Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles Part 16

The economic organization of the Socialist state would consist, then, of three distinct divisions, as follows: (1) Private production and exchange, subject only to such general supervision and control by the state as the interests of society demand, such as protection against monopolization, sanitary laws, and the like; (2) voluntary cooperation, subject to similar supervision and control; (3) production and distribution by the state, the administration to be by the autonomous organizations of the workers in industrial groups, subject to the fundamental laws and government of society as a whole.[190]

VI

Two other functions of the economic organization of society remain to be considered, the distribution of labor and its remuneration. In the organization of industry society will have to achieve a twofold result, a maximum of general, social efficiency, on the one hand, and of personal liberty and comfort to the workers on the other. The state would not only guarantee the right to labor, but, as a corollary, it would impose the duty of labor upon every competent person. The Pauline injunction, "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat," would be applied in the Socialist state to all except the incompetent to labor.

The immature child, the aged, the sick and infirm members of society, would alone be exempted from labor. The result of this would be that instead of a large unemployed army, vainly seeking the right to work, on the one hand, accompanied by the excessive overwork of the great ma.s.s of the workers fortunate enough to be employed, a vast increase in the number of producers from this one cause alone would make possible much greater leisure for the whole body of workers. Benjamin Franklin estimated that in his day four hours' labor from every adult male able to work would be more than sufficient to provide wealth enough for human wants; and it is certain that, without resorting to any standards of Spartan simplicity, Franklin's estimate could be easily realised to-day with anything approaching a scientific organization of labor.

Not only would the productive forces be enormously increased by the absorption of those workers who under the present system are unemployed, and those who do not labor or seek labor; in addition to these, there would be a tremendous transference of potential productive energy from occupations rendered obsolete and unnecessary by the socialization of society. Thus there are to-day tens of thousands of bankers, lawyers, traders, middlemen, speculators, advertisers, and others, whose functions, necessary to the capitalist system, would in most cases disappear. Because of this, they would be compelled to enter the producing cla.s.s. The possibilities of the scientific organization of industry are therefore almost unlimited. Every gain made by the state in the direction of economy of production would test the private enterprise existing and urge it onward in the same direction. Likewise, every gain made by the private producers would test the social production and urge it onward. Whether socialized production extended its sphere, or remained confined to its minimum limitations, would depend upon the comparative success or failure resulting. The state would not be a force outside of the people, arbitrarily extending its functions regardless of their will. The decision would rest with the people; they would _be_ the state, and would, naturally, resort to social effort only where it demonstrated its ability to serve the community more efficiently than private enterprise, with greater comfort and liberty to the individual and to the community.

While in the Socialist regime labor would be compulsory, it is inconceivable that a free people would tolerate a bureaucratic rule a.s.signing to each individual his or her proper task, no matter how ingenious the a.s.signment might be. Even if the bureaucracy were omniscient, such a condition of life would be intolerable. Just as it is necessary to insist that all must be secured in their right to labor, and required to labor, it is necessary also that the choice of one's occupation should be as far as possible personal and free, subject only to the laws of supply and demand. The greatest amount of personal freedom compatible with the requisite efficiency would be secured to the workers in their chosen occupations through their craft organizations.

But, it will be objected, all occupations are not equally desirable.

There are certain forms of work which, disagreeable in themselves, are just as essential to the well-being of society as the most artistic and pleasing. Who will do the dirty work, and the dangerous work, under Socialism? Will these occupations also be left to choice, and, if so, will there not be an insurmountable difficulty arising from the natural reluctance of men to choose such work?

