Socialism and Democracy in Europe Part 25

In every country the parliamentary experience has been the same: the liberal and radical element, attracted by the legislative demands of the labor party, coalesced, for specific issues, with the Socialists, and a new era of economic and social legislation was ushered in. Even in Germany, with its unmodern conditions in government, all the powers of feudal autocracy failed to crush the rising forces of the new political consciousness.

In France and England we have seen Socialists take their places in the cabinet, to the chagrin of that portion of the Socialists who still regard social cla.s.ses as natural enemies, and consider social co-operation among all the elements of society impossible.

In brief, Socialism has entered politics and has become mundane. You need a microscope to tell a Socialist from a Socialist-Radical in France, and a Laborite from a Radical-Liberal in England. Briand and Millerand may be voted out of the Socialist Party, and John Burns may be spurned by the I.L.P. But these men are teaching a double lesson: first, that there are no new ways to human betterment; second, that the old way is worth traveling, because it does lead to happier and easier conditions of toil. Socialists the world over will soon be compelled to realize that the political force which shrinks from the responsibility of daily political drudgery will never be a permanent factor in life. A political party that is afraid to a.s.sume the obligations of government for fear that it will lose its ideal, is too fragile for this world.

The Socialist Party wherever it exists is a labor party, with a labor program that is based on conditions which need to be remedied. Their practical demands as a rule are of such a nature that all of society would benefit by their enactment into law. The mystery has all gone out of the movement. It is not necromancy, it is plain parliamentary humdrum which you see. The threatened witchery is all words; the doing is intensely human, of the earth earthy.

The Socialist movement tends toward the latest phase of democracy, which is social democracy; the democracy that has ceased to toy with Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the other tinsel abstractions of the bourgeois revolutions; the democracy that sees poverty and suffering increase as wealth and ease increase. It is the democracy of the human heart, that cares for the babe in the slums, the lad in the factory, the mother at the cradle, and the father in his old age.

Against all these helpless ones society has sinned. And it is to a universal, sincere, social penance that the new democracy calls the rich, the powerful, and the comfortable.

Socialism is merging rapidly into this new democracy. In doing so it is abandoning its two great illusions. The first illusion is that the interests of the worker are somehow different from the interests of the rest of the community. Cla.s.s war has been a resonant battle-cry, and has served its purpose. It is folly for any cla.s.s to magnify its needs above those of the rest of society. Civilization and culture embrace the artisan and the artist, the poor and the powerful. Any cla.s.s interest that clashes with the welfare of society as a whole cannot survive. Socialism is abandoning the tyranny of cla.s.s war, is being mellowed by cla.s.s co-operation. Socialists are now claiming that their interests are the interests of society. The social complexion of the party in the countries of its greatest advancement is an indication of this. Many of the party leaders are of middle-cla.s.s origin. Some of them are rich. You call at their homes and servants open the door and receive your card on a silver tray. Mult.i.tudes of lawyers, physicians, journalists, and professors are in the movement.

Dr. Frank of Mannheim, the leader of the Badensian Socialists, said to me that the degree to which Socialism can gain the support of the intellectual element is the measure of success of the movement. All this indicates that Socialism is breaking the bonds of self-limited cla.s.s egoism. The peasant landowner, the small shopkeeper, the intellectualist, and occasionally a man or two of wealth and high social position are being drawn into this new democracy.

The question is now being seriously asked: Can there be a social co-operation? Must there always be industrial war? Von Vollmar, Millerand, Vandervelde, MacDonald proclaim the possibility of rational co-operation. MacDonald says: "The defense for democracy which is far and away the weightiest is that progress must spring, not from the generosity or enlightenment of a cla.s.s, but from the common intelligence." "It must be pointed out that the labor legislation now being asked for is very much more than a sequel to that pa.s.sed under the influence of Lord Shaftesbury. This differs from that as the working of the moral conscience differs from the motives of the first brute man who shaped his conduct under a contract of mutual defense with a friendly neighbor. To use the arm of the law to abolish crying evils, to put an end to an ever-present injustice, is one thing; to use that arm to promote justice and to keep open the road to moral advancement, to bring down from their throne in the ideal into a place in the world certain conceptions of distributive justice, is quite another thing. And yet this latter is now being attempted, and was certain to be attempted as soon as democracy came into power. When society is enfranchised, the social question becomes the political question."[1]

"The state is not the interest of a cla.s.s, but the organ of society."[2] There can be no broader foundation for political action than this. All progress springs from the "common intelligence" to which every one contributes his quota.

