Socialism As It Is Part 41

Here is an invaluable insight into the underlying standpoint of some of these anti-political "syndicalists," to use a term that has come to us from France. Nothing could possibly be more alien to the whole spirit of revolutionary Socialism than these conclusions. The very reason for the existence of Socialism is that Socialists believe that the unions cannot control the labor market in present society. The Socialists' chief hope, moreover, is that economic evolution will make possible and almost inevitable the transformation of a capitalist into a Socialist society; it is then to their interest not to r.e.t.a.r.d the development of industry by the restriction of output, but to advance it. Indeed, Mr. d.u.c.h.ez's philosophy is not that of Socialist labor unionism, but of anarchist labor unionism, and there have been strong tendencies in many countries, not only in France and Italy, but also in the United States, especially among the more conservative unions, to be guided by such a policy. It is the essence of Mr. Gompers's program, as I have shown, to claim that "a partial expropriation of capital" is taking place through the unions, and that by this means, _without any government action_, and _without any revolutionary general strike_ the workers will gradually "get all they produce." According to the Socialist view, such a gradual expropriation can only _begin_ after a _political and economic_ revolution, or when, on its near approach, capitalists prefer to make vital concessions rather than to engage in such a conflict.

The leading Socialist monthly in America, the _International Socialist Review_, which has indorsed the new unionism, has even found it necessary recently to remind its readers that the Socialist Party does after all play a certain role and a more or less important one, in the revolutionary movement. "Representative revolutionary unionists, like Lagardelle of France and Tom Mann of Australia," said the _Review_, "point out the immense value of a political party _as an auxiliary_ to the unions. A revolutionary union without the backing of a revolutionary party will be tied up by injunctions. Its officers will be kidnapped.

Its members, if they defy the courts, will be corralled in bull pens or mowed down by Gatling guns.

"A revolutionary party, on the other hand, if it pins its hopes mainly to the pa.s.sing of laws, tends always to degenerate into a reform party.

Its 'leaders' become hungry for office and eager for votes, even if the votes must be secured by concessions to the middle cla.s.s. In the pursuit of such votes it wastes its propaganda on immediate demands."

The _Review_ adds, however, that a non-political menace of revolution does ten times as much for reforms as any political activity; which can only mean that in its estimation revolutionary strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, etc., are of ten times higher present value than the ballot.

Mr. Tom Mann seems also to subordinate political to labor union action: "Experience in all countries shows most conclusively that industrial organization, intelligently conducted, is of much more moment than political action, for, entirely irrespective as to which school of politicians is in power, capable and courageous industrial activity forces from the politicians proportionate concessions.... Indeed, it is obvious that a growing proportion of the intelligent pioneers of economic changes are expressing more and more dissatisfaction with Parliament and all its works, and look forward to the time when Parliaments, as we know them, will be superseded by the people managing their own affairs by means of the Initiative and the Referendum."[260]

The last sentence shows that Mr. Mann had somewhat modified his aversion to politics, for the Initiative and Referendum is a political and not an economic device. His objection to politics in the form of parliamentarism (that is, trusting everything to elected persons, or _representatives_) as distinguished from direct democracy, would probably meet the views of the majority of Socialists everywhere (except in Great Britain).

A later declaration of Mr. Mann after his return from Australia to England shows that he now occupies the same ground as Debs and Haywood in America--favoring a revolutionary party as well as revolutionary unions:--

"The present-day degradation of so large a percentage of the workers is directly due to their economic enslavement; and it is economic freedom that is demanded.

"Now Parliamentary action is at all times useful, in proportion as it makes for economic emanc.i.p.ation of the workers. But Socialists and Labour men in Parliament can only do effective work there in proportion to the intelligence and economic organization of the rank and file....

"Certainly nothing very striking in the way of constructive work could reasonably be expected from the minorities of the Socialists and Labour men hitherto elected. But the most moderate and fair-minded are compelled to declare that, not in one country but in all, a proportion of those comrades who, prior to being returned, were unquestionably revolutionary, are no longer so after a few years in Parliament. They are revolutionary neither in their att.i.tude towards existing society nor in respect of present-day inst.i.tutions. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that many seem to have const.i.tuted themselves apologists for existing society, showing a degree of studied respect for bourgeois conditions, and a toleration of bourgeois methods, that destroys the probability of their doing any real work of a revolutionary character.