In answering the question and affirming the principle of free choice--for so it must be answered--the Socialist is called upon to show that the absence of compulsion would not involve the neglect of these disagreeable, but highly important, social services; that it would be compatible with social safety to leave them to personal choice. In the first place, much of this kind of work that is now performed by human labor could be more efficiently done by mechanical means. Much of the work done by sweated women and children in our cities is in fact done in compet.i.tion with machines. Machinery has been invented, and is now available, to do thousands of the disagreeable and hurtful things now done by human beings. Professor Franklin H. Giddings is perfectly right when he says: "Modern civilization does not require, it does not need, the drudgery of needle-women or the crushing toil of men in a score of life-destroying occupations. If these wretched beings should drop out of existence and no others take their places, the economic activities of the world would not greatly suffer. A thousand devices latent in inventive brains would quickly make good any momentary loss."[191]

When, in England, a law was pa.s.sed forbidding the practice of forcing little boys through chimneys, to clean them, chimneys did not cease to be swept. Other, less disagreeable and less dangerous, means were quickly invented. When the woolen manufacturers were prevented from employing little boys and girls, they invented the piecing machine.[192]

Thousands of instances might be compiled in support of the contention of Professor Giddings, equally as pertinent as these. Another important point is that the amount of such disagreeable and dangerous work to be done would be very much less than now. That would be an inevitable result of the scientific organization of industry. It is likely that, if the subject could be properly investigated, it could be shown that the amount of such labor involved in wasteful and unnecessary advertising alone is enormous.

Addressing an audience composed mainly of scientific men upon the subject of Socialism, the writer was once questioned upon this phase of the subject. "Gentlemen," was the reply, "it is impossible for me to say exactly how the intelligence of the people in a more or less remote future will solve the problem. The Socialist state will be a democracy, not a dictatorship. But if I were dictator of society to-day and wanted to solve the problem, I should a.s.sign to such men as yourselves all the most disagreeable and dangerous tasks I could find. This I should do because I should know that at once your inventive brains would begin to devise mechanical and other means of doing the work. You would make sewer cleaning as pleasant as any other occupation in the world." There was, of course, nothing original in the reply, but the men of science recognized its force, and it fairly states one important part of the Socialist answer to the objection we are discussing. Still, with all possible reduction of the quant.i.ty of such work to be done, and with all the mechanical genius brought to bear upon it, we may freely concede that, for a long time to come, there must be some work quite dangerous, altogether disagreeable and repellent, and a great difference in the degree of attractiveness of some occupations as compared with some others. But an occupation repellent in itself might be made attractive, if the hours of labor were relatively few as compared with other occupations. If six hours be regarded as the normal working day, it is quite easy to believe that, for sake of the larger leisure, with its opportunities for the pursuit of special interests, many a man would gladly accept a disagreeable position for three hours a day.

The same holds true of superior remuneration. Under the Socialist regime, just as to-day, many a man would gladly exchange his work for less pleasant work, if the remuneration offered were higher. To the old Utopian ideas of absolute equality and uniformity of income these methods would be fatal, but they are not at all incompatible with modern, scientific Socialism. Nothing could well be sillier, or more futile, than the Rooseveltian attacks upon the Socialism of to-day as if it meant equality of possession, or equality of anything except opportunity.[193] Finally, in connection with this question, we must not forget that there is a natural inequality of talent, of power. In any state of society most men will prefer to do the things they are best fitted for, the things they can do best. The man who feels himself to be best fitted to be a hewer of wood or a drawer of water will choose that rather than some loftier task. There is no reason at all to suppose that leaving the choice of occupation to the individual would involve the slightest risk to society.

While equality of remuneration, meaning by that uniformity of reward for labor, is not an essential condition of the Socialist regime, it may be freely admitted that _approximate equality of income_ is the ideal to be ultimately aimed at. Otherwise, if there should be the present inequality of remuneration, represented by the enormous salary of a manager like Mr. Schwab, to quote a conspicuous example, and the meager wage of the average laborer, cla.s.s formations must take place and the old problems incidental to economic inequality reappear. There is no need to regard uniformity of reward for all as the only solution of this problem, however. Given such an industrial democracy as is herein suggested as the essential condition of Socialism, there is little reason to doubt that gradually, by the free play of economic law, approximate equality would be attained. This brings us to the method of the remuneration of labor.

