraternizing with crowned but envious fellow-kings?

The existence of cla.s.ses in America to-day is as evident as the existence of America itself.

VI

Antagonisms of cla.s.s interests have existed from the very beginning of civilization, though not always recognized. It is only the consciousness of their existence, and the struggle which results from that consciousness, that are new. As we suddenly become aware of the pain and ravages of disease, when we have not felt or heeded its premonitory symptoms, so, having neglected the fundamental cla.s.s division of society, the bitterness of the strife resulting therefrom shocks and alarms us. So long as it is possible for the stronger and more ambitious members of an inferior cla.s.s to rise out of that cla.s.s and join the ranks of a superior cla.s.s, so long will the struggle which ensues as the natural outgrowth of opposing interests be postponed.

Until quite recently, in the United States, this has been possible.

Transition from the status of wage-worker to that of capitalist has been easy. But with the era of concentration and the immense capitals required for industrial enterprise, and the exhaustion of our supply of free land, these transitions become fewer and more difficult, and cla.s.s lines tend to become permanently fixed. The stronger and more ambitious members of the lower cla.s.s, finding it impossible to rise into the cla.s.s above, thus become impressed with a consciousness of their cla.s.s status.

The average worker no longer dreams of himself becoming an employer after a few years of industry and thrift. The ambitious and aggressive few no longer look with the contempt of the strong for the weak upon their less aggressive fellow-workers, but become leaders, preachers of a significant and admittedly dangerous gospel of cla.s.s consciousness.

President Roosevelt has a.s.sailed the preachers of cla.s.s consciousness with all the energy of a confirmed moralizer. It is evident, however, that he has never taken the trouble to study either the preachers or their gospel. Never in his utterances has there been any hint given of a recognition of the fact that there could be no preaching of cla.s.s consciousness had there been no cla.s.ses. Never has he manifested the faintest recognition of the existence of conditions which develop cla.s.ses, out of which the cla.s.s consciousness of the propagandists springs naturally. He does not see that there is danger only when the preachers are not wise enough, nor sufficiently educated to see their position in its historical perspective; when in blind revolt they engender cla.s.s hatred, personal hatred of the capitalist by the worker.

But when there is the historical perspective, wisdom to see that economic conditions develop slowly, and that the capitalist is no more responsible for conditions than the worker, there is not only no personal hatred for the capitalist engendered, but, more important still, the workers get a new view of the relationship of the cla.s.ses, and their efforts are directed to the bringing about of peaceful change.

The Socialists, accused as they are of seeking to stir up hatred and strife, by placing the cla.s.s struggle in its proper light, as one of the great social dynamic forces, have done and are doing more to allay hatred and bitterness of feeling, and to save the world from the red curse of anarchistic vengeance, than all the Rooseveltian preaching in which thousands of venders of moral plat.i.tudes are engaged. The Socialist movement is vastly more powerful as a force against Anarchism, in its violent manifestations, than any other agency in the world.

Wherever, as in Germany, the Socialist movement is strong, Anarchism is impotent and weak. The reason for this is the very obvious one here given. Cla.s.s divisions are not created by Socialists, but developed in the womb of economic conditions. Cla.s.s consciousness is not something which Socialism has developed. Before there was a Socialist movement, in the days of Luddite attacks upon machinery, and Captain Swing's rick-burners, there was cla.s.s consciousness expressed in cla.s.s revolt.

Modern Socialism simply takes the cla.s.s consciousness of the worker and educates it to see the futility of machine-destroying, or other foolish and abortive attacks upon capitalists and their property, and organizes it into a political movement for the peaceful transformation of society.

VII

Nowhere in the world, at any time in its history, has the antagonism of cla.s.ses been more evident than in the United States at the present time.

