The Common Sense of Socialism Part 7

"Compet.i.tion gluts our markets, enables the rich to take advantage of the necessity of the poor, makes each man s.n.a.t.c.h the bread out of his neighbor's mouth, converts a nation of brethren into a ma.s.s of hostile units, and finally involves capitalists and laborers in one common ruin."

The crises due to this unregulated production, and the costliness of the struggles, led to the formation of joint-stock companies.

Compet.i.tion was giving way before a stronger force, the force of co-operation. There was still compet.i.tion, but it was more and more between giants. To adopt a very homely simile, the bigger fish ate up the little ones so long as there were any, and then turned to a struggle among themselves.

Another thing that forced the development of industry and commerce away from compet.i.tive methods was the increasing costliness of the machinery of production. The new inventions, first of steam-power and later of electricity, involved an immense outlay, so that many persons had to combine their capitals in one common fund.

This process of eliminating compet.i.tion has gone on with remarkable swiftness, so that we have now the great Trust Problem. Everyone recognizes to-day that the trusts practically control the life of the nation. It is the supreme issue in our politics and a challenge to the heart and brain of the nation.

Fifty years ago Karl Marx, the great Socialist economist, made the remarkable prophecy that this condition would arise. He lived in the heyday of compet.i.tion, when it seemed utter folly to talk about the end of compet.i.tion. He a.n.a.lyzed the situation, pointed to the process of big capitalists crushing out the little capitalists, the union of big capitalists, and the inevitable drift toward monopoly. He predicted that the process would continue until the whole industry, the main agencies of production and distribution at any rate, would be centralized in a few great monopolies, controlled by a very small handful of men. He showed with wonderful clearness that capitalism, the Great Idea of buy cheap and sell dear, carried within itself the germs of its own destruction.

And, of course, the wiseacres laughed. The learned ignorance of the wiseacre always compels him to laugh at the man with an idea that is new. Didn't the wiseacres imprison Galileo? Haven't they persecuted the pioneers in all ages? But Time has a habit of vindicating the pioneers while consigning the scoffing wiseacres to oblivion. Fifty years is a short time in human evolution but it has sufficed to establish the right of Marx to an honored place among the pioneers.

More than twenty-five years after Marx made his great prediction, there came to this country on a visit Mr. H.M. Hyndman, an English economist who is also known as one of the foremost living exponents of Socialism. The intensity of the compet.i.tive struggle was most marked, but he looked below the surface and saw a subtle current, a drift toward monopoly, which had gone unnoticed. He predicted the coming of the era of great trusts and combines. Again the wiseacres in their learned ignorance laughed and derided. The amiable gentleman who plays the part of flunkey at the Court of St. James, in London, wearing plush knee breeches, silver-buckled shoes and powdered wig, a marionette in the tinseled show of King Edward's court, was one of the wiseacres. He was then editor of the _New York Tribune_, and he declared that Mr. Hyndman was a "fool traveler" for making such a prediction. But in the very next year the Standard Oil Company was formed!

So we have the trust problem with us. Out of the bitter compet.i.tive struggle there has come a new condition, a new form of industrial ownership and enterprise. From the cradle to the grave we are encompa.s.sed by the trust.

Now, friend Jonathan, I need not tell you that the trusts have got the nation by the throat. You know it. But there is a pa.s.sage, a question, in the letter you wrote me the other day from which I gather that you have not given the matter very close attention. You ask "How will the Socialists destroy the trusts which are hurting the people?"

I suppose that comes from your old a.s.sociations with the Democratic Party. You think that it is possible to destroy the trusts, to undo the chain of social evolution, to go back twenty or fifty years to compet.i.tive conditions. You would restore compet.i.tion. I have purposely gone into the historical development of the trust in order to show you how useless it would be to destroy the trusts and introduce compet.i.tion again, even if that were possible. Now that you have mentally traced the origin of monopoly to its causes in compet.i.tion, don't you see that if we could destroy the monopoly to-morrow and start fresh upon a basis of compet.i.tion, the process of "big fish eat little fish" would begin again at once--_for that is compet.i.tion_? And if the big ones eat the little ones up, then fight among themselves, won't the result be as before--that either one will crush the other, leaving a monopoly, or the compet.i.tors will join hands and agree not to fight, leaving monopoly again?

And, Jonathan, if there should be a return to the old-fashioned, free-for-all scramble for markets, would it be any better for the workers? Would there not be the same old struggle between the capitalists and the workers? Would not the workers still have to give much for little; to wear their lives away grinding out profits for the masters of their bread, of their very lives? Would there not be gluts as before, with panics, misery, unemployed armies sullenly parading the streets; idlers in mansions and toilers in hovels? You know very well that there would be all these, my friend, and I know that you are too sensible a fellow to think any longer about destroying the trusts.

It cannot be done, Jonathan, and it would not be a good thing if it could be done.

I think, my friend, that you will see upon reflection that there are many excellent features about the trust which it would be criminal and foolish to destroy had we the power. Compet.i.tion means waste, foolish and unnecessary waste. Trusts have been organized expressly to do away with the waste of men and natural resources. They represent economical production. When Mr. Perkins, of the New York Life Insurance Company, was testifying before the insurance investigating committee he gave expression to the philosophy of the trust movement by saying that, in the modern view, compet.i.tion is the law of death and that co-operation and organization represent life and progress.