The second great illusion of Socialism is the social revolution. No one except a few extremists any longer thinks of the revolution by blood. Engels, the friend of Marx, shows that everywhere violence is giving way to political methods. "Even in the Romance countries we see the old tactics revised. Everywhere the German example of using the ballots is being followed. Even in France the Socialists see more and more that no lasting victory is to be theirs unless they win beforehand the great ma.s.ses of the people. The slow work of propaganda and parliamentary activity is here also recognized as the next step in party development."[3] Engels shows how Socialists have entered the parliaments of Belgium, Italy, Denmark, Bulgaria, Roumania, as well as the parliaments of the great powers. And he indicates that the revolution of the Socialist must come as a revolution by majorities--which is democracy.

Engels still believed that violence would follow the accession of democratic power. If he had lived another decade he would have discarded this last remnant of the theory of violence. In Germany the bourgeois are more frightened over the legal than over the illegal acts of the Socialist. They fear the results of elections more than rebellion. Violence they can suppress with a bayonet, but laws--they must be obeyed.

This is true in every country. The power of the ballot is infinitely greater than the power of the bullet, provided it is followed up with common sense and energy.

The theory of violence, then, has almost disappeared. The Syndicalist, in his reversion to anarchy, attempts to revive the forsaken theory.

He does this by a general strike. But the general strike is not to be confused with the social revolution. The general strike, wherever it has been tried as an economic forcing valve, has failed. But whenever it has been used as a political uprising, demanding political rights, it has been more or less successful. In Belgium we have seen how it brought results. In Sweden a few years ago there was a general strike that not only shut every factory, but stopped the street cars and all transportation lines, closed the gas-works, and even the newspapers were suspended. It was a powerful political protest, but the number of striking workmen did not equal the non-strikers.

In Italy in 1904 a general strike was called to protest against the arbitrary att.i.tude of the government toward the labor movement. In some of the cities all work ceased, even the gondoliers of Venice joined the strikers. In Russia in 1904-5 the transportation lines and post and telegraph lines were tied up while the workingmen demonstrated for their political liberty.

The violence of Socialism to-day is political; the violence of trade unionism is economic. As the democratic consciousness spreads, there may be such a coalescing of interests that violence will cease. But a human society without warfare and contention is still a tax upon the imagination. Strikes are increasing in number and bitterness and all the arbitrations and devices of democracies seem helpless in the turmoil of economic strife.

I am not unmindful that behind all this parliamentary activity there is the dim background of hope in the hearts of many Socialists that somehow the wage system will vanish, that compet.i.tion will cease, that the primary activities of production and distribution will be a.s.sumed by society, and that economic extremes will become impossible. In a people of fitful temper and ebullient spirit the doctrine of overturning remains a constant menace. Socialism in Spain and Italy wears a scarlet coat, in Germany a drab, and in England a black. The danger to civilization lurks, not in the survival of the doctrines of the older Socialism, but in the temper of the people who espouse them.

The Socialist movement has accomplished three notable things. First, it has spread democracy. The bourgeois revolutions established democracy; Socialism extends it. We have seen how in Belgium it compelled the governing powers to give labor the ballot; how in Germany, hard set and dogmatic, it is shaping events that will surely lead to ministerial responsibility and to universal suffrage; and how in England it is resulting in universal manhood suffrage and probably "votes for women." Socialism is spreading the obligations of government upon all shoulders. It is not, however, democratizing the machinery of administration. In France the centralized autocracy of Napoleon's empire remains almost untouched. In England the ancient traditions of administration are slow to change. In Germany the civil service will be the last barrier to give way.

Secondly, Socialism has forced the labor question upon the lawmakers.

This is a great achievement. The neglected and forgotten portions of the human family are now the objects of state solicitude. The record of this revolution is written in the statute books. Turn the leaves of the table of contents of a modern parliamentary journal, and compare it with the same work of thirty years ago. Almost the entire time is now taken up with questions that may be called humanitarian rather than financial or political. Grave ministers of state make long speeches on the death-rate of babies in the cities, on the cost of living in factory towns, on the causes of that most heartbreaking of modern woes, non-employment. Budgets are now concerned with the feeding of school children as well as the building of warships, and with the training of boys as well as the drilling of soldiers.