With an average of over a thousand strikes a year,[128] some of them involving, directly, tens of thousands of producers, a few capitalists, and millions of noncombatants, consumers; with strikes like this, boycotts, lockouts, injunctions, and all the other incidents of organized cla.s.s strife reported daily by the newspapers, denials of the existence of cla.s.ses, or of the struggle between them, are manifestly absurd. We have, on the one hand, organizations of workers, labor unions, with a membership of something over two million in the United States; one organization alone, the American Federation of Labor, having an affiliated membership of one million seven hundred thousand. On the other hand, we have organizations of employers, formed for the expressed purpose of fighting the labor unions, of which the National a.s.sociation of Manufacturers is the most perfect type yet evolved.

While the leaders on both sides frequently deny that their organizations betoken the existence of a far-reaching fundamental cla.s.s conflict, and, through ostensibly pacificatory organizations like the National Civic Federation, proclaim the "essential ident.i.ty of interests between capital and labor"; while an intelligent and earnest labor leader like Mr. John Mitch.e.l.l joins with an astute capitalist leader like the late Senator Marcus A. Hanna in declaring that "there is no necessary hostility between labor and capital," that there is no "necessary, fundamental antagonism between the laborer and the capitalist,"[129] a brief study of the const.i.tutions of these cla.s.s organizations, and their published reports, in conjunction with the history of the labor struggle in the United States, in which the names of Homestead, Hazelton, Coeur d'Alene and Cripple Creek appear in b.l.o.o.d.y letters, will show these denials to be the offspring of hypocrisy or delusion. If this much-talked-of unity of interests is anything but a stupid fiction, the great and ever increasing strife is only a matter of mutual misunderstanding. All that is necessary to secure permanent peace is to remove that misunderstanding. If we believe this, it is a sad commentary upon human limitations, upon man's failure to understand his own life, that not a single person on either side has arisen with sufficient intelligence and breadth of vision to state the relations of the two cla.s.ses with clarity and force enough to accomplish that end, to make them understand each other.

Let us get down to fundamental principles.[130] Why do men organize into unions? Why was the first union started? Why do men pay out of their hard-earned wages to support unions now? The first union was not started because the men who started it did not understand their employers, or because they were misunderstood by their employers. The explanation involves a deeper insight into things than that. When the individual workingman, feeling that from the labor of himself and his fellows came the wealth and luxury of his employer, demanded higher wages, a reduction of the hours of labor, or better conditions in general, he was met with a reply from the employer--who understood the workingman's position very well, much better, in fact, than the workingman himself did--something like this, "If you don't like this job, and my terms, there are plenty of others outside ready to take your place." The workingman and the employer, then, understood each other perfectly. The employer understood the position of the worker, that he was dependent upon him, the employer, for opportunity to earn his bread. The worker understood that so long as the employer could discharge him and fill his place with another, he was powerless. The combat between the workers and the masters of their bread has from the first been an unequal one.

Nothing remained for the individual workingman but to join with his fellows in a collective and united effort. So organizations of workers appeared, and the employers could not treat the demands for higher wages or other improvements in conditions as lightly as before. The workers, when they organized, could take advantage of the fact that there were no organizations of the employers. Every strike added to the ordinary terrors of the compet.i.tive struggle for the employers. The manufacturer whose men threatened to strike often surrendered because he feared most of all that his trade, in the event of a suspension of work, would be s.n.a.t.c.hed by his rival in business. So, by playing upon the inherent weakness of the compet.i.tive system as it affected the employers, the workers gained many substantial advantages. There is no doubt whatsoever that under these conditions the wage-workers got better wages, better working conditions, and a reduction in the hours of labor. It was in many ways the golden age of trade unionism. But there was an important limitation of the workers' power--the unions could not absorb the man outside; they could not provide all the workers with employment. That is an essential condition of capitalist industry, there is always the "reserve army of the unemployed," to use the expressive phrase of Friederich Engels. Rare indeed are the times when all the available workers in any industry are employed, and the time has probably never yet been when all the available workers in all industries were employed.

Notwithstanding this important limitation of power, it is incontrovertible that the workers were benefited by their organization.

