Socialism, Revolution and Internationalism Part 2

Let the stocks representing part-ownership in a company lose all value--this is an occurrence that the shareholders and bondholders of the Panama ca.n.a.l, for example, can tell you is not unknown in our bourgeois society--and the shareholder finds himself, in this instance, permitted to enjoy all the blessings of expropriation without any indemnifying compensation; sometimes even he has the delicate attention of an invitation from the Receiver or the Courts to pour some more money into the hole where his former savings disappeared. Now even in this case the owners of this sort of personal property do not make too much ado about the matter. Why should they complain any more bitterly on the day when there will be, as it were, only a subst.i.tution of one kind of stocks or shares for another, when they will all become stockholders and bondholders of the great society (the Co-operative Commonwealth), instead of being shareholders and bondholders in one or several little societies or companies?

By this transformation they will gain complete a.s.surance against risk of loss--a real enough danger to-day when, after the actual control of property pa.s.ses into the hands of financial magnates, the revenue of the nominal owners, the stockholders, etc., falls to zero or nearly zero, thus cutting off their means of existence or enjoyment. They will lose only one thing: the power of dominating the labor of others and of appropriating its fruits; while they will have the privilege of enjoying the common wealth and the advantages springing from its co-operative employment.

Healthy adults will take for their own use, provided they work, their share of the social products. If they are already accustomed to any kind of work, they will find no hardship in this obligation to perform useful labor; if they are not accustomed to it, they will acquire the habit and will find their health greatly improved thereby in every respect. If they are old and infirm they will be liberally provided for by society.

What they can reasonably expect and insist upon having is the sustenance of life (in a broad sense),[7] and this they will have, as you see, in any case. The socialization will not result in such a change in the distribution of wealth as is often caused by watering the stock of a company. It will simply extend to all, those who hold stocks at present included, those advantages which a minority alone enjoys to-day, and it will benefit all, but stockholders especially, by doing away with those risks which capitalist exploitation forces everyone to run.

Finally, socialism will rob no one. I would ask those who a.s.sert the contrary, what description then should be given to those transactions in the goods and property of the n.o.bility, the clergy and above all of the communes, performed by our great radicals in the French Revolution, by those whose work has become a "compa.s.s" for our guidance. Just as soon as we cease simply subst.i.tuting one privileged cla.s.s for another, just as soon as we enable all without exception to enjoy the same advantages, no one will be robbed or deprived of anything. Simply, inequality in the enjoyment of privilege will have been abolished, another privileged cla.s.s will have vanished from the stage. Yes, the capitalists will lose, along with their special privileges or rights over the means of production, that characteristic or quality that makes them capitalists; but, I repeat, they will have exactly the same rights as all others to the use and enjoyment of those means of production, from that time forth the inalienable property of society. With capital dethroned, the principles of the Republic will at last be applied with controlling power to the field of economics, just as they are to the field of politics, and political democracy will have ceased to be a farce, for it will have developed into its perfect flower, INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] This is not an English word, but I will take the liberty of borrowing it from the French.--Tr.

[7] "The world owes every man a living," is a common saying.

VII.

Far from being a material upheaval, the advent of socialism will be simply the culmination of the economic evolution now going on. Born, in its contemporaneous form, from the study of facts, socialism sees in the facts the controlling elements of the modifications to be effected. It makes no pretence of going in advance of the economic phenomena, it limits itself to following them, to adapting itself to conditions which it does not create and which it is not its part to create. Now, if, in all those cases where the means of production are already collectively owned by companies or trusts or are concentrated in the hands of single individuals, they can be placed at the disposition of ALL only by the subst.i.tution of society as a whole for their present capitalist possessors, in those cases in which the form of ownership of the means of labor is still truly individual, _i.e._, where they are still in the hands of those who themselves directly make use of them in actual work, it is not for society to force itself into the place of the present proprietors. The purpose of the interference of society, indeed, is to give, in the only form to-day possible, the means of production to the laborers who have them not, it is to restore the tools and materials of labor to those who have been robbed of them. It is not its business, then, to interfere in those cases where the laborers are still in possession of their tools and materials. And so the peasant will retain the patch of land he possesses and tills, the petty tools and implements will continue to belong to the artisan-manufacturer who himself works with them, until the facts shall lead them to renounce voluntarily this form of private ownership, no longer to their advantage, in order to enjoy the far more fruitful benefits of collective ownership and production.

Moreover, just as, in the capitalist period, the changes brought about by the development of machinery re-acted upon even those branches of production in which machinery had not as yet been introduced, by developing, for example, in all branches the exploitation of women and children, in the same way, the advantages of the socialization of the means of production previously centralized by the capitalists, will re-act upon the petty proprietors of the means of production not yet socialized. The petty producer, who remains master of his own instrument of labor, will, through the simultaneity and propinquity of the embryonic co-operative commonwealth, get the help he needs.