Nowhere has this radical change taken place without a labor party. The laboring man forced the issue. He bent kings and cabinets and parliaments to his demands. The time was ripe, society had reached that stage of its development when it was ready to take up these questions. But it did not do so of its own free will. When labor parties sprang like magic into puissance, a decade ago, the social conscience was ready to hear their plea. Bismarck foresaw their demands. But he was too obsessed of feudalism to realize their motives. Therefore his state socialism failed to silence the Socialists. The workman had his heart in the cause, not merely his tongue.

And the third great achievement is the natural result of the other two. When democracy is potent enough to force its demands on parliament, then the power of the state is ready to fulfil its demands. So we find in every country where Social Democracy has gained a foothold a constant increase of the functions of the state. What shall the state do? That is now the great question. One hundred years ago it was, What sort of a state shall we have? That is answered: a democratic state; at least, a state democratic in spirit. The state is no longer merely judge, soldier, lawmaker, and governor. It is physician, forester, bookkeeper, schoolmaster, undertaker, and a thousand other things. Society has grown complex, and the state, which is only another name for society, has developed a surprising precocity.

We have seen that in England especially the trend of legislation is to deprive the individual, one by one, of those prerogatives which gave him dominion over property. A man owning land in the city of London, for instance, has not the liberty to build as he likes or what he likes. He must build as the state permits him, and the exactions are manifold. He can be compelled to build a certain distance from the street,--that is, the city demands a strip of his land for common use.

He can build only a certain height,--the community wants the sunlight.

If his older buildings are dilapidated, the city tears them down. If the streets through his allotment are too narrow, the city widens them. In short, he may have t.i.tle in fee simple, but the community has a t.i.tle superior. Even his income from this parcel of land is not all his own. The state now takes a goodly slice in taxes. If he is inclined to resent this, and does not improve his property, the state taxes him on the unearned increment, and if he refuses to submit to this "socialism," the constable seizes the whole parcel, and he can have what is left after the community has satisfied its demands.

The taxes that he pays are distributed over a vast variety of activities. They go to feed school children, to pension aged workmen, to send inspectors into the factories, to keep up hospitals, as well as to light and pave the streets and pay policemen. Other taxes that he pays on other forms of property go to the improvement of agriculture, to the payment of boards of arbitration, and so on. In short, ownership is becoming more and more only an incident; it is not merely a badge of ease, but a symbol of social responsibility.

The burden of the law is shifting from property to persons, from protecting things to protecting humanity. This change from the Roman law is almost revolutionary. Even Blackstone, our halfway-mark in the evolution of the common law, is busy with postulates protecting property.

Where is this encroachment of the state on private "rights" going to end? There are some things which the state (society) can do better than the individual; like the marshaling of an army or conducting a post-office, and things that are done to counteract the selfishness of individuals, like factory inspection. But there are other things which society cannot do; things that depend on individual effort, like art, literature, and invention. The two fields of state and individual activity merge into each other. Each nation marks its own distinctions. But this is certain: _in a democracy the state will do the things which the people want it to do_. And in a Social Democracy these things are numerous.

Social Democracy strikes a balance between individual duty and collective energy. It brings the power of government (collective power), not to the few who are rich, therefore ignoring oligarchy; nor to the few who are clever, thereby ignoring tyranny; nor to the few who are well-born, thus discarding aristocracy; but it brings all the power of the government to all the people. It attempts to coalesce the cleverness of the tyrant, the experience of the aristocrat, the wealth of the industrial nabob, and the aggregate momentum of the ma.s.s, into a humanitarian power. It attempts to use the gifts of all for the benefit of all.

Social Democracy is the resultant of two forces meeting from opposite directions: the forces of industrialism, and Socialism, of collectivism and individualism. No one can draw the exact direction of this resultant. It attempts to avoid the tyranny and selfishness of the few, and the tyranny and greed of the many.

Our study of the operation of governments under the sway of Social Democracy has shown the sort of legislation that is demanded. It is not necessary to repeat here the details of these laws. But it is necessary to bear in mind that there are two industrial questions which have absolutely refused to bend to the power of government: the question of the length of the workday and the question of wages. The vast majority of strikes are due to differences over these two questions. The eight-hour day and the minimum wage have been successful only in a limited government service.[4] Nor has any machinery set up by governments to avoid industrial collisions between workmen and employers been successful in avoiding differences over hours and wages. The elaborate system of Germany, for instance, is nothing more than the good will of the state offered to the warring industrial elements in the interests of peace. The questions of hours and wages are so fundamental that they embrace the right of private property. Any power that divests an individual of the right to dispose of his time or substance by contract virtually deprives him of the right of ownership.

The limits to the possibilities of Social Democracy are the limits of private ownership. This brings us at once to the verge of the eternal question of government--the finding of a just ratio between individual and collective responsibility: a ratio that varies with varying nationalities, and that will vary with the pa.s.sing years. Each generation in every land will have to fix the limitations for itself.

The new Social Democracy has acquired certain characteristics which will help us in determining the trend of its movements. In the first place it is an educated Social Democracy. The taunt of ignorance applied to the old Socialism of pa.s.sion cannot be applied to the new Socialism of practice. The nations of Europe no longer debate the suitability of universal education. That question happily was settled for the United States with the landing of the Pilgrims. It took one hundred years for Europe to understand the Ordinance of 1787, that "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Not all of the European nations have touched the heights of this ideal, but Social Democracy is struggling towards it, and schools, more or less efficient, are open to the workmen's children. This education is extended to adults by the press and by self-imposed studies. The eagerness with which men and women flock to lectures and night cla.s.ses is a great omen. In Paris the _ecole Socialiste_ and _Universite Populaire_, in Germany and Belgium the night cla.s.ses in the labor union clubhouses, the debates and the lecture courses, are evidences of intellectual eagerness.

In the second place it is a drilled democracy. It is organized into vast co-operative societies and trade unions. Here it learns the lesson of constant watchfulness over details. This training in the infinite little things of business is a good sedative. Socialists bargain and sell and learn the lessons of compet.i.tion; do banking and learn discount; engage in manufacture and learn the problem of the employer.

They are, moreover, drilled in parliaments, in city and county councils, in communal offices. They learn the advantages of give and take, are skilled in compromise, and feel the friction of opposition.

All this has wrought a wonderful change in Socialism. To a Belgian co-operativist running a butcher-shop, the eight-hour day is a practical problem; and to a Bavarian member of a city council the question of opening communal dwellings ceases to be only a subject for debate. Nothing has brought these people to earth so suddenly as the infusion of earthly experience into their blood. And this transfusion has given them life. It has rid them of their many adjectives and given them a few verbs. It has robbed them in large measure of their mob spirit.[5] Every year the arbitrary governments of Europe are finding police coercion more and more unnecessary. The Socialist crowd is growing orderly, is achieving that self-control which alone ent.i.tles a people to self-government.

It is not unnatural that this movement has made leaders. Of these, Herr August Bebel is the most remarkable example. This woodturner, turned party autocrat and statesman, is a never-ending wonder to the German aristocracy. His speeches are read as eagerly as those of the Chancellor, and his opinions are quoted as widely as the Kaiser's.

When in 1911 he made his great speech on the Morocco Question in the Social Democratic Convention, it was reported by the column in all of the great Continental and English dailies. Bebel is an example of what the open door of opportunity will do, and he had to force the door himself. A few years ago, in a moment of reminiscent confidence, he confessed that he used to cherish as an ideal the time when he could, for once, have all the bread and b.u.t.ter he could eat. In America we are accustomed to this rising into power of obscure and untried men.

But in Europe it is rare. European Social Democracy is an expression of the desire on the part of the people for the open highways of opportunity.

In the third place, Social Democracy is self-conscious. I have not used the word cla.s.s-conscious, because it is more than the consciousness of an economic group. History is replete with instances that reveal the irresistible power generated by ma.s.s consciousness.

This is the psychology of nationalism. The dynamo that generates the mysterious voltage of patriotism, of tribal loyalty, is the heart.

Socialism has replaced tribal and national ideals and welded its devotees into a self-conscious international unity. Whatever danger there may be in Socialism is the danger of the zealot. The ideal may be impracticable and discarded, but the devotion to it may be blind and destructive.

As a rule, Socialist leaders and writers maintain that this drawing together of Socialism and democracy is only transitory, and that beyond this lies the promised land of social production. Jaures has explained this clearly: "Democracy, under the impetus given it by organized labor, is evolving irresistibly toward Socialism, and Socialism toward a form of property which will deliver man from his exploitation by man, and bring to an end the regime of cla.s.s government. The Radicals flatter themselves that they can put a stop to this movement by promising the working cla.s.ses some reforms, and by proclaiming themselves the guardians of private property. They hope to hold a large part of the proletariat in check by a few reforming laws expressing a sentiment of social solidarity, and by their policy of defending private property to rouse the conservative forces, the petty bourgeoisie, the middle cla.s.ses, and the small peasant proprietors to oppose Socialism."[6]

So we see that in spite of their experiences Socialists still draw a clear distinction between their Socialism and democracy. The Socialist is willing to ignore the experiences of the past twenty years in his ecstasy of vision. He claims that whatever has been done is mere reform. He affects to belittle it, the Marxian scorns it. To the Socialist, democracy is only the halfway house on the road to the economic paradise. He has his gaze fixed on the New Jerusalem of "co-operative production" and "distributive justice." Whether this New City, with its streets paved with the gold of altruism and its gates garnished with the pearls of good will and benevolence, will be brought from the fleecy clouds of ecstatic imagination to our sordid earth remains a question of speculation to that vast body of sincere and practical citizens who have not scaled the heights of the Socialistic Patmos.

European Socialism has been transplanted to America. But its growth until quite recently has been very slow, and confined largely to immigrants. There is no political spur to hasten the movement. Here democracy has been achieved. The universal ballot, free speech, free press, free a.s.sociation are accomplished. Many of the economic policies espoused by the Social Democratic parties of Europe are written into the platforms of our political parties. There will be no independent labor party of any strength until the old parties have aroused the distrust of the great body of laboring men, and until the labor unions cut loose from their traditional aloofness and enter politics. How socialistic such a party will be must depend upon the circ.u.mstances attending its organization. The two third-party movements which have flourished since the Civil War, the Greenback movement of the '70's and the Populist movement of the '90's, were virtually "cla.s.s" parties, restricted to the agricultural population of the Middle and Far West; and both of them feared Socialism as much as they hated capitalism. Neither of these parties outlived a decade.

Economic prosperity abruptly ended both.[7]

The stress of political exclusiveness and the harsh hand of government will not produce a reactionary movement among the workingmen of America. But economic circ.u.mstances may do so. We are still a young country full of the hope of youth. The ranks of every walk of life are filled with those who have worked their way to success from humble origin. Most of our famous men struggled with poverty in their youth.

Their lives are constantly held up to the children of the nation as examples of American pluck, enterprise, and opportunity. A nation that lures its clerks toward proprietorship and its artisans toward independence offers barren soil for the doctrines of discontent. We have no stereotyped poverty in the European sense. Our farmers own their acreage, and many of the urban poor are able to buy a cottage in the outskirts of the city.

But there are signs that these conditions are undergoing profound changes. Unlimited compet.i.tion has led to limitless consolidation of industries, and the financial destinies of the Republic repose in the hands of comparatively few men. So much of the Marxian proposition is fulfilled, at the moment, in America. This concentrated wealth has not been unmindful of politics. Governmental power and money power are closely identified in the public mind. Our cities are overflowing with a new population from the excitable portions of southern Europe, a population that is proletarian in every sense of the word. Panics follow one another in rapid succession. The uneasiness of business is fed by the turmoil of politics. Unrest is everywhere. Labor and business are engaged in constant struggles that affect all members of society. The cost of living has increased alarmingly in the last ten years. We are becoming rapidly a manufacturing nation; the balance of power is shifting from the farm to the city.[8]

European Socialists are taking a keen interest in American affairs.

Bebel said to me: "You are getting ready for the appropriation of the great productive enterprises and the railways. Your trusts make the problem easy." John Burns prophesied that violence and bloodshed alone would check us in our mad career for wealth. Jaures asked how long it would take before our poverty would be worse than that of Europe. At a distance they see us plunging headlong into a Socialist regime.

Professor Brentano of Munich knows us better. He said to me, "Conservation will be your Socialism."[9] If the fundamental principles of conservation can be embodied in const.i.tutional laws, then there will be an almost indefinite extension of the power of the state over industry. It will embrace mines, forests, irrigated deserts; it will extend to the sources of all water supply and water power; the means of transportation may ultimately be included. So that without radical legal and inst.i.tutional changes it will be possible for many of the sources of our raw materials to be placed under governmental surveillance, leaving the processes of manufacture and exchange in the hands of private individuals.

There are at present many indications that this will be our general process of "socialization." The people appear to want it; and in a democracy the will of the people must prevail.

Before we have advanced far along the new road of conservation we will find it necessary to reconstruct our whole system of administration.

The haphazard of politics must be foreign to public business.

Everywhere in Europe, especially in Germany and England, the people, including the Socialists, appear satisfied with the efficiency of their administrative machinery. Who would intrust the running of a railroad to our Federal or State governments?