Socialism As It Is Part 44

France is by no means the only country where the question of strikes of government employees has become all-important. When the railways were nationalized in Italy there was considerable Socialist opposition on the ground that the employees were likely to lose a part of such rights as they had had when in private employment, and it turned out just as was feared. The position of the Italian Socialists on the subject is as interesting as that of the French. The Congress at Florence in 1908 resolved that "considering the fact that a strike of munic.i.p.alized or nationalized services represents, not the struggle of the proletariat against a private capitalistic enterprise, but the conflict of a cla.s.s against the collectivity, whence the difficulty of its success, the employees in public service ought to be advised not to proclaim a strike unless urged on by the most compelling motives and when every other means have failed;" but "taking it into consideration at the same time that in the present condition of society the working people in public service have no other means to guarantee the defense of their rights, and that in critical moments of history the suspension of public services is among the most efficacious arms of which the proletariat can avail itself to disorganize the defense of the government, any disposition to bring into legislation the principle of the abolition of the right to strike is dangerous" and "any attempt in that direction"

must be defeated.

The gulf between those who consider the collective refusal of the organizations of government employees to work under conditions they do not accept, as being "treason" and "mutiny," and those who feel that such an organization is the _very basis_ of industrial democracy of the future and the sole possible guarantee of liberty, is surely unbridgeable.

The clash between the cla.s.ses on this question of livelihood and liberty is already momentous, but its full significance can only be realized when the Socialist aim is recalled. As employees of railroads, of governments, and of industries become Socialists, they will not only be ready to strike to raise their wages, or to protect the unions and the Socialist Party, or to prevent military reaction, but also--when they have the majority with them--to take possession of government.

An editorial in the _New York Call_ (October 31, 1911) shows how most American Socialists expect the general strike to work:--

"The failure of one 'general' strike, or any attempt to carry out a general strike, does not bankrupt or destroy the working cla.s.s, for the reason that it is that cla.s.s which holds the future in its hands. Nor does such failure help capitalism--the decaying system--in any way. On the contrary, it helps disintegrate it, and the failure itself is merely the necessary prelude to a still stronger a.s.sault by the same method. The general strike seems to be like what is said of democracy, that the cure for democracy is still more democracy. In the same way the cure for the general strike is to make it still more 'general' in character. The less 'general' it is, the less chance has it of success, and the more 'general' it can be made, the more certain is it of success.

"And that success may not, and very likely will not, take the form hoped for by those who advocate it as a means of immediate or even ultimate social revolution. But even this, if true, is no argument against its use. It will, however, bring the social revolution nearer in other ways.

"We hardly, for instance, expect to see the capitalists, paralyzed by the most 'general' of general strikes surrender their property offhand to the victorious proletariat in despair of being able to operate it themselves. Much as we would like to see the working cla.s.s march in and take possession of the abandoned factories and workshops in this manner, and commence operations under their collective ownership, the vision can only remain while other factors are disregarded. There is possibly much more flexibility and elasticity in the capitalist system than is usually imagined by Socialists. As William Morris tells old John Ball, the 'rascal hedge-priest,' 'Mastership hath many shifts' before it finally goes down and out.

"If we were to venture an opinion, the course and procedure of the general strike, with special reference to the railroads and allied industries, will follow something in this order.

"General strikes will succeed one another intermittently, each becoming more 'general,' the method finally establishing itself as a settled policy of the workers in enforcing their demands. Some may fail, but from time to time they will grow more 'general' and more powerful, and will wrest more concessions from the owners, until the point is reached where the railroad business will return practically no private profits to its owners. And when this point is reached, or the certainty of its being reached is plainly seen, then mastership will make its next shift. There will be two alternatives.

"The first is literal, physical suppression, by the armed forces of the nation still under control of the capitalists, and greatly augmented for the purpose. This, however, for a mult.i.tude of reasons, is a most dangerous policy and much more 'impossible' than the general strike. Instead of postponing social revolution, it rather accelerates its approach.

"The other alternative, and the one by all means most likely to be adopted, is government ownership of the railroads, with the capitalists, of course, as owners of the government. This will undoubtedly be ushered in as 'State Socialism.' Laws will be pa.s.sed const.i.tuting the railroad workers as direct servants of the State, and forbidding the general strike or any other kind of strike.

"The prohibition will not have the desired effect. If attempted to be enforced, it merely throws capitalist society back on the first dangerous alternative policy we have mentioned. But it will give capitalism a breathing spell, and a chance to 'spar for wind' for a while, which is the best it can expect. The general strike will still be utilized to a.s.sail the capitalist State and its property.