But only for a time. There came a time when the employers began to organize unions also. That they called their organizations by other and high-sounding names does not alter the fact that they were in reality unions formed to combat the unions of the workers. Every employers'

a.s.sociation is, in reality, a union of the men who employ labor against the unions of the men they employ. When the organized workers went to individual, unorganized employers, who feared their rivals more than they feared the workers, or, rather, who feared the workers most of all because rivals waited to s.n.a.t.c.h their trade, a strike making their employees allies with their compet.i.tors, the employers were easily defeated. The workers could play one employer against another employer with constant success. But when the employers also organized, it was different. Then the individual employer, freed from his worst terrors, could say, "Do your worst. I, too, am in an organization." Then it became a battle betwixt organized capital and organized labor. When the workers went out on strike in one shop or factory, depending upon their brother unionists employed in other shops or factories, the employers of these latter locked them out, thus cutting off the financial support of the strikers. In other cases, when the workers in one place went out on strike, the employer got his work done through other employers, by the very fellow-members upon whom the strikers were depending for support.

Thus the workers were compelled to face this dilemma, either to withdraw these men, thus cutting off their financial supplies, or to be beaten by their own members.

Under these changed conditions, the workers were beaten time after time.

It was a case of the worker's cupboard against the master's warehouse, purse against bank account, poverty against wealth. The workers' chances are slight in such a combat! A strike means that the employers on one side, and the workers on the other, seek to force each other to surrender by waiting patiently to see who first feels the pinch of hardship and poverty. Employers and employees determine to play the waiting game. Each waits patiently in the hope that the other will weaken. At last one--most often the workers'--side weakens and gives up the struggle. When the workers are thus beaten in a strike, they are not convinced that their demands are unreasonable or unjust; they are simply beaten because their resources are too small to enable them to stand the struggle.

When the master cla.s.s, the masters of jobs and bread, organized their forces, they set narrow and sharp boundaries to the power of labor organizations. Henceforth the chances of victory were overwhelmingly on the side of the employers. The workers learned by bitter and costly experience that they could not play the interests of individual employers against other employers' interests. Meantime, too, they have learned that they are not only exploited as producers, but also as buyers, as consumers. For long, dominated by economic theories, the Socialists refused to recognize this aspect of the labor struggle, though the workers felt it strongly enough. They set their fine-spun theories against the facts of life. Their contention was that wages being determined by the cost of living, it mattered nothing how much or how little the workers got in wages, the cost of living and wages adjusted themselves to each other. But in actual experience the workers found that when prices fall, wages are _quick_ to follow, whereas when prices soar high, wages are _slow_ to follow. Wages climb with leaden feet when prices soar with eagle wings. Because the workers are consumers, almost to the last penny of their incomes, having to spend practically every penny earned, that form of exploitation becomes a serious matter.

But against this exploitation the unions have ever been absolutely powerless. Workingmen have never made any very serious attempt to protect the purchasing capacity of their wages, notwithstanding its tremendous importance.[131] The result has been that not a few of the "victories" so dearly won by trade union action have turned out to be hollow mockeries. When better wages have been secured, prices have often gone up, most often, in fact, so that the net result has been little to the advantage of the workers. In many cases, where the advance in wages applied only to a restricted number of trades, the advance in prices becoming general, the total result has been against the working cla.s.s as a whole, and little or nothing to the advantage of the few who received the advance in immediate wages. At this point, the need is felt of a social revolution, not a violent revolution, be it understood, but a comprehensive social change which will give to the workers the control of the implements of labor, and also of the product of their labor. In other words, the demand arises for independent, working-cla.s.s action, aiming at the socialization of the means of production and the product.

VIII

A line of cleavage thus presents itself between those, on the one hand, who would continue the old methods of economic warfare, together with the advocates of physical force, and, on the other hand, the advocates of united political action by the working cla.s.s, consciously directed toward the socialization of industry and its products. The measure of the crystallization of this latter force is represented by the strength of the political Socialist movement. Whoever has studied the labor movement during the past few years must have realized that there is a tremendous drift of sentiment in favor of that policy in the labor unions of the country. The clamor for political action in the labor unions presages an enormous advance of the political Socialist movement during the next few years.