"I shall not here attempt to juggle with the quibble of 'Revolution or Evolution,'--or to meet the contention of some of those under consideration that it is not Revolution that is wanted. 'You cannot change the world and yet not change the world.' _Revolution is the means of, not the alternative to, Evolution._ I simply state that a working-cla.s.s movement that is not revolutionary in character, is not of the slightest use to the working cla.s.s."[261]

If Mr. Mann later resigned from the British Social Democratic Party, this was in part due to the special conditions in Great Britain, as he said at the time, and partly to his Australian experience of the demoralizing effects of office seeking on the Labour Party there. Mann stands with Herve in the French Party and Debs and Haywood in the American. The reasons given for his withdrawal from the British Party embody the universal complaint of revolutionary unionists against what is everywhere a strong tendency of Socialist parties to become demoralized like other political organizations. Mr. Mann, in his letter of resignation, said:--

"After the most careful reflection I am driven to the belief that the real reason why the trade unionist movement of this country is in such a deplorable state of inefficiency is to be found in the fict.i.tious importance which the workers have been encouraged to attach to parliamentary action.

"I find nearly all the serious-minded young men in the Labour and Socialist movement have their minds centered upon obtaining some position in public life, such as local, munic.i.p.al, or county councilorship, or filling some governmental office, or aspiring to become a member of Parliament.

"I am driven to the belief that this is entirely wrong, and that economic liberty will never be realized by such means. So I declare in favor of Direct Industrial Organization, not as _a_ means but as _the_ means whereby the workers can ultimately overthrow the capitalist system and become the actual controllers of their own industrial and social destiny."

There is little disagreement among Socialists that "Direct Industrial Organization" is likely to prove the most important means by which "the workers can ultimately overthrow the capitalist system." This, the "industrial unionism" of Debs and Haywood and Mann, is to be sharply distinguished from French "syndicalism" which undermines all Socialist political action and all revolutionary economic action as well, by teaching that even to-day by direct industrial organization--without a political program or political support, and without a revolution--"a partial expropriation of capital is taking place."

The advocates of revolutionary labor unionism in America for the most part are not allowing the new idea to draw away their energies from the Socialist Party; it merely serves to emphasize their hostility to the present unaggressive policy of the Executive American Federation of Labor and some of the unions that compose it.

Mr. Haywood (another of Mr. Roosevelt's "undesirable citizens") urges the working cla.s.s to "become so organized on the economic field that they can take and hold the industries in which they are employed." This view might seem to obviate the need of a political party, but Mr.

Haywood does not regard it in that light. He says:--

"There is justification for political action, and that is, to control the forces of the capitalists that they use against us; to be in a position to control the power of government so as to make the work of the army ineffective.... That is the reason that you want the power of government. That is the reason that you should fully understand the power of the ballot.

"Now, there isn't any one, Socialist, S.L.P., Industrial Worker, or any other working man or woman, no matter what society you belong to, but what believes in the ballot. There are those--and I am one of them--who refuse to have the ballot interpreted for them. I know or think I know the power of it, and I know that the industrial organization, as I have stated in the beginning, is its broadest interpretation. I know, too, that when the workers are brought together in a great organization they are not going to cease to vote. That is when the workers will _begin_ to vote, to vote for directors to operate the industries in which they are all employed."

In the recent pamphlet, "Industrial Socialism," Mr. Haywood and Mr.

Frank Bonn develop the new unionism at greater length. Their conclusions as to politics are directed, not against the Socialist Party, but against its non-revolutionary elements:--

"The Socialist Party stands not merely for the POLITICAL supremacy of labor. It stands for the INDUSTRIAL supremacy of labor. Its purpose is not to secure old age pensions and free meals for school children. Its mission is to help overthrow capitalism and establish Socialism.

"The great purpose of the Socialist Party is to seize the powers of government and thus prevent them from being used by the capitalists against the workers. With Socialists in political offices the workers can strike and not be shot. They can picket shops and not be arrested and imprisoned.... To win the demands made on the industrial field it is absolutely necessary to control the government, as experience shows strikes to have been lost through the interference of courts and militia. The same functions of government, controlled by a cla.s.s conscious working cla.s.s, will be used to inspire confidence and compel the wheels of industry to move in spite of the devices and stumblingblocks of the capitalists....

"Socialist government will concern itself entirely with the shop.

Socialism can demand nothing of the individual outside the shop....

It has no concern with the numberless social reforms which the capitalists are now preaching in order to save their miserable profit system.