While the wage-workers are probably in many respects better off as a result of the trustification of industry, it would be idle to deny that there are many evils connected with it. No one who views the situation calmly can deny that the trusts exert an enormous power over the government of the country, that they are, in fact, the real government of the country, exercising far more control over the lives of the common people than the regularly const.i.tuted, const.i.tutional government of the country does. It is also true that they can arbitrarily fix prices in many instances, so that the natural law of value is set aside and the workers are exploited as consumers, as purchasers of the things necessary to life, just as they are exploited as producers.

Of course, friend Jonathan, wages must meet the cost of living. If prices rise considerably, wages must sooner or later follow, and if prices fall wages likewise will fall sooner or later. But it is important to remember that when prices fall wages are _quick_ to follow, while when prices soar higher and higher wages are very _slow_ to follow. That is why it wouldn't do us any good to have a law regulating prices, supposing that a law forcing down prices could be enacted and enforced. Wages would follow prices downward with wonderful swiftness. And that is why, also, we do need to become the masters of the wealth we produce. For wages climb upward with leaden feet, my friend, when prices soar with eagle wings. It is always the workers who are at a disadvantage in a system where one cla.s.s controls the means of producing and distributing wealth.

But, friend Jonathan, that is due to the fact that the advantages of the trust form of industry are not used as well as they might be. They are all grasped by the master cla.s.s. The trouble with the trust is simply this: the people as a whole do not share the benefits. We continue the same old wage system under the new forms of industry: we have not changed our mode of distributing the wealth produced so as to conform to the new modes of producing it. The heart of the economic conflict is right there.

We must find a remedy for this, Jonathan. Labor unionism is a good thing, but it is no remedy for this condition. It is a valuable weapon with, which to fight for better wages and shorter hours, and every workingman ought to belong to the union of his trade or calling. But unionism does not and cannot do away with the profit system; it cannot break the power of the trusts to extort monopoly prices from the people. To do these things we must bring into play the forces of government: we must vote a new status for the trust. The union is for the economic struggle of groups of workers day by day against the master cla.s.s so long as the present cla.s.s division exists. But that is not a solution of the problem. What we need to do is to vote the cla.s.s divisions out of existence. _We need to own the trusts, Jonathan!_

This is the Socialist position. What is needed now is the harmonizing of our social relations with the new forms of production. When private property came into the primitive world in the form of slavery, social relations were changed and from a rude communism society pa.s.sed into a system of individualism and cla.s.s rule. When, later on, slave labor gave way before serf labor, the social relations were again modified to correspond. When capitalism came, with wage-paid labor as its basis, all the laws and inst.i.tutions which stood in the way of the free development of the new principle were swept away; new social relations were established, new laws and inst.i.tutions introduced to meet its needs.

To-day, in America, we are suffering because our social relations are not in harmony with the changed methods of producing wealth. We have got the laws and inst.i.tutions which were designed to meet the needs of compet.i.tive industry. They suited those old conditions fairly well, but they do not suit the new.

In a former letter, you will remember, I likened our present suffering to a case of appendicitis, that society suffers from the trouble set up within by an organ which has lost its function and needs to be cut out. Perhaps I might better liken society to a woman in the travail of childbirth, suffering the pangs of labor incidental to the deliverance of the new life within her womb. The trust marks the highest development of capitalist society: it can go no further.

The Old Order changeth, yielding place to new.

And the new order, waiting now for deliverance from the womb of the old, is Socialism, the fraternal state. Whether the birth of the new order is to be peaceful or violent and painful, whether it will be ushered in with glad shouts of triumphant men and women, or with the noise of civil strife, depends, my good friend, upon the manner in which you and all other workers discharge your responsibilities as citizens. That is why I am so anxious to set the claims of Socialism clearly before you: I want you to work for the peaceful revolution of society, Jonathan.

For the present, I am only going to ask you to read a little five cent pamphlet, by g.a.y.l.o.r.d Wilshire, called _The Significance of the Trust_, and a little book by Frederick Engels, called _Socialism, Utopian and Scientific_. Later on, when I have had a chance to explain Socialism in a general way, and must then leave you to your own resources, I intend to make for you a list of books, which I hope you will be able to read.

You see, Jonathan, I remember always that you wrote me: "Whether Socialism is good or bad, wise or foolish, _I want to know_." The best way to know is to study the question for yourself.

VIII

WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT

Socialism is industrial democracy. It would put an end to the irresponsible control of economic interests, and subst.i.tute popular self-government in the industrial as in the political world.--_Charles H. Vail._

Socialism says that man, machinery and land must be brought together; that the toll gates of capitalism must be torn down, and that every human being's opportunity to produce the means with which to sustain life shall be considered as sacred as his right to live.--_Allan L. Benson._

Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered. It means that the tools of employment shall belong to their creators and users; that all production shall be for the direct use of the producers; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together; and that all opportunities shall be open and equal to all men.--_National Platform of the Socialist Party, 1904._

Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor.

Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land where the apples will drop off the trees into our open mouths, the fish come out of the rivers and fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out ready-made suits of velvet with golden b.u.t.tons without the trouble of coaling the engine. Neither is it a dream of a nation of stained-gla.s.s angels, who never say d.a.m.n, who always love their neighbors better than themselves, and who never need to work unless they wish to.--_Robert Blatchford._

By this time, friend Jonathan, you have, I hope, got rid of the notion that Socialism is a ready-made scheme of society which a few wise men have planned, and which their followers are trying to get adopted. I have spent some time and effort trying to make it perfectly plain to you that great social changes are not brought about in that fashion.

Socialism then, is a philosophy of human progress, a theory of social evolution, the main outlines of which I have already sketched for you.

Because the subject is treated at much greater length in some of the books I have asked you to read, it is not necessary for me to elaborate the theory. It will be sufficient, probably, for me to restate, in a very few words, the main principles of that theory:

The present social system throughout the civilized world is not the result of deliberately copying some plan devised by wise men. It is the result of long centuries of growth and development. From our present position we look back over the blood-blotted pages of history, back to the ages before men began to write their history and their thoughts, through the centuries of which there is only faint tradition; we go even further back, to the very beginning of human existence, to the men-apes and the ape-men whose existence science has made clear to us, and we see the race engaged in a long struggle to

Move upward, working out the beast And let the ape and tiger die.

We look for the means whereby the progress of man has been made, and find that his tools have been, so to say, the ladder upon which he has risen in the age-long climb from bondage toward brotherhood, from being a brute armed with a club to the sovereign of the universe, controlling tides, harnessing winds, gathering the lightning in his hands and reaching to the farthest star.

We find in every epoch of that long evolution the means of producing wealth as the center of all, transforming government, laws, inst.i.tutions and moral codes to meet their limitations and their needs. Nothing has ever been strong enough to restrain the economic forces in social evolution. When laws and customs have stood in the way of the economic forces they have been burst asunder as by some mighty leaven, or hurled aside in the cyclonic sweep of revolutions.

Have you ever gone into the country, Jonathan, and noticed an immense rock split and shattered by the roots of a tree, or perhaps by the might of an insignificant looking fungus? I have, many times, and I never see such a rock without thinking of its aptness as an ill.u.s.tration of this Socialist philosophy. A tiny acorn tossed by the wind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stood for thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it as an emblem of the Everlasting. Soon the warm caresses of the sun and the rain wake the latent life in the acorn; the sh.e.l.l breaks and a frail little shoot of vegetable life appears, so small that an infant could crush it. Yet that weak and puny thing grows on un.o.bserved, striking its rootlets farther into the crevice of the rock. And when there is no more room for it to grow, _it does not die, but makes room for itself by shattering the rock_.

Economic forces are like that, my friend, they _must_ expand and grow.

Nothing can long restrain them. A new method of producing wealth broke up the primitive communism of prehistoric man; another change in the methods of production hurled the feudal barons from power and forced the establishment of a new social system. And now, we are on the eve of another great change--nay, we are in the very midst of the change.

Capitalism is doomed! Not because men think it is wicked, but because the development of the great industrial trusts compels a new political and social system to meet the needs of the new mode of production.

Something has got to give way to the irresistible growing force! A change is inevitable. And the change must be to Socialism. That is the belief of the Socialists, Jonathan, which I am trying to make you understand. Mind, I do not say that the coming change will be the _last_ change in human evolution, that there will be no further development after Socialism. I do not know what lies beyond, nor to what heights humanity may attain in future years. It may be that thousands or millions of years from now the race will have attained to such a state of growth and power that the poorest and weakest man then alive will be so much superior to the greatest men alive to-day, our best scholars, poets, artists, inventors and statesmen, as these are superior to the cave-man. It may be. I do not know. Only a fool would seek to set mete and bound to man's possibilities.

We are concerned only with the change that is imminent, the change that is now going on before our eyes. We say that the outcome of society's struggle with the trust problem must be the control of the trust by society. That the outcome of the struggle between the master cla.s.s and the slave cla.s.s, between the _wealth makers_ and the _wealth takers_, must be the victory of the makers.

Throughout all history, ever since the first appearance of private property--of slavery and land ownership--there have been cla.s.s struggles. Slave and slave-owner, serf and baron, wage-slave and capitalist--so the cla.s.ses have struggled. And what has been the issue, thus far? Chattel slavery gave way to serfdom, in which the oppression was lighter and the oppressed gained some measure of human recognition. Serfdom, in its turn, gave way to the wages system, in which, despite many evils, the oppressed cla.s.s lives upon a far higher plane than the slave and serf cla.s.ses from whence it sprang. Now, with the capitalists unable to hold and manage the great machinery of production which has been developed, with the workers awakened to their power, armed with knowledge, with education, and, above all, with the power to make the laws, the government, what they will, can anybody doubt what the outcome will be?

It is impossible to believe that we shall continue to leave the things upon which all depend in the hands of a few members of society. Now that production has been so organized that it can be readily controlled and directed from a few centers, it is possible for the first time in the history of civilization for men to live together in