VII

Socialists are too often judged by their shibboleths, rather than by the principles which those shibboleths imperfectly express, or seek to express. Declaiming, rightly, against the wages system as a form of slave labor,[194] the "abolition of wage slavery," forever inscribed on their banners, the average man is forced to the conclusion that the Socialists are working for a system in which the workers will divide their actual products and then barter the surplus for the surplus products of other workers. Either that, or the most rigid system of governmental production and a method of distributing rations and uniforms similar to that which obtains in the military organization of present-day governments. It is easily seen, however, that such plans do not conform to the democratic ideals of the Socialists, on the one hand, nor would either of them, on the other hand, be compatible with the wide personal liberty herein put forward as characteristic of the Socialist state.

The earlier Utopian Socialists did propose to do away with wages; in fact, they proposed to do away with money altogether, and invented various forms of "Labor Notes" as a means of giving equality of remuneration for given quant.i.ties of labor, and providing a medium for the exchange of wealth. But when the Socialists of to-day speak of the "abolition of wages," or of the wages system, they use the words in the same sense as they speak of the abolition of capital: _they would abolish only the social relations implied in the terms_. Just as they do not mean by the abolition of capital the destruction of the machinery and implements of production, but the social relation in which they are used to create profit for the few, so, when they speak of the abolition of the wages system, they mean only the use of wages to exploit the producers for the gain of the owners of the means of production and exchange. Though the name "wages" might not be changed, a money payment for labor in a democratic arrangement of industry, representing an approximation to the full value of the labor, minus only its share of the cost of maintaining the public services, and the weaker, dependent members of society, would be vastly different from a money payment for labor by one individual to other individuals, representing an approximation to their cost of living, bearing no definite relation to the value of their labor products, and paid in lieu of those products with a view to the gathering of a rich surplus value by the payer.

Karl Kautsky, perhaps the greatest living exponent of the theories of modern Socialism, has made this point perfectly clear. He accepts without reserve the belief that wages, unequal and paid in money, will be the method of remuneration for labor in the Socialist regime.[195]

When too many laborers rush into certain branches of industry, the natural way to lessen their number and to increase the number of laborers in other branches where there is need for them, will be to reduce wages in the one and to increase them in the other. Socialism, instead of being defined as an attempt to make men equal, might perhaps be more justly and accurately defined as a social system based upon the natural inequalities of mankind. Not human equality, but equality of opportunity, and the prevention of the creation of artificial inequalities by privilege, is the essence of Socialism.

What, it may be asked, will society do to prevent the h.o.a.rding of wealth on the one hand, and the exploitation of the spendthrift by the abstinent upon the other? Here, as throughout this discussion, we must be careful to refrain from laying down dogmatic rules, giving categorical replies to questions which the future will settle in its own way. At best, we can only reason as to what possible answers are compatible with the fundamental principles of Socialism. Thus we may safely answer that in the Socialist regime society will not attempt to dictate to the individual how he shall spend his income. If Jones prefers _objets d'art_, and Smith prefers fast horses or a steam yacht, each will be free to follow his inclinations so far as his resources will permit. If, on the contrary, one should prefer to h.o.a.rd his wealth, he would be free to do so. The inheritance of such acc.u.mulated property, other than personal objects, of course, might be denied, the state being made the only possible inheritor of such acc.u.mulated property. Even in the absence of such a regulation, the inheritance of h.o.a.rded wealth would not be a serious matter and would speedily adjust itself. There would be no opportunity for its _investment_, so that at most individuals inheriting such property would be enabled to live idly, or with extra luxury, until it was spent. The fact of inheriting property would not give the individual power over the life and labor of others.

By either method, full play for individual liberty would be coupled with full economic security for society. There would be no danger of the development of a ruling cla.s.s as a result of natural inequalities.

With such conditions as these, it is not difficult nor in any sense romantic to suppose that the tendency to h.o.a.rd wealth would largely disappear. In the same way we must regard the possibilities of the exploitation of man by man developing in the Socialist state, through the wastefulness and improvidence of the one and the frugality, abstinence, and cunning of the other, as slight. With the credit functions entirely in the hands of the state, the improvident man would be able to obtain credit upon the same securities as from a private creditor, without extortion. Society would further secure itself against the weakness and failure of the improvident by insuring all its members against sickness, accident, and old age.

