Socialism As It Is Part 48

"The property to-day that is so hard to find then lies in broad day-light.

"It would then only be necessary to declare that all bonds must be public, and it would be known exactly what was the value of every property and every capitalist income.

"_The tax would then be raised as high as desired_ without the possibility of tax frauds.

"It would then also be impossible to escape taxation by emigration, for the tax could simply be taken from the interest before it was paid out. [A similar tax exists in France to-day.]

"_If necessary it might be put so high as to be equivalent, or nearly so, to a confiscation of the great properties._

"It might be well to ask what is the advantage of this round-about way of confiscation over that of taking the direct road?

"The difference between the two methods is not so trifling as at first appears.

"Direct confiscation of all capitalists would strike all, the small and the great, those utterly useless to labor, in the same manner.

"It is difficult, often impossible, in this method to separate the large possession from the small, when these are united in the form of money capital in the same undertaking.

"Direct confiscation would complete this quickly, often at one stroke, while _confiscation through taxation permits the disappearance of capitalists' property through a long-drawn-out process, proceeding in the exact degree in which the new order is established and its benevolent influence made perceptible._

"Confiscation in this way loses its harshness and becomes more acceptable and less painful.

"The more peaceable the conquest of political power by the proletariat, and the more firmly organized and enlightened it is, the more we can expect that the primitive forms of confiscation will be softened." (My italics.)[295]

Nor are any of the more influential Socialists anxious to make a clean sweep of private enterprise in industry. It is only the more important and fundamental industries, those which underlie all the processes of manufacturing, or furnish the sheer necessities of the people, that must necessarily be directly controlled by a Socialist society. "It may be granted," says Kautsky, "that small establishments will have a definite position in the future in many branches of industry that produce directly for human consumption, for machines manufacture essentially only products in bulk, while many purchasers desire that their personal taste shall be considered. It is easily possible that under a proletarian regime the number of small businesses may increase as the well-being of the ma.s.ses increases." Of such industries Kautsky says that they can produce for private customers or even for the open market.

As to-day, he insists, so also in the future, it will be open to the working people to employ themselves either in public or private industry.

"A seamstress, for example," he says, "can occupy herself for a time in a national factory, and at another time make dresses for private customers at home, then again she can sew for another customer in her own house, and finally she may, with a few comrades, unite in a cooperative for the manufacture of clothing for sale.

"The most manifold forms of property in the means of production--national, munic.i.p.al, cooperatives of consumption and production and private industry can exist beside each other in a Socialist society--the most diverse forms of industrial organization, bureaucratic, trades union, cooperative and individual; the most diverse forms of remunerative labor, fixed wages, time wages, piece wages, profit sharing in the economies in raw material, machinery, etc., profit sharing in the results of intensive labor; the most diverse forms of distribution of products, like contract by purchase from the warehouses of the State, from munic.i.p.alities, from cooperatives of production, from producers themselves, etc., etc. _The same manifold character of economic mechanism that exists to-day is possible in a Socialistic society._ Only the hunting and the hunted, the struggling and the resisting, the annihilating and being annihilated of the present compet.i.tive struggle are excluded, and therewith the contrast between exploiter and exploited." (Italics mine.)[296]

Equally important, or more important, than private cooperative industries in the Socialist State, it is expected, will be the increase of private _organizations of other kinds_, especially in the fields of publications, education, etc., by what Kautsky calls free a.s.sociations, which will serve art and science and public life and advance production in these spheres in the most diverse ways, or undertake it directly, as the a.s.sociations which to-day bring out plays, publish newspapers, purchase artistic works, publish writings, fit out scientific expeditions. _He expects such private organizations to play an even more important role than the government_, for "it is their destiny to enter into the place now occupied by capital and individual production and _to organize and to lead mankind as a social being_."[297] (Italics mine.)

"The utmost restriction of private property under Socialism," Mrs.

Gilman says, "leaves us still every article of personal use and pleasure. One may still 'own' land by paying the government for it as now; with such taxation, however, as would make it very expensive to own too much! One may own one's house and all that is in it: one's clothes and tools and decorations; one's horses, carriages and automobiles; one's flying machines--presently. All 'personal property' remains in our personal hands.

"But no man or group of men could own the country's coal and decide how much the public can have, and what we must pay for it. Private holding of public property would be abolished."[298]

It can never be too often repeated or too strongly emphasized that, with some unfortunate exceptions, from the time of Marx to the present, Socialists have opposed not private property, but capitalism. It is the domination of society by the capitalists, _i.e._ "capitalism" or the capitalist system, that is to be done away with.

"The distinguishing feature of Communism," wrote Marx, using this word instead of Socialism, "is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of capitalist property. But modern capitalist property is the final and most complete expression of that system of producing and appropriating products that is based on cla.s.s antagonism, on the expropriation of the many by the few."[299]

In seeking the better organization of industry and leaving the most perfect freedom to individuals and to private organizations, what the Socialists are really aiming at is really to restrict the government to _a government of things rather than to a government of men_; and this phrase is in common use among them. It is sought not to increase the power of higher officials over government employees and citizens, but, on the contrary, to limit their powers to the necessities of industry itself, and to leave the most perfect and complete freedom to the individual _in every other sphere_, as well as in industry, so far as the physical conditions themselves allow. There is no doubt, for instance, that whole departments of restrictive legislation directed against individual liberty would at once be repealed by any Socialist government (though not by a government of so-called "State Socialists").