The struggle between the capitalist and working cla.s.ses must become a political issue, the supreme political issue. This must result, not only because the collective ownership of property can best be brought about by political methods, but also because the capitalists themselves have taken the industrial struggle into the political arena to suit themselves; and when the workers realize the issue and accept it, the capitalists will not be able to resist them. One is reminded of the saying of Marx that capitalism produces its own gravediggers. In taking the industrial issue into the political sphere, to suit their own immediate advantages, the capitalists were destined to reveal to the workers, sooner or later, their power and opportunity.

Realizing that all the forces of government are on their side, the legislative, judicial, and executive powers being controlled by their own cla.s.s, the employers have made the fight against labor political as well as economic in its character. When the workers have gone on strike and the employers have not cared to play the "waiting game," choosing rather to avail themselves of the great reserve army of unemployed workers outside, the natural resentment of the strikers, finding themselves in danger of being beaten by members of their own cla.s.s, has led to violence which has been remorselessly suppressed by all the police and military forces at the command of the government. In many instances, the employers have purposely provoked striking workers to violence, and then called upon the government to crush the revolt thus made. Workers have been shot down at the shambles in almost every state, no matter which political party has been in power. Nor have these forces of our cla.s.s government been used merely to punish lawless union men and women on strike, to uphold the "sacred majesty of the law," as the hypocritical phrase goes. They have been also used to deny strikers the rights which belonged to them, and to protect capitalists and their agents in breaking the laws. No one can read with anything like an impartial spirit the records of the miners' strike in the Coeur d'Alene mine, Idaho, or the labor disturbances in the state of Colorado from 1880 to 1905 and dispute this a.s.sertion.

Most important of all has been the powerful opposition of the makers and interpreters of the law. A body of cla.s.s legislation, in the interests of the employing cla.s.s, has been created, while the workers have begged in vain for protective legislation. In no country of the world have the interests of the workers been so neglected as in the United States.

There is practically no such thing as employers' liability for accidents to workers; no legislation worthy of mention relating to occupations which have been cla.s.sified as "dangerous" in most industrial countries; women workers are sadly neglected. Whenever a law of distinct advantage to the workers in their struggle has been pa.s.sed, a servile judiciary has been ready to render it null and void by declaring it to be unconst.i.tutional. No more powerful blows have ever been directed against the workers than by the judiciary. Injunctions have been issued, robbing the workers of the most elemental rights of manhood and citizenship.

They have forbidden things which no law forbids, and even things which the Const.i.tution and statute law declare to be legal.

Mr. John Mitch.e.l.l refers to this subject, in strong but not too strong terms. "No weapon," he says, "has been used with such disastrous effect against trade unions as the injunction in labor disputes. By means of it, trade unionists have been prohibited under severe penalties from doing what they had a legal right to do, and have been specifically directed to do what they had a legal right not to do. It is difficult to speak in measured tones or moderate language of the savagery and venom with which unions have been a.s.sailed by the injunction, and to the working cla.s.ses, as to all fair-minded men, it seems little less than a crime to condone or tolerate it."[132] This is strong language, but who shall say that it is too strong when we remember the many injunctions which have been hurled at organized labor since the famous Debs case brought this weapon into general use?

In this celebrated case, which grew out of the Pullman strike, in 1894, Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, was arrested and arraigned on indictments of obstructing the mails and interstate commerce. Although arraigned, he was not tried, the case being abandoned, despite his demands for a trial. President Cleveland's strike commission subsequently declared, "There is no evidence before the commission that the officers of the American Railway Union at any time partic.i.p.ated in or advised intimidation, violence, or destruction of property." Realizing that it had no sort of evidence upon which a jury might be hoped to convict, a new way was found. Debs and his officers were enjoined in a famous "blanket" injunction directed against Debs and all other officials of the union, and "all persons whomsoever." For an alleged violation of that injunction, Judge Woods, without trial by jury, sentenced Debs to six months' imprisonment and his a.s.sociates to three months'. The animus and cla.s.s bias of the whole proceeding may be judged from the fact that President Cleveland selected to represent the United States Government, at Chicago, Mr. Edwin Walker, general counsel at that very time for the General Managers' a.s.sociation, representing the twenty-four railroads centering or terminating in Chicago. And these railroads were operating in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law at the time.[133]