VIII

The administration of justice is necessarily a social function in a democratic society. All juridical functions should be socialized in the strict sense of being maintained at the social expense for the free service of its citizens. Court fees, advocates' charges, and other expenses incidental to the administration of justice in present society are all anti-democratic and subversive of justice.

Finally, education is likewise a social necessity which society itself must a.s.sume responsibility for. We have discovered that for self-protection society must insist upon a certain minimum of education for every child able to receive it; that it is too vital a matter to be left to the option of parents or the desires of the immature child. We have made a certain minimum of education compulsory and free; the Socialist state would make a minimum--probably much larger than our present minimum--compulsory, but it would also make _all_ education free. From the first stages, in the kindergartens, to the last, in the universities, education must be wholly free or equality of opportunity cannot be realized. So long as a single barrier exists to prevent any child from receiving all the education it is capable of profiting by, democracy is unattained.

Whether the Socialist state could tolerate the existence of elementary schools other than its own, such as privately conducted kindergartens, religious schools, and so on, is by no means agreed upon by Socialists.

It is like the question of marriage, a matter which is wholly beyond the scope of present knowledge. The future will decide for itself. There are those who believe that the state would not content itself with refusing to permit religious doctrines or ideas to be taught in the schools, but would go further, and, as the protector of the child, guard its independence of thought in later life as far as possible by forbidding religious teaching of any kind in schools for children below a certain age. It would not, of course, attempt to prevent parental instruction in religious beliefs in the home. Beyond the age prescribed, religious education, in all other than public inst.i.tutions of learning, would be freely admitted. This restriction of religious education to the years of judgment and discretion implies no hostility to religion on the part of the state, but complete neutrality. Not the least important of the rights of the child is the right to be protected from influences which bias the mind and destroy the possibilities of independent thought in later life, or make it attainable only as a result of bitter, needless, tragic experience. This is one view. On the other hand, there are probably quite as many Socialists who believe that the state would not attempt to prevent the religious education of children of any age, in schools voluntarily maintained for that purpose, independent of the public schools. They believe that the state would content itself with insisting that these religious schools must be so built and equipped as not to imperil the lives or the health of the children attending them, and so conducted as not to interfere with the public schools,--all of which means simply that, like vaccination, and the form of marriage contract, the question will be settled by the future in its own way.

There is nothing in the fundamental principles of Socialism, nor any body of facts in our present experience, from which we can judge the manner of that settlement.

In this brief outline of the Socialist state as the writer, in common with many of his a.s.sociates, conceives it, there are many gaps. The temptation to fill in the outline somewhat more in detail is strong, but that is beyond the borderland which divides scientific and Utopian methods. The purpose of the outline is mainly to show that the ideal of the Socialism of to-day is something far removed from the network of laws and the oppressive bureaucracy commonly imagined; something wholly different in spirit and substance from the mechanical arrangement of human relations imagined by Utopian romancers. If the Socialist propaganda of to-day largely consists of the advocacy of laws for the protection of labor and dealing with all kinds of evils, it must be remembered that these are to _ameliorate conditions in the existing social order_. Many of the laws for which Socialists have most strenuously fought have their _raison d'etre_ in the conditions of capitalist society, and would be quite unnecessary under Socialism. If a reference to one's personal work may be pardoned, I will cite the matter of the feeding of school children, in the public schools, at the public expense. I have, for many years, advocated this measure, which is to be found in most Socialist programmes, and which the Socialists of other countries have to a considerable extent carried into practical effect.

Yet, I am free to say that the plan is not my ideal of the manner in which children should be fed. It is, at best, a palliative, a necessary evil, rendered necessary by the conditions of capitalist society. One hopes that in the Socialist regime, home life would be so far developed as to make possible the proper feeding and care of all children in their homes. This is but an ill.u.s.tration. The Socialist ideal of the state of the future, when private property is no longer an instrument of oppression used by the few against the many, is not a life completely enmeshed in a network of government, but a life controlled by government as little as possible; not a life ruled and driven by a powerful engine of laws, but a life as spontaneous and free as possible--a maximum of personal freedom with a minimum of restraint.