Notably, he will be freed from the clutches of the financial middlemen whose victim he is at present; his labor, freed from their exploitation, will be in its turn emanc.i.p.ated, just as truly, although in a different way, as will be the labor of those who, exploited to-day because they lack the means of labor, will have these means, socialized, placed at their free disposition. The result for all will thus be the emanc.i.p.ation of labor, in the one case, by placing the socialized means of labor at the free disposition of all laborers, in the other, by leaving to the individual laborer his individual tool.

In both cases, the tools will be owned by those who use them.

And, though it displeases our opponents, this way of proceeding is very logical, although it does not conform to their pretended conception of logic. The logic of the Socialists does not consist in forcing a solution demanded by a certain set of facts upon other facts which do not yet require that solution, it does not consist in making fish live out of the water because that mode of life agrees with men.

It consists in adapting itself in all cases to the environment, to the facts, in always acting with reference to the facts, instead of requiring the same kind of action in the face of different combinations of facts. To those who a.s.sert that this position is in conflict with the "pure dogma of the socialist church," you have only to reply that there is neither a socialist church nor a socialist dogma, but that there are far too many bourgeois imbeciles who attempt to palm off ideas made by themselves out of the whole cloth as the dogmas of socialism.

During the sixteen years that our socialist theory has been developing in France, it has never varied upon the subject of the petty producers. Those who a.s.sert the contrary follow their own imaginations and not the facts. I defy them to prove that we have not always spoken in the same way in regard, for example, to the small farms of the peasants. They now accuse our opinion on this subject of opportunism, using the word in its political meaning; they could, more correctly, accuse us of having always professed opportunism, but this time using the word in the sense implied by its derivation. You know how necessary it is to avoid the confusion--opportune for some, it is true--of the political meaning of a word with its true meaning. The political radicals are far from being radical in the ordinary sense, and their brothers (nominally opponents) the opportunists, instead of wishing that which is opportune, find nothing opportune except the satisfaction of their own appet.i.tes and the postponement of all else.

In the true meaning--the time has come to say it--of the word, there cannot be a party more thoroughly opportunist than the socialist party which--I will not cease repeating--must simply adapt itself to the facts and which has no guide, save the facts, to point the way in the transformation of property.

When we talk of the transformation of property which is nothing, as they are obliged to confess, but "a social inst.i.tution,"[8] our opponents, with their strange fashion of doing us justice, change our words into "suppression of property." "Socialists of all schools have decreed the suppression of property"[9] is the notable affirmation of "a certain number of young men, strangers. .h.i.therto to politics"[10]--this part of the phrase is not mine, it is, possibly, the least open to criticism of any part of the work of the young men in question, who have felt impelled to speak on a question that they confess is foreign to them.

Their confession is superfluous; we would have readily perceived, unaided, that they spoke of socialism after the fashion of those who know nothing of it.

These young men, in founding the "_comite d'action de la gauche liberale_,"[11] wrote: "We are partisans of individual liberty and of individual property." I a.s.sume, until proof to the contrary is forthcoming, that they are not partisans of these things for themselves and their friends alone. If they advocate them for every one, I beg them to tell us what they think of the liberty of the man who has, as his source of livelihood, only his labor-power without the means of utilizing it.

Either they recognize that every man ought to have the means of labor at his disposal, and, in that case, I will ask them how, with the system of mechanical industry, they hope to put at the disposal of all these means so necessary to the liberty of all.

Or, they do not recognize that every man, to be free, must dispose of the tools and materials of labor, and then I will ask them what becomes of the liberty of the man to whom the employer can say: if you do such or such a thing, if you do not accept such or such a thing, you shall have no work, that is to say, it shall be impossible for you to eat. And that they may not accuse me of describing hypothetical cases blacker than nature, I will submit for their meditation the following fact related by the _Temps_ (Times)[12] at the time of the strike of Rive-de-Gier.

"An engine-stoker fell ill. He was replaced, all the time of his illness, by a common laborer at 50 cents a day. The regular stoker having gotten well, resumed his duties. He was completely surprised, at the end of the fortnight, to receive only 50 cents a day, when he had been paid, before his illness, 80 cents. He protested. 'There it is. Take it or leave it,' he was told; 'we have found out that a common laborer at 50 cents does this work just as well as you; we cut you down to 50 cents. Get out or accept it.' The man had a family, and choice was forbidden him. He accepted it."