In 1899 an injunction was issued out of the United States Circuit Court of West Virginia against "John Smith and others," without naming the "others," in the interest of the Wheeling Railway Company. Two men, neither of them being John Smith, nor found to be the agent of "John Smith and others," were jailed for contempt of court![134] In 1900 members of the International Cigarmakers' Union, in New York City, were enjoined by Justice Freeman, in the Supreme Court, from even approaching their former employers for the purpose of attempting to arrange a peaceable settlement! The cigarmakers were further enjoined from publishing their grievances, or in any manner making their case known to the public, if the tendency of that should be to vex the plaintiffs or make them uneasy; from trying, even in a peaceful way, in any place in the city, even in the privacy of a man's own home, to persuade a new employee that he ought to sympathize with the union cause sufficiently to refuse to work for unjust employers; and, finally, the union was forbidden to pay money to its striking members to support them and their families. In the great steel strike of 1901, the members of the Amalgamated a.s.sociation of Iron and Steel Workers were enjoined from peaceably discussing the merits of their claim with the men who were at work, even though the latter might raise no objection. In Pennsylvania, in the case of the York Manufacturing Company _vs._ Obed.i.c.k, it was held that workmen had "no legal right" to persuade or induce other workmen to quit, or not to accept, employment.[135] In the strike of the members of the International Typographical Union against the Buffalo _Express_, the strikers were enjoined from discussing the strike, or talking about the paper in any way which might be construed as being against the paper. If one of the strikers advised a friend not to buy a "scab" paper, he was liable under the terms of that injunction to imprisonment for contempt of court. The members of the same union were, in the case of the Sun Printing and Publishing Company _vs_. Delaney and others, enjoined by Justice Bookstaver, in the Supreme Court of New York, from publishing their side of the controversy with the _Sun_ as an argument why persons friendly to organized labor should not advertise in a paper hostile to it. In 1906 members of the same union were enjoined by Supreme Court Justice Gildersleeve from "making any requests, giving any advice, or resorting to any persuasion ... to overcome the free will of any person connected with the plaintiff [a notorious anti-union publishing company]

or its customers as employees or otherwise."[136]

These are only a few examples of the abuse of the injunction in labor disputes, hundreds of which have been granted, many of them equally subversive of all sound principles of popular government. There is probably not another civilized country in which such judicial tyranny would be tolerated. It is not without significance that in West Virginia, where, as a result of an outcry against a number of particularly glaring abuses of the power to issue injunctions, the legislature pa.s.sed a law limiting the right to issue injunctions, the Supreme Court decided that the law was unconst.i.tutional, upon the ground that the legislature had no right to attempt to restrain the courts which were coordinate with itself.

Even more dangerous to organized labor than the injunction is what is popularly known by union men as "Taff Vale law." Our judges have not been slow to follow the example set by the English judges in the famous case of the Taff Vale Railway Company against the officers of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, a powerful labor organization.

The decision in that case was most revolutionary. It compelled the workers to pay damages, to the extent of $115,000, to the railroad company for losses sustained by the company through a strike of its employees, members of the defendant union. That decision struck terror into the hearts of British trade unionists. At last they had to face a mode of attack even more dangerous than the injunction which their transatlantic brethren had so long been contending against. Taff Vale law could not long be confined to England. Very soon, our American courts followed the English example. A suit was inst.i.tuted against the members of a lodge of the Machinists' Union in Rutland, Vermont, and the defendants were ordered to pay $2500. A writ was served upon each member and the property of every one of them attached. Since that time, numerous other decisions of a like nature have been rendered in various parts of the country. Thus the unions have been a.s.sailed in a vital place, their treasuries. It is manifestly foolish and quite useless for the members of a union to strike against an employer for any purpose whatever, if the employer is to be able to recover damages from the union. Taff Vale judge-made law renders the labor union _hors de combat_ at a stroke.