"The final struggle will be a political one, for the capture of the State from the hands of the capitalists, and such capture will mean the transfer of capitalist State-owned property to collective property and the establishment of industrial democracy, or Socialism."

FOOTNOTES:

[271] The following quotations are taken from the brochure, "Der Generalstreik," by Henriette Roland-Holst (Dresden, 1905).

[272] From a private letter published editorially in the _New York Sun_.

[273] The _Outlook_, Nov. 25, 1911.

[274] _Collier's Weekly_, Sept. 2, 1911.

[275] The _Outlook_, Aug. 26, 1911.

[276] _Die Neue Zeit_, Oct. 27, 1911.

CHAPTER VII

REVOLUTION IN DEFENSE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT

"The workers do not yet understand," says Debs, "that they are engaged in a cla.s.s struggle, and must unite their cla.s.s and get on the right side of that struggle economically, politically, and in every other way--strike together, vote together, and, if necessary, fight together."[277] Socialists are prepared to use force when governments resort to arbitrary violence--for example, to martial "law." In the Socialist view no occasion whatever justifies the suspension of the regular government the people has inst.i.tuted--and even if such an occasion could arise there is no authority to which they would consent to give arbitrary power. Military "government" is not government, but organized violence.

Tolstoi's masterly language on this matter will scarcely be improved upon:--

"The slavery of the working people is due to this, that there are governments. But if the slavery of the laborers is due to the government, the emanc.i.p.ation is naturally conditioned by the abolition of the existing governments and the establishment of new governments,--such as will make possible the liberation of the land from ownership, the abolition of taxes, and the transference of the capital and the factories into the power and control of the working people.

"There are men who recognize this issue as possible, and who are preparing themselves for it.... So long as the soldiers are in the hands of the government, which lives on taxes and is connected with the owners of land and of capital, a revolution is impossible. And so long as the soldiers are in the hands of the government, the structure of life will be such as those who have the soldiers in their hands want it to be.

"The governments, who are already in possession of a disciplined force, will never permit the formation of another disciplined force. All the attempts of the past century have shown how vain such attempts are. Nor is there a way out, as the Socialists believe, by means of forming a great economic force which would be able to fight successfully against the consolidated and ever more consolidating force of the capitalists. Never will the labor unions, who may be in possession of a few miserable millions, be able to fight against the economic power of the multimillionaires, who are always supported by the military force. Just as little is there a way out as is proposed by other Socialists, by getting possession of the majority of the Parliament. Such a majority in the Parliament will not attain anything, so long as the army is in the hands of the governments. The moment the decrees of the Parliament are opposed to the interests of the ruling cla.s.ses, the government will close and disperse such a parliament, as has been so frequently done and as will be done so long as the army is in the hands of the government."

Tolstoi, in spite of his contrary impression, here reaches conclusions which are the same as those of the Socialists; for they are well aware that armies are likely to be used to dissolve Parliaments and labor unions.

"The introduction of socialistic principles into the army will not accomplish anything," Tolstoi continues. "The hypnotism of the army is so artfully applied that the most free-thinking and rational person will, _so long as he is in the army_, always do what is demanded of him. Thus there is no way out by means of revolution or in Socialism."

Here Tolstoi is again mistaken, for at this point also Socialists agree with him completely. The soldier, they agree, must be reached, and some think must even be led to act, _before_ he reaches the barracks--whether he is about to enter them for military training in times of peace or for service in times of war.

"If there is a way out," concludes Tolstoi, "it is the one which has not been used yet, and which alone incontestably destroys the whole consolidated, artful, and long-established governmental machine for the enslavement of the ma.s.ses. This way out consists in refusing to enter into the army, before one is subjected to the stupefying and corrupting influence of discipline.

"This way out is the only one which is possible and which at the same time is inevitably obligatory for every individual person."[278]

Socialists differ from the great Russian, not in their a.n.a.lysis of the situation, but in their more practical remedy. They would _organize_ the campaign against military service instead of leaving it to the individual, and _after_ they had converted a sufficient majority to their views they would not hesitate to use any kind of force that seemed necessary to put an end to government by force. But they would not proceed to such lengths until their political and economic modes of action were forcefully prevented from further development. If civil government is suspended to combat the great general strike towards which Socialists believe society is moving they will undertake to restore it or to set up a new one to replace that which the authorities have "legally" destroyed. I say _legally_ because all capitalist governments have provided for this contingency by giving their executives the right to suspend government when they please--on the pretext that its existence is threatened by internal disorder. It has been generally and publicly agreed among capitalist authorities that this power shall be used in the case of a general strike--as the British government declared, at the time of the recent railway strike, _whether there is extensive popular violence or not_.

I have shown that the Socialists contemplate the use of the general strike whenever, in vital matters, governments refuse to bow to the clearly expressed will of the majority, and that they recognize the difficulties to be overcome before such a measure can be used successfully. Of course the overwhelming majority of the population will have to be against the government. But the military aspect of the question may possibly make it necessary that the majority to be secured will have to be even greater than was at first contemplated, and that an even more intense struggle will have to be carried on. The Bismarcks of the world are already using armies as strike breakers and training them especially for this purpose, while even the more democratic and peaceful States, like England and France, are rapidly following in the same direction. Of course, as Bismarck said, not all of a large army can be so used, but there is a strong tendency in Russia and Germany, which may be imitated elsewhere, for the military leaders to concentrate their efforts and attention on the picked and more or less professional part of their armies, and it is this part that is being used for strike-breaking purposes.

No one has dealt more ably with this struggle between the working people and coercive government than Karl Liebknecht, recently elected to the Reichstag from the Kaiser's own district of Potsdam, who spent a year as a political prisoner in Germany for his "Militarismus und Anti-Militarismus." Liebknecht opens his pamphlet by quoting a statement of Bismarck to Professor Dr. Otto Kamaell, in October, 1892:--

"In Rome water and fire were forbidden to him who put himself outside of the legal order. In the middle ages that was called to outlaw. It was necessary to treat the Social-Democracy in the same way, to take away its political rights and its right to vote. So far I have gone. The Social-Democratic question is a military question. The Social-Democracy is being handled now in an extraordinarily superficial way. The Social-Democracy is striving now--and with success--to win the noncommissioned officers. In Hamburg already a good part of the troops consist of Social-Democrats, since the people there have the right to enter exclusively into their own battalion. What now if these troops should refuse to shoot their fathers and brothers as the Kaiser has demanded? Shall we send the regiments of Hanover and Mecklenburg against Hamburg? Then we have something there like the Commune in Paris. The Kaiser was frightened. He said to me he wouldn't exactly care about being called a cardboard prince like his grandfather, nor at the very beginning of his reign to wade up to the knees in blood. Then I said to him, 'Your Majesty will have to go deeper if you give way now.'"

Here we have it from the lips of Bismarck that the Social-Democratic question was already a military question in his time, and his view is supported by the present Kaiser. This is high authority. Similar views and threats have been common among the statesmen of our time in nearly every country.

As early as 1903 the government of Holland broke a large general strike by the use of the army to operate the railroads, and the same thing was done in Hungary in the following year. Indeed, these measures had such a great success that the Hungarian government went farther two years later, and took away the right of organization from the agricultural laborers; while at the same time it used the army as strike breakers in harvest time and made permanent arrangements for doing this in a similar contingency in the future. In the matter of breaking railway strikes by soldiers, Bulgaria and other countries are following Holland and Hungary. The latest and most extraordinary example is undoubtedly the use of soldiers by the "Socialist" Briand to break the recent railroad strike in democratic France.[279]

Even peaceful countries like Belgium and Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States, are developing and changing their military systems so rapidly as to make it almost certain that they would take similar measures if occasion should arise.

The agitation for universal conscription in England may succeed before many years, and the plans for reorganizing the militia in the United States will also make of it a force that can be far more useful in breaking strikes than the present one, and more ready to be used in case of a nation-wide strike crisis. Indeed, the d.i.c.k military law made every possible provision for the use of the military in internal disturbances, up to the point of enlisting every citizen and making a dictator of the President.

Similar tendencies exist on the Continent of Europe. Formerly the militia of Switzerland was quite democratically organized, and each man kept his gun and ammunition at home, but the government is gradually doing away with this system and modeling the army every year more closely on that of the larger and less democratic European powers. In Belgium a similar movement can be seen in the creation of a Citizens'

Guard, entirely for use at home and especially against strikers.

Here, then, is a situation to which every Socialist is forced to give constant thought, no matter how peace-loving and law-abiding he may be.

What is there in modern systems of government to prevent these large military forces already employed so successfully for the ominous function of strike breaking, from being used for other reactionary and tyrannical purposes--for putting an end to democratic government, when it is attempted to apply it to property and industry? So everywhere Socialists and labor unions are giving special attention to agitation against militarism. Years ago even the most conservative unions began forbidding their members to join the militia, and the practice has become general, while the Boy Scout movement is everywhere denounced and repudiated. Not only is every effort being made by the Socialists, in connection with other democratic elements, to cut off the financial supplies for the army and navy, but they also sought to inspire all the youth, and particularly the children of the workers, with a spirit of revolt against armies, war, and aggressive patriotism, as well as the spirit of servile obedience, the ignorance, and the brutality that invariably accompany them.[280]