In the face of such facts, M. Celestin Jonnart has the a.s.surance--which I will describe, returning one of the epithets he applies to us, as "villainous"--to a.s.sert that the socialists "are working for conditions which will produce generations of men who will know nothing but abject submission and will be ready for every degradation." These generations, sir, are not to be made; they are to be raised from their degradation, and that is the task at which socialism is working.

If I have cited only one fact, this is not because facts of this kind are rare, it is because the one I have cited has the advantage of coming from the _Temps_ which may be suspected of anything you like except socialism. Then, besides proving how free the laborer is in his choice, this fact shows how the free contract between capitalist and laborer is concluded. When the stoker resumes his place, he naturally imagines that he is resuming it upon the former conditions, and no one undeceives him. On pay-day, which does not come till a fortnight later, he perceives that he must conclude a new free contract different from the one he had a right to believe in force, and accept 50 cents instead of the 80 cents expected and agreed upon.

Are these men free, the stoker and his like? I would gladly have on this point the opinion of M. Leon Say who not long since posed as the champion, against the socialists, of "human liberty and dignity." The truth is that the laborer is free, only when, to the right of being free, he joins the effective power of being free, only when he has at his disposition the things necessary to the realization of his labor, only, in other words, when he does not have to throw himself upon the mercy of the possessors of those things. Whatever the law may say, the man who depends upon another for his subsistence is not free. What is requisite is to furnish means of labor to the laborers who have them not; now, on the basis of the present form or character of these means, society can a.s.sure possession of them to all, only when these means shall have been socialized, shall have become social property.

As regards the laborers who still possess their means of labor, they will retain them, as I explained just above. In fact, only through socialism can individual liberty be made a reality for all.

It is the same with individual property as with individual liberty.

From all that I have just stated it is clear that the only property that socialism wishes to transform, is the property no longer made use of by the individual owners thereof; it is the property which is formed by the agglomeration of petty sc.r.a.ps of property wrested from the immense majority, and which exists only to the detriment of that very majority.[13] And even in this case there will be no suppression, since the present holders will be granted the use of their transformed property on the same terms as others.

What, then, is the property of "those silent mult.i.tudes who toil and struggle so hard for existence and who are in truth the artisans of our greatness?"[14] Is not your capitalist society stripping them more and more every day of the means of labor and of individually owned dwellings, and leaving to them in individual ownership only the things indispensable to the bare support of life? It is the capitalist regime which, by increasing immeasurably the property of the few, contracts the limits within which the personal acquirement of property by the many is possible. It is the socialist regime which will increase this possibility of the personal acquirement of property, by a.s.suring to each the share earned by his labor. It is only under the regime of socialism that individual property will be a reality for all, as this regime alone will suppress--though suppressing nothing else--the possibility of using this property to exploit the labor of others.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] M. Celestin Jonnart.

[9] Declaration du "Comite d'action de la gauche liberale."

[10] Idem.

[11] Committee of action of the Liberal Left.

[12] March 8, 1893, 2d page.

[13] "Political economy confuses on principle two very different kinds of private property, of which one rests on the producers' own labor, the other on the employment of the labor of others. It forgets that the latter not only is the direct ant.i.thesis of the former, but absolutely grows on its tomb only."--Marx, 1st vol. of _Capital_, Humboldt Edition, page 488.

[14] M. Celestin Jonnart.

VIII.

It appears that from the moment when it will no longer be possible to exploit the individual, there will no longer be any individuality. At least it so appears to the capitalists who deem that which does not yield them a profit to be non-existent. To the socialists, on the other hand, the existence of individuality appears dependent upon its freedom. Now, as it is, as we have just seen, only in the socialist period that all individuals will be able to have the means necessary to true freedom, it follows that the triumph of socialism will be the triumph of the individual, the blossoming of personality.[15] In the socialist period, indeed, all those who shall wish to work will be able to do so, by choosing freely their favorite kind of socially useful labor, and all will be able to consume the social products proportionally to the labor they have furnished. Will it not, therefore, be to the interest of all to work, and to try to make the work as little toilsome and as productive as possible? Is there not here, apart from the joy of serving one's fellows, the most powerful motive for emulation both as regards the quant.i.ty of labor individually performed and in the invention or discovery of improved processes tending to procure for each and all the maximum of benefits in return for the minimum of exertion?

A certain degree of audacity is required to dare compare the producers of the future under socialism, with the office-holders of to-day under capitalism. What interest has the office-holder of to-day to reduce to the minimum the cost to the State of the services it is his function to perform? His salary, determined before any labor is performed, is independent of the quant.i.ty and quality of his labor; and so the office-holder, though full of righteous indignation against the workingmen who wish to work only eight hours a day, seeks, on his own part, to work just as little as possible, and he squanders and wastes as much as possible, because extravagance never costs him a penny and sometimes brings him in handsome rewards. While under the regime of socialism, the personal interest of the individual will be in harmony with the social interest of all, under the present system the personal interests of the office-holders are in direct conflict with the interest of the State. Under the regime of socialism, men, all men, will be producers and not office-holders; they will not be office-holders any more than are members of a family who, in order to provide for the satisfaction of the needs of the family, perform severally various functions.