"Old age pensions are not Socialism. The workers had much better fight for higher wages and shorter hours. Old age pensions under the present government are either charity doled out to paupers, or bribes given to voters by politicians. Self-respecting workers despise such means of support. Free meals or cent meals for poverty-stricken school children are not Socialism. Industrial freedom will enable parents to give their children solid food at home. Free food to the workers cuts wages and kills the fighting spirit."

The American "syndicalists" are not opposed to political action, but they want to use it _exclusively_ for the purposes of industrial democracy.

While Messrs. Haywood and Bohn by no means take an anarchistic position, they show no enthusiasm for the capitalist-collectivist proposals that _present governments_ should take control of industry. They are not hostile to all government, but they think that democracy applied directly to industry would be all the government required:--

"In the shop there must be government. In the school there must be government. In the conduct of the great public services there must be government. We have shown that Socialism will make government democratic throughout. The basis of this freedom will be the freedom of the individual to develop his powers. People will be educated in freedom. They will work in freedom. They will live in freedom....

"Socialism will establish democracy in the shop. Democracy in the shop will free the working cla.s.s. The working cla.s.s, through securing freedom for itself, will liberate the race."

Even the American "syndicalists," however, attach more importance to economic than to political action. Hitherto revolutionary Socialists have agreed that the only constructive work possible _under capitalism_ was that of education and organization. The "syndicalists" also agree that nothing peculiarly socialistic can be done to-day by _political_ action, but they are reformists as to the immediate possibilities of _economic_ action. Here they believe revolutionary principles can be applied even under capitalism. Even the conservative and purely businesslike effort to secure a little more wages by organized action, they believe, can be converted here and now into a cla.s.s struggle of working cla.s.s _vs._ capitalists. What is needed is only organization of all the unions and a revolutionary policy. With the possibilities of a revolutionary union policy when capitalism has largely exhausted its program of political reforms and economic betterment and when Socialism has become the political Opposition, I deal in following chapters. But syndicalists, even in America, say revolutionary tactics can be applied now--Mr. Haywood, for instance, feels that the only thing necessary for a successful revolutionary and Socialistic general strike in France or America to-day, is sufficient economic organization.

Mr. Debs admits the need of revolutionary tactics as well as revolutionary principles and even says: "We could better succeed with reactionary principles and revolutionary tactics than with revolutionary principles and reactionary tactics." He admits also that Socialists and revolutionary unionists are inspired with an entirely new att.i.tude towards society and government and indorses as _entirely sound_ certain expressions from Haywood and Bohn's pamphlet which had been violently attacked by reformist Socialists and conservative unionists. Mr. Debs agrees with the former writers in their definition of the att.i.tude of the Socialist revolutionist's att.i.tude towards property: "He retains absolutely no respect for the property 'rights' of the profit takers. He will use any weapon which will win his fight. He knows that the present laws of property are made by and for the capitalists. Therefore he does not hesitate to break them." But he does not agree that this new spirit offers any positive contribution to Socialist tactics at the present time. Just as Herve has recently admitted that the superior political and economic organization of the Germans were more important than all the "sabotage" (violence) and "direct action" of the French though he still favors the latter policies, so the foremost American revolutionary opposes "direct action" and "sabotage" altogether under present conditions. Both deny that revolutionary economic action under capitalism is any more promising than revolutionary political action.

Even Herve defends his more or less friendly att.i.tude to "direct action"

wholly on the ground that it is good _practice_ for revolution, not on Lagardelle's syndicalist ground that it means the beginning of revolution itself (see below).

By much of their language Haywood and several industrial unionists of this country would seem to cla.s.s themselves rather with Lagardelle and Labriola (see below) than with Herve, Debs, and Mann. Haywood, for example, has said that no Socialist can be a law-abiding citizen.

Haywood's very effective and law-abiding leadership in strikes at Lawrence (1912) and elsewhere would suggest that he meant that Socialists cannot be law-abiding by principle and under all circ.u.mstances. But this statement as it was made, together with many others, justifies the above cla.s.sification. Debs, on the contrary, claims that the American workers are law-abiding and must remain so, on the whole, until the time of the revolution approaches. "As a revolutionist," he writes, "I can have no respect for capitalist property laws, nor the least scruple about violating them," but Debs does not believe there can be any occasion to put this principle into effect until the workers have been politically and economically organized and educated, and then only if they are opposed by violence (see the _International Socialist Review_, February, 1912).