IX

The immediate effect of the revolutionary judicial decision in England was to arouse the workers to the necessity for cla.s.s-conscious political action. The cry went up that the unions must adopt a policy of independent political action. There is no doubt whatever that the tremendous advance of the Socialist movement in England during the past few years began as a result of the attack made upon the funds of the labor unions. From the moment of the Taff Vale decision the Socialist movement in England took rapid strides. A similar process is going on in this country, gathering momentum with every injunction against organized labor, every hostile enactment of legislatures, and every use of the judicial and executive powers to defeat the workers in their struggle against capitalism. The workers are being educated to political Socialism by the stern experiences resulting from capitalist rule.

Underneath the thin veneer of party differences, the worker sees the cla.s.s ident.i.ty of the great political parties, and cries out, "A plague on both your houses!" The Socialist argument comes to him with a twofold force: not only does it show him how he is enslaved and exploited as a producer, but it convinces him that as a citizen he has it in his power to control the government and make it what he will. He can put an end to government by injunctions, to the use of police, state, and federal troops to break strikes, and to the sequestration of union funds by hostile judges. He can, if he so decides, own and control the government, and, through the government, own and control the essentials of life: be master of his own labor, his own bread, his own life.

If we take for granted that the universal increase of Socialist sentiment, and the growth of political Socialism, as measured by its rapidly increasing vote, presage this great triumph of the working cla.s.s; that the heretofore despised and oppressed proletariat is, in a not far distant future, to rule instead of being ruled, the question arises, will the last state be better than the first? Will society be bettered by the change of masters?

The very form of the question must be denied. It is not a movement for a change of masters. To regard this struggle of the cla.s.ses as one of revenge, of exploited ma.s.ses ready to overturn the social structure that they may become exploiters instead of exploited, is to misread the whole movement. The political and economic conquest of society by the working cla.s.s means the end of cla.s.s divisions once and forever. A social democracy, a society in which all things essential to the common life and well-being are owned and controlled by the people in common, democratically organized, precludes the existence of cla.s.s divisions in our present-day economic and political sense. Profit, through human exploitation, alone has made cla.s.s divisions possible, and the Socialist regime will abolish profit. The working cla.s.s, in emanc.i.p.ating itself, at the same time makes liberty possible for the whole race of man, and destroys the conditions of cla.s.s rule.

FOOTNOTES:

[116] The _Communist Manifesto_, Kerr edition, page 8.

[117] In _Centralization and the Law: Scientific Legal Education, An Ill.u.s.tration_, edited by Melville M. Bigelow.

[118] See, for instance, _The Coal Mine Workers_, by Frank Julian Warne, Ph.D. (1905).

[119] Adam Smith, _The Wealth of Nations_, Vol. I, Book I, Chapter VIII.

[120] _The Common Sense of Socialism_, by John Spargo, page 131 (1908).

[121] See, for instance, _The American Farmer_, by A. M. Simons, page 130; _Agrarfrage_, by Karl Kautsky, pages 305-306.

[122] Mr. Ghent's excellent work, _Ma.s.s and Cla.s.s_, and Karl Kautsky's _Ethics and the Materialistic Conception of History_, may be named as excellent examples of what Socialists have done in this direction.

[123] In _The Worker_ (New York), March 25, 1905.

[124] Cf., for instance, _The Labor History of the Cripple Creek District_, by Benjamin McKie Rastall (1908), and Senate Doc.u.ment No.

122, being _A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado, from 1880 to 1904, Inclusive_, by Carroll D. Wright (1905), for evidence of this from sources not specially friendly to the miners.