The Book of Life Part 31

Let us consider the process of political evolution, briefly and in its broad outlines. Take any savage tribe; you find it composed of individuals who are very much alike. Some are a little stronger than others, a little more clever, more powerful in battle; but the difference is slight, and when the tribe chooses someone to lead them, they might as well choose one man as another. They all have a say in the tribe councils, both men and women; their "rights" in the tribe are the same. They are, of course, slaves to ignorance, to degrading superst.i.tion and absurd taboos; but these things apply to everyone alike, there is no privileged caste, no hereditary inequality.

But little by little, as the tribe grows in numbers, and in power and intelligence, as it comes to capture slaves in battle, and to unite with other tribes, there comes to be an hereditary chieftain and a group of his leading supporters, his courtiers and henchmen. When the society has evolved into the stage which we call barbarism, there is a permanent superior caste; there are hereditary priests, who have in their keeping the favor of the G.o.ds; and there is a subject population of slaves.

The society moves on into the feudal stage, in which the various grades and cla.s.ses are precisely marked off, each with its different functions, its different privileges and rights and duties. The feudal princ.i.p.alities and duchies war and struggle among themselves; they are united by marriage or by conquest, and presently some stronger ruler brings a great territory under his power, and we have what is called a kingdom; a society still larger, still more complex in its organization, and still more rigid in its cla.s.s distinctions. Take France, under the ancient regime, and compare a courtier or n.o.ble gentleman with a serf; they are not only different before the law, they are different in the language they use, in the clothes they wear, in the ideas they hold; they are different even in their bodies, so that the gentleman regards the serf as an inferior species of creature.

The kings warred among themselves and emperors arose. The ultimate ideal in Europe was a political society which should include the whole continent, and this ideal was several times almost attained. But it is the rule of history that wherever a large society is built upon the basis of privilege and enslavement, the ruling cla.s.ses prove morally and intellectually unequal to the burden put upon them; they become corrupted, and their rule becomes intolerable. This happened in Europe, and there came political revolutions--first in England, which accomplished it by gradual stages, and then in the French monarchy, and quite recently in a dozen monarchies and empires, large and small.

What precisely is this political revolution? Let us consider the case of France, where the change was sudden, and the issues precisely drawn.

King Louis XIV had said, "I am the state." To a person of our time that might seem like boasting, but it was merely an a.s.sertion of the existing political fact. King Louis was the state by universal consent, and by divine authority, as all men believed. The army was his army, the navy was his navy, and wars, when he made them, were his wars. Everyone in the state was his subject, and all the property of the state was his personal, private property, to dispose of as he pleased. The government officials carried out his will, and members of the n.o.bility held the land and ruled in his name.

But now suddenly the people of France overthrew the king, and put him to death, and drove the n.o.bles into exile; they seized the power of the French state, and proclaimed themselves equal citizens in the state, with equal voices in its government and equal rights before the law. So we call France a republic, and describe this form of society as political democracy. It is the completion of the process of political evolution, and you will see that it moves in a sort of spiral; having completed a circle and got back where it was before, but upon a higher plane. The citizens of a modern republic are equal before the law, just as were the members of the savage tribe; but the political organization is vastly larger, and infinitely more complicated, and every individual lives his life upon a higher level, because he shares in the benefits of this more highly organized and more powerful.

CHAPTER LIII

INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION

(Examines the process of evolution in industry and the stage which it has so far reached.)

And now let us consider the process of industrial evolution. We shall find it to be exactly the same thing, reproducing the changes in another field of activity. You may picture two gigantic waves sweeping over the ocean. In some places the waves are far apart, and in other places they are closer together; for a time they may mingle, and perhaps their bases always mingle. It would be easy for a critic to point out how political affairs play a leading part in industrial evolution, and vice versa; it would be easy to argue that property rules the political state, or again, that the main function of the political state is to protect property. As I have said, man has to fight his enemies, and he has to seek food, and often he has to do the two things at the same time; but nevertheless, broadly speaking, we observe two great waves, sweeping over human society, and most of the time these waves are clearly separated and easily distinguished.

Industry in a savage tribe is, like government, simple and uniform; all the members of the tribe get their living in the same way. One may be a little more expert as a fisherman, another as a gatherer of cocoanuts, but the fisherman gathers cocoanuts and the cocoanut-gatherer fishes. In the days of primitive communism there is little economic strife and little change; but as slavery comes in, and the private property system, there begins industrial war--the members of the tribe trade with one another, and argue over prices, and gradually some get the better of others, they acc.u.mulate slaves and goods, and later on they appropriate the land to their private use. Of course, the men who do this are often the rulers of the tribe, and so politics and industry are mixed; but even a.s.suming that the state never interfered, a.s.suming that the government allowed business affairs to work themselves out in their own way, the tendency of compet.i.tion is always to end in monopoly. The big fish eat the little fish, the strong gain advantage over the weak, the rich grow richer, and the poor grow relatively poorer. As the amount of trading increases, and men specialize in the arts of bargaining, we see again and again how money concentrates in the hands of a few. It does this, even when the political state tries to prevent it; as, for example, when the princes and dukes of the Middle Ages would torture the Jewish money-lenders and take away their treasure, but the Jews never failed to grow rich again.

It is when political evolution has completed itself, and a republic has been set up, that a free field is given to economic forces to work themselves out to their logical end. We have seen this in the United States, where we all started pretty much on the same economic level, and where political tyranny has had little hold. Our civilization is a civilization of the trader--the business man, as we call him; and we see how big business absorbs little business, and grows constantly larger and more powerful. We are familiar with what we call "graft," the use by business men of the powers of government to get trade advantage for themselves, and we have a school of old-time thinkers, calling themselves "Jeffersonian Democrats," who insist that if only there had never been any government favors, economic equality and democracy would have endured forever in our country. But it is my opinion that government has done far more to prevent monopoly and special privilege in business than to favor it; and nevertheless, monopoly has grown.

In other words, the tendency toward concentration in business, the absorption of the small business by the big business, is an irresistible natural process, which neither can be nor should be hindered. The condition of compet.i.tion, whether in politics or in industry, is never a permanent one, and can never be made permanent; it is a struggle which automatically brings itself to an end. Large-scale production and distribution is more economical than small-scale, and big business has irresistible advantages of credit and permanence over little business.

As we shall presently show, the blind and indiscriminate production of goods under the compet.i.tive system leads to the glutting of markets and to industrial crises. At such times the weaker concerns are weeded out and the strong ones take their trade; and as a result, we have the modern great corporation, the most powerful machine of production yet devised by man, and which corresponds in every aspect to the monarchy in political society.

We are accustomed to speak of our "captains of industry," our "coal kings," and "beef barons" and "lords of steel," and we think we are using metaphors; but the universality of these metaphors points to a fundamental truth in them. As a matter of fact, our modern captain of industry fills in the economic world exactly the same functions as were filled in ancient days by the head of a feudal state. He has won his power in a similar struggle, and he holds it by similar methods. He rules over an organization of human beings, arranged, economically speaking, in grades and cla.s.ses, with their authorities and privileges and duties precisely determined, as under the "ancient regime." And just as King Louis said, "I am the state," so Mr. Armour considers that he is Armour & Co., and Mr. Morgan considers that he is the house of Morgan, and that the business exists for him and is controlled by him under divine authority.

If I am correct in my a.n.a.lysis of the situation, this process of industrial evolution is destined to complete itself, as in the case of the political state. The subject populations of industry are becoming more and more discontented with their servitude, more and more resentful of that authority which compels them to labor while others reap the benefit. They are organizing themselves, and preparing for a social transformation which will parallel in every detail the revolution by which our ancestors overthrew the authority of King George III over the American colonies, and made inhabitants of those colonies no longer subjects of a king, but free and equal citizens of a republic. I expect to see a change throughout the world, which will take the great instruments of production which we call corporations and trusts, out of the hands of their present private owners, and make them the property, either of the entire community, or of those who do the work in them.

This change is the "social revolution," and when it has completed itself, we shall have in that society an Industrial Republic, a form of business management which const.i.tutes economic democracy.

The history of the world's political revolutions has been written almost exclusively by aristocratic or bourgeois historians; that is to say, by men who, whatever their att.i.tude toward political democracy, have no conception of industrial democracy, and believe that industrial strife and enslavement are the normal conditions of life. If, however, you will read Kropotkin's "Great French Revolution," you will be interested to discover how important a part was played in this revolution by economic forces. Underneath the political discontent of the merchants and middle cla.s.ses lay a vast ma.s.s of social discontent of the peasants and workers. It was the ma.s.ses of the people who made the revolution, but it was the middle cla.s.ses who seized it and turned it to their own ends, putting down attempts toward economic equality, and confining the changes, so far as possible, to the political field.

And everywhere throughout history, if you study revolutions, you find that same thing happening. You find, for example, Martin Luther fighting for the right to preach the word of G.o.d without consulting the Pope; but when the peasants of Germany rose and sought to set themselves free from feudal landlords, Luther turned against them, and called upon the princes to shoot them down. "The a.s.s needs to be beaten, and the populace needs to be controlled with a strong hand." The landlords and propertied cla.s.ses of England were willing to restrict the power of the king, and to give the vote to the educated and well-to-do; but from the time of Jack Cade to our own they shoot down the poor.

But meantime, the industrial process continues; the modern factory system brings the workers together in larger and larger groups, and teaches them the lesson of cla.s.s consciousness. So the time of the workers draws near. The first attempt in modern times to accomplish the social revolution and set up industrial democracy was in the Paris Commune. When the French empire collapsed, after the war with Germany in 1871, the workers of Paris seized control. They were ma.s.sacred, some 50,000 of them, and the propertied cla.s.ses of France established the present bourgeois republic, which has now become the bulwark of reaction throughout the Continent of Europe.

Next came the Russian revolution of 1905, and this was an interesting ill.u.s.tration of the relation between the two waves of social progress.

Russia was a backward country industrially, and according to theory not at all prepared for the social revolution. But nowadays the thoughts of men circulate all over the world, and the exiles from Russia had absorbed Marxian ideas, and were not prepared to accept a purely political freedom. So in 1905, after the j.a.panese war, when the people rose and forced the Czar to grant a parliament, the extremists made an effort to accomplish the social revolution at the same time. The peasants began to demand the land, and the workers the factories; whereupon the capitalists and middle cla.s.ses, who wanted a parliament, but did not want Socialism, went over to the side of reaction, and both the political and social revolutions were crushed.

But then came the great war, for which Russia with her incompetent government and her undeveloped industry was unprepared. The strain of it broke her down long before the other Allies, and in the universal suffering and ruin the Russian people were again forced to rise. The political revolution was accomplished, the Czar was imprisoned, and the Douma reigned supreme. Middle cla.s.s liberalism throughout the world gave its blessings to this revolution, and hastened to welcome a new political democracy to the society of nations. But then occurred what to orthodox democratic opinion has been the most terrifying spectacle in human history. The Russian people had been driven too far towards starvation and despair; the ma.s.ses had been too embittered, and they rose again, overthrowing not only their Czar and their grand dukes, but their capitalists and land-owners. For the first time in history the social revolution established itself, and the workers were in control of a great state. Ever since then we have seen exactly what we saw in Europe from 1789 onward, when the first political republic was established, and all the monarchies and empires of the world banded themselves together to stamp it out. We have witnessed a campaign of war, blockade, intrigue and propaganda against the Soviet government of Russia, all pretending to be carried on in the name of the Russian people, and for the purpose of saving them from suffering--but all obviously based upon one consideration and one alone, the fear that an effort at industrial self-government might possibly prove to be a success.

Whether or not the Soviets will prove permanent, no one can say. But this much is certain; just as the French revolution sent a thrill around the world, and planted in the hearts of the common people the wonderful dream of freedom from kings and ruling cla.s.ses, just so the Russian revolution has brought to the working ma.s.ses the dream of freedom from masters and landlords. Everywhere in capitalist society this ferment is working, and in one country after another we see the first pangs of the new birth. Also we see capitalists and landlords, who once found "democracy," "free speech" and "equality before the law" useful formulas to break down the power of kings and aristocrats, now repudiating their old-time beliefs, and going back to the frankest reaction. We see, in our own "land of the free," the government refusing to reprint the Declaration of Independence during the war, and arresting men for quoting from it and circulating it; we even see the Department of Justice refusing to allow people to reprint the Sermon on the Mount!

CHAPTER LIV

THE CLa.s.s STRUGGLE

(Discusses history as a battle-ground between ruling and subject cla.s.ses, and the method and outcome of this struggle.)

There is a theory of social development, sometimes called the materialistic interpretation of history, and sometimes the economic interpretation of history. It is one of the contributions to our thought which we owe to Karl Marx, and like all the rest of Marxian theory, it is a subject of embittered controversy, not merely between Socialists and orthodox economists, but between various schools of revolutionary doctrine. For my part, I have never been a great hand for doctrine, whether ancient or modern; I am not much more concerned with what Marx taught than I am with what St. Paul taught, or what Martin Luther taught. My advice is to look at life with your own eyes, and to state in simple language the conclusions of your own thinking.

Man is an eating animal; he has also been described as a tool-making animal, and might be described as an ideal-making animal. There is a tendency on the part of those who specialize in the making of ideals to repudiate the eating and the tool-making sides of man; which accounts for the quarrel between the Marxians and the moralists. All through history you find new efforts of man to develop his emotional and spiritual nature, and to escape from the humiliating limitations of the flesh. These efforts have many of them been animated by desperate sincerity, but none of them have changed the fundamental fact that man is an eating animal, an animal insufficiently provided by nature against cold, and with an intense repugnance to having streams of cold water run down back of his neck. The religious teachers go out with empty purse, and "take no thought for the morrow"; but the forces of nature press insistently upon them, and little by little they make compromises, they take to shelter while they are preaching, they consent to live in houses, and even to own houses, and to keep a bank account. So they make terms with the powers of this world, and the powers of this world, which are subtle, and awake to their own interests, find ways to twist the new doctrine to their ends.

So the new religion becomes simply another form of the old hypocrisy; and it comes to us as a breath of fresh air in a room full of corruption when some one says, "Let us have done with aged shams and false idealisms. Let us face the facts of life, and admit that man is a physical animal, and cannot do any sane and constructive thinking until he has food and shelter provided. Let us look at history with unblinking eyes, and realize that food and shelter, the material means of life, are what men have been seeking all through history, and will continue to seek, until we put production and distribution upon a basis of justice, instead of a basis of force."

Such is, as simply as I can phrase it, the materialistic interpretation of history. Put into its dress of scientific language it reads: the dominant method of production and exchange in any society determines the inst.i.tutions and forms of that society. I do not think I exaggerate in saying that this formula, applied with judgment and discrimination, is a key to the understanding of human societies.

Wherever man has moved into the stage of slavery and private property there has been some group which has held power and sought to maintain and increase it. This group has set the standards of behavior and belief for the community, and if you wish to understand the government and religion, the manners and morals, the philosophy and literature and art of that community, the first thing you have to do is to understand the dominant group and its methods of keeping itself on top. This statement applies, not merely to those cultural forms which are established and ordained by the ruling cla.s.s; it applies equally well to the revolutionary forms, the behavior and beliefs of those who oppose the ruling cla.s.s. For men do not revolt in a vacuum, they revolt against certain conditions, and the form of their revolt is determined by the conditions. Take, for example, primitive Christianity, which was certainly an effort to be unworldly, if ever such an effort was made by man. But you cannot understand anything about primitive Christianity unless you see it as a new form of slave revolt against Roman imperialism and capitalism.

The theory of the cla.s.s struggle is the master key to the bewilderments and confusions of history. Always there is a dominant cla.s.s, holding the power of the state, and always there are subject cla.s.ses; and sooner or later the subject cla.s.ses begin protesting and struggling for wider rights. When they think they are strong enough, they attempt a revolt, and sometimes they succeed. If they do, they write the histories of the revolt, and their leaders become heroes and statesmen. If they fail, the histories are written by their oppressors, and the rebels are portrayed as criminals.

One of the commonest of popular a.s.sumptions is that if the rebels have justice on their side, they are bound to succeed in the long run; but this is merely the sentimental nonsense that is made out of history. It is perfectly possible for a just revolt to be crushed, and to be crushed again and again; just as it is possible for a child which is ready to be born to fail to be born, and to perish miserably. The fact that the Huguenots had most of the virtue and industry and intelligence of France did not keep them from being slaughtered by Catholic bigots, and reaction riveted upon the French people for a couple of hundred years.

The fact that the Moors had most of the industry of Spain did not keep them from being driven into exile by the Inquisition, and the intellectual life of the Spanish people strangled for three hundred or four hundred years.

Some eight hundred years ago our ancestors in England brought a cruel and despotic king to battle, and conquered him, and on the field of Runnymede forced him to sign a grant of rights to Englishmen. That doc.u.ment is known as Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, and everyone who writes political history today recognizes it as one of the greatest of man's achievements, the beginning of a process which we hope will bring freedom and equality before the law to every human being on earth.

And now we have come to the stage in our industrial affairs, when the organized workers seek to bring the monarchs of industry into the council chamber, and force them to sign a similar Great Charter, which will grant freedom and self-government to the workers. Just as King John was forced to admit that the power to tax and spend the public revenue belonged to the people of England, and not to the ruler; just so the workers will establish the principle that the finances of industry are a public concern, that the books are to be opened, and prices fixed and wages paid by the democratic vote of the citizens of industry. If that change is accomplished, the historian of the future will recognize it as another momentous step in progress; and he will heed the protests of the lords of industry, that they are being deprived of their freedom to do business, and of their sacred legal rights to their profits, as little as he heeded the protests of King John against the "treason" and "usurpation" and infringement of "divine right" by the rebellious barons.

CHAPTER LV

THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM

(Shows how wealth is produced in modern society, and the effect of this system upon the minds of the workers.)

In the beginning man got his living by hunting and fishing. Then he took to keeping flocks and herds, and later by slow stages he settled down to agriculture. With the introduction of slavery and the ownership of the land by ruling cla.s.ses, there came to be a subject cla.s.s of workers, who toiled on the land from dawn to dark, year in and year out, and got, if they were fortunate, an existence for themselves and their families.

Whether these workers were called slaves or serfs or peasants, whether their product was taken from them in the form of taxes by the king, or of rent by the landlord, made no difference; the workers were bound to the soil, like the beasts with which they lived in intimate contact.

They were drafted into armies, and made to fight for their lords and masters; they suffered pestilence and famine, fire and slaughter; but with infinite patience they would rebuild their huts, and dig and plant again, whether for the old master or for a new one.

In the early days these workers made their own crude tools and weapons; but very early there must have been some who specialized in such arts, and with the growth of towns and communications came a new kind of labor, based upon a new system. Some enterprising man would buy slaves, or hire labor, and obtain a supply of raw material, and manufacture goods to be bartered or sold. He would pay his workers enough to draw them from the land, and would sell the product for what he could get, and the difference would be his profit. That was capitalism, and at first it was a thing of no importance, and the men who engaged in it had no social standing. But princes and lords needed weapons and supplies for their armies, and the men who could furnish these things became more and more necessary, and the states which encouraged them were the ones which rose to power. Merchants and sea-traders became the intimates of kings, and by the time of the Roman empire, capitalism was a great world power, dominating the state, using the armies of the state for its purposes. It went down with the rest of Roman civilization, but in the Middle Ages it began once more to revive, and by the end of the eighteenth century the merchants and money lenders of France, with their retainers, the lawyers and journalists, were powerful enough to take the control of society.

Then, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, came the invention of machinery and of the power process. Capitalism began to grow like a young giant among pygmies. In the course of a century it has ousted all other methods of production, and all other forms of social activity. A hundred years ago the British House of Commons was a parliament of landlords; today it is a Merchants' and Manufacturers' a.s.sociation. Out of the 707 members of the British House of Commons, 361 are members of the "Federation of British Industries," the labor-smashing organization of British "big business." And the same is true of every other parliament and congress in the modern capitalist state. Practically all the wealth of the world today is produced by the capitalist method, and distributed under capitalist supervision, and therefore capitalist ideas prevail in our society, to the practical exclusion of all other ideas. I have shown in "The Profits of Religion" how these ideas dominate the modern church, and in "The Bra.s.s Check" how they dominate the modern press. I plan to write two books, to show how they dominate education and literature.

A hundred years ago an industry consisted of a half a dozen or a dozen men, working under the personal supervision of an owner, and using crude hand tools. Today it consists of a gigantic trust, owning and managing scores and perhaps hundreds of mills and factories, each employing thousands of workers. A corporation like the Steel Trust owns enough of the sources of its raw material to give it practical monopoly; it owns a fleet of vessels especially designed for ore-carrying; it owns its private railroads, to deliver the ore to the mills. Through its system of dummy directorates it has practical control of the main railroads over which it distributes its products; also of banks and trust companies and insurance companies, to gather the money of the public to finance its undertakings. It owns huge office buildings, and vast tracts of land upon which the homes of its workers are built. It has a private army for the defense of its property--a complete army of cavalry, infantry and artillery, including a large and highly efficient secret service department, with a host of informers and spies. It has newspapers for the purpose of propaganda, and it controls the government of every village, town and city in which it has important interests. If you will take the trouble to visit a "steel town," and make inquiries among public officials, newspaper men, and others who are "on the inside," you will discover that those in authority consider it necessary and proper that "steel" should control, and are unable to conceive any other condition of affairs. If you go to other parts of the country, where other great industries are located, you find it taken for granted that "copper" should control, or "lumber," or "coal," or "oil," or whatever it may be.