"These things shall be! A loftier race Than e'er the world hath known shall rise With flower of freedom in their souls And light of science in their eyes."[196]

FOOTNOTES:

[180] Cf. _Das Erfurter Program_, by Karl Kautsky.

[181] Cf. Ensor's _Modern Socialism_, page 351.

[182] _Labour and Capital: a Letter to a Labour Friend_, by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L. (Macmillan, 1907).

The reader of Professor Smith's little book is referred, for the Socialist answer to his criticisms, to a small volume by the author of this book: _Capitalist and Laborer: an Open Letter to Professor Goldwin Smith_, D.C.L. (Kerr, _Standard Socialist Series_), 1907.

[183] _La Conquete du pain_, Pierre Kropotkin, 5th edition, Paris, 1895, page 202.

[184] _The Principles of Sociology_, by Herbert Spencer, Vol. III, page 534.

[185] Cf. _The Spirit of American Government_, by J. Allen Smith, LL.B.

Ph.D., for a discussion of this subject.

[186] This statement must not be interpreted too narrowly, of course.

While the nature of these things makes possible an infinitely wider range of personal liberty than is possible in some other things, individual liberty must _ultimately_ be governed by the liberty of others. A fanatical religious sect practicing human sacrifice, for instance, could not be tolerated by any civilized society. Obscenity in art is another example.

[187] I use the word "state" throughout this discussion in its largest, most comprehensive sense, as meaning the whole political organization of society.

[188] This view is fully shared by Kautsky, _Agrarfrage_, pages 443-444, and by Paul Lafargue, _Revue Politique et Parliamentaire_, October, 1898, page 70.

[189] Of course, this does not mean that there must not be private _use_ of land.

[190] The student who cares to pursue the subject will find that this a.n.a.lysis is, in the main, agreed to by the most eminent exponents of Marxian Socialism to-day. Cf., for instance, Kautsky's _Das Erfurter Program_; the same writer's _The Social Revolution_, especially pages 117, 159; Vandervelde, quoted by Ensor, _Modern Socialism_, page 205; also, Vandervelde's _Collectivism_, page 46. Jaures, the brilliant French Socialist, may not perhaps be strictly included in the category of "eminent Marxists," but he accepts the position of Kautsky, see _Studies in Socialism_, by Jean Jaures, pages 36-40. See, also, Engels, _Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschland_, published in _Die Neue Zeit_, 1894-1895, No. 10; Kautsky, _Die Agrarfrage_; and Simons, _The American Farmer_. That most of these deal with petty agriculture rather than petty industry is true, but the principle holds in regard to both.

[191] "Ethics of Social Progress," by Professor Franklin H. Giddings in _Philanthropy and Social Progress_ (1893), page 226.

[192] "The Economics of Factory Legislation," in _The Case For the Factory Acts_, by Mrs. Sidney Webb, page 50.

[193] See, for instance, Mr. Roosevelt's speech at Matinec.o.c.k, L.I., near Oyster Bay, July 11, 1908, as reported in the daily papers by the a.s.sociated Press. Also, the Republican National Platform, 1908, which states that Socialism stands for "equality of possession," while the Republican Party stands for "equality of opportunity"--a complete misrepresentation, both of Socialism and the Republican Party!

[194] For condemning the wages system as a form of slavery, Socialists are often vigorously condemned, but there are few sociologists of repute who question the truth of the Socialist claim. Herbert Spencer, for example, is as vigorous in a.s.serting that wage-labor is a form of slavery as any Socialist. See _The Principles of Sociology_, Vol. III, Chapter 18.

[195] See Kautsky's _Das Erfurter Program_, and also _The Social Revolution_, especially pages 128-135; Anton Menger, _L'etat Socialiste_, page 35; and Vandervelde's _Collectivism_, pages 149-150.

[196] J. Addington Symonds.