In conclusion, the whole question may be summed up thus: Is the spirit of initiative and personal energy likely to be more broadly disseminated among the ma.s.ses, when the latter know that they are compelled to make their own wretchedness the instrument of the prosperity of a minority, or when they shall know that their own prosperity will be whatever they, by their own labor, shall make it, under a system of absolute equality of privilege? There can be no doubt as to the answer in the minds of all those who are not too much wonted to the denial of truth. But, under the regime of socialism, initiative[16] and energy cannot promote personal interests alone; while being more favorable than ever to those interests, they will necessarily be advantageous to all. As soon as the material conditions necessary for the attainment of individual prosperity shall also be the conditions requisite for social prosperity, we shall see grow out of this harmony a system of ethics based on the newly acquired consciousness of social solidarity, and under this new morality the action of the individual will have not only as its necessary though indirect result, but also as its guiding principle, motive and goal, the social or common interest, the greatest good of all.

It would seem that from this time forth all ought to unite their efforts in order to hasten the dawn of the realization of a social environment so advantageous to all. In fact, excepting a very small minority of great financiers and capitalists, all those who work or have worked with hand or brain, all have an interest in the triumph of socialism; unfortunately all are not conscious of the undeniable precariousness of the situation of all under the regime of capitalism, and so do not see the advantage for all in transforming this regime along the lines of its social tendencies, and many will stupidly strive to prolong the state of things which is the cause of their troubles.

Socialism repels no one and is open to all those, without regard to their social position, who comprehend its necessity. But, if it is far from repelling them--striving indeed to attract them--it cannot count in advance, generally speaking, on those who too readily become the dupes of illusions begotten by a more or less privileged social situation and who are unable to rise above their cla.s.s prejudices sufficiently to form a just conception of their own true interests.

While preparing the ground for socialism which is developing wherever the capitalist mode of production has reached a certain stage, the economic phenomena at the same time necessitate the economic and political organization of the industrial[17] laborers, and they are the cla.s.s immediately and directly interested in the triumph of socialism.

Small industrial employers, artisans, retail merchants and working owners of small farms have two-fold cla.s.s-ties. They belong to the possessing cla.s.s, and yet they are exploited. When, under the empire of a naive pride and vain hopes, the man proud of his possessions, the would-be capitalist, dominates in them, they give heed to the dirty blackguards who are forever telling them that the common laborer and the socialist wish to take their little property away from them, and they show a hostility which, in spite of their conservative intentions, is aimed against those whom they ought to help if they wish to be sure of retaining the little property they have. When, under the lashes of the thong of stern reality they feel themselves exploited and menaced with expropriation, they applaud the demands of the socialists and help support--as has often been seen--the strikes of the laborers. According to circ.u.mstances the middle cla.s.s declares itself in this way, now on one side, now on the other.

The industrial workingmen who own nothing but their labor-power and to whom the possession, even in a dream, of the smallest estate is an impossibility, cannot possibly conceive the false idea that they have anything to lose by the victory of socialism. From that to thinking that they have everything to gain by that victory is not far; for this all that is needed is for them to be brought into contact with the socialist propaganda. Therefore the princ.i.p.al mission of socialism is to instruct and organize the mult.i.tudes of industrial laborers; they must be won over the first of all. This which is, in fact, for the middle cla.s.s only a defensive war against the great capitalists becomes an offensive war for the great majority of the industrial laborers who have to conquer that which the middle cla.s.s has only to preserve.

Because we say that socialism makes its appeal more particularly to the industrial laborers, we beg our critics not to represent us as saying that socialism ought to neglect the members of all other cla.s.ses. Socialism struggling for the emanc.i.p.ation--no longer impossible--of all, combats in every rank or stratum of society all exploitations and all oppressions, and it is the natural defender of all the exploited and all the oppressed. Just as, to regard the economic question as the sum and substance of militant socialism is not, in our opinion, to restrict its field of action, but is simply, on the contrary, to pursue directly the only line of conduct by which it is possible for its efforts to produce broad general effects, so to devote our attention first of all to the industrial laborers is not to make light of the wrongs of the other victims of exploitation, but it is to devote our first efforts to strengthening the active army of socialism, formed of those who have to blaze out a path for the movement, but whose success--which will be hastened by the support of members of other cla.s.ses--will a.s.sure the emanc.i.p.ation of all.