Perhaps the idea is best expressed by the Belgian Socialist, Vandervelde:--

"The capitalist State has as an end the government of men; it needs centralized power, ministers ready to employ force, functionaries blindly obeying the least sign. Enlarge its domain [_i.e._ inst.i.tute 'State Socialism.'--W.] and you will create a vast barracks, you will inst.i.tute a republic of scoundrels.

"The Socialist State, on the contrary, will have for its end an administration of things; it will need a decentralized organization, practical men of science, industrial forces over which spontaneity and initiative will be required above every other quality."[300]

Surely such a State does not resemble in any way the paternalistic, bureaucratic capitalism or "State Socialism" towards which we are at present tending.

"It is quite as possible," says Mr. Spargo, "for a government to exploit the workers in the interests of a privileged cla.s.s as it is for private individuals, or quasi-private corporations, to do so.

Germany with her State-owned railroads, or Austria-Hungary and Russia with their great government monopolies, are not more Socialistic, but less so than the United States, where these things are owned by individuals or corporations. The United States is nearer Socialism for the reason that its political inst.i.tutions have developed farther towards pure democracy than those of the other countries named.... The real _motif_ of Socialism is not merely to change the form of industrial organization and ownership, but to eliminate exploitation.... Every abuse of capitalism calls forth a fresh installment of legislation restrictive of personal liberty, with an army of prying officials. Legislators keep busy making laws, judges keep busy interpreting and enforcing them, and a swarm of petty officials are kept busy attending to this intricate machine of popular government. In sober truth, it must be said that capitalism has created, and could not exist without, the very bureaucracy it charges Socialism with attempting to foist upon the nation."[301]

The Socialists are as far from proposing anything resembling a system of mechanical and absolute equality as they are from attacking personal or industrial liberty. Ninety-nine and one half per cent of the product of the men of the different social cla.s.ses, says Edward Bellamy, "is due in every case to advantages afforded by modern civilization."[302] So that if one man is twice as capable as another, it merely raises the proportion of the product due to his personal efforts from one half of one per cent to one per cent. International Socialism realizes with Bellamy that the product is social in far greater proportion than is at present recognized, but it does not deny that there are cases in which the contribution of the individual is more important even than everything that can be attributed to his social advantages. It does not propose, therefore, to level incomes. It is true that this communist principle of Bellamy's has a wide practical application both in the Socialist scheme of things and in present-day society, as, for example, in free schools and parks, and in the "State Socialist" program. But the extension of such communism, the distribution of services to the general public without charge, is due to-day, not to any acceptance of the general principle, but to the fact that it is inconvenient or impossible to attempt to distribute the cost of many services among individuals in proportion as they take advantage of them.

Kautsky expresses the prevailing Socialist view when he says that the _principle_ of equality, if distinguished from mere _artificial leveling_, will play a certain role in a Socialist society. Without any definite legislation in that direction the natural economic forces of such a society will tend to raise low wages, and at the same time, by the increase of compet.i.tion for higher positions, to lower somewhat the highest salaries. For if Socialists are opposed to any kind of artificial equality or leveling, they are still more opposed to artificial inequality, and all the initial advantages that arise out of the possession of wealth or privileges in education will be done away with.[303]

On the supposition that Socialism proposes a communistic leveling of income, it has been stated very often by Socialists that it would be necessary to abolish wages, but there is no authority for this either from Karl Marx or from any of his most prominent successors. It is "wage slavery" or "the wage system" that is to be abolished. In his letter on the Gotha Program written in 1875 Marx said that there will be applied to wages "the principle which at present governs the exchange or merchandise to that degree in which identical values are being exchanged"; that is to say, supply and demand, when it operates _freely_, will give us a standard also in a Socialist system. There will be no starvation wages, no inflated salaries, no "rent" of educational advantages, no unearned income and no monopoly prices, but automatically adjustable prices and wages will continue. In 1896 Jules Guesde, perhaps the best known disciple of Marx in France, expressed nearly the same idea in the Chamber of Deputies--"The play of supply and demand," he said, "will have sufficed to determine without any arbitrary or violent act, that problem of distribution which had seemed insoluble to you before."

Here again we see that Socialism, in its aversion to all artificial systems and every restriction of personal liberty is far more akin to the individualism of Herbert Spencer than it is to the "State Socialism"

of Plato. Socialists expect their children to be far wiser and more fortunate than themselves, and do not intend to attempt to decide anything for them that can well be left undecided. They intend only that these children shall have the freedom and power necessary to direct society as they think best. The few principles I have mentioned are perhaps the most important of those they believe to be the irreducible minimum needed to insure this result.

FOOTNOTES:

[292] H. G. Wells, "This Misery of Boots," pp. 29-32.

[293] Alfred Russell Wallace, "The Railways and the Nation," the _Arena_, January, 1907.

[294] Anton Menger, "L'etat Socialiste" (Paris, 1904), p. 348.

[295] Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 121-123.

[296] Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 165-167.

[297] Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," p. 179.

[298] Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the _Forerunner_ (1910).

[299] The Communist Manifesto.

[300] emile Vandervelde, "Collectivism," p. 126.

[301] John Spargo, "Socialism."

[302] Edward Bellamy, "Equality," p. 89.

[303] Karl Kautsky, "Das Erfurter Programm," pp. 161-162.