The French and Italian advocates of revolutionary unionism also a.s.sign to the party a very secondary part, though they are by no means, like the anarchists, opposed to all political action. They do not as a rule oppose the Socialist parties, but they protest against the view that Socialist activities should be chiefly political. Their best-known spokesman in Italy, Arturo Labriola, one of the most brilliant orators in the country, and a professor in the University of Naples, writes:--

"The Social Democracy will prove to have been the last capitalistic party to which the defense of capitalistic society will have been intrusted. The syndicalists [revolutionary unionists] ought to get that firmly into their heads and draw conclusions from it in their _necessary_ relations with the official Socialist Party. _The latter ought to resign itself to being no more than a simple party of the legal demands of the proletariat [i.e. the unions,] on the basis of existing society, and not an anti-capitalist party._"[262]

This is strong language and brings up some large questions. Far from being displeased with the moderate and non-revolutionary character of the Socialist Party, Labriola, himself a revolutionist, is so indifferent to the party as a direct means to revolution, as to hope that it will drop its revolutionary claims altogether and become a humble and modest but more useful tool of the unions. He even admitted in conversation with the writer that, attaching no value to political advance as such, he was not even anxious at this time that the illiterate South Italians should be given a vote, since they would long remain under the tutelage of the Catholic Church.

One of the founders of the present French movement, its earliest and chief theorist, Pelloutier, who has many followers among the present officials of the French Federation of Labor, went even further, denying to the government, and therefore to all political parties, any vital function whatever. To Pelloutier the State is built exclusively upon "superfluous and obnoxious political interests." The unions are expected to work towards a Socialist society without much, if any, political support. They are to use non-political means: "The general strike as a purely economic means that _excludes the cooperation_ of parliamentary Socialists and demands only labor union activity would necessarily suit the labor union groups."[263]

The leading "syndicalist" writer to-day, Hubert Lagardelle, feels not only that a Socialist Party is not likely to bring about a Socialist society, but that any steps that it might try to take in this direction to-day would necessarily be along the wrong lines, since it would establish reforms by law rather than as a natural upgrowth out of economic conditions and the activities of labor unions, with the result that such reforms would necessarily go no farther than "State Socialism."[264]

Lagardelle speaks of the "State Socialistic" reform tendency as synonymous with "modern democracy." Because it supposes that there are "general problems common to all cla.s.ses," says Lagardelle, democracy refuses to take into account the real difference between men, which is that they are divided into economic cla.s.ses. Here we see the central principle of Socialism exaggerated to an absurdity. Few Socialists, even the most revolutionary, would deny that there are some problems "common to all cla.s.ses." Indeed, the existence and importance of such problems is the very reason why "State Socialism," of benefit to the ma.s.ses, but still more to the interest of the capitalists, is being so easily and rapidly introduced. Lagardelle would be right, from the Socialist standpoint, if he demanded that it should oppose mere political democracy, or "State Socialism" in proportion as these forces have succeeded in reorganizing the capitalist State--or rather after they have been a.s.similated by it. But to obstruct their present work is merely to stand against the normal and necessary course of economic and political evolution, as recognized by the Socialists themselves, a similar mistake to that made by the Populists and their successors, who think they can prevent normal economic evolution by dissolving the new industrial combinations and returning to compet.i.tion. Just as Socialists cannot oppose the formation of trusts under normal circ.u.mstances, neither can they oppose the extension of the modern State into the field of industry or democratic reform, even though the result is _temporarily_ to strengthen capitalism and to decrease the economic and political power of the working people. One of the fundamental differences between the Socialist and other political philosophies is that it recognizes ceaseless political evolution and acts accordingly.

It teaches that we shall probably pa.s.s on to social democracy through a period of monopoly rule, "State Socialism," and political reforms that in themselves promise no relative advance, economic or political, to the working cla.s.s.

In a recent congress of the French Party, Jaures protested against a statement of Lagardelle's that Socialism was opposed to democracy.

"Democracy," Lagardelle answered, "corresponds to an historical movement which has come to an end; syndicalism is an anti-democratic movement to the extent that it is post-democratic. Syndicalism comes after democracy; it perfects the life which democracy was powerless to organize." It is difficult to understand why Lagardelle persists in saying that a movement which thus supplements democracy, which does what democracy was claiming to do, and which is expected to supersede it, should on this account be considered as "anti-democratic." Socialism fights the "State Socialists" and opposes those whose democracy is merely political, but it is attacking not their democracy or their "State Socialism," but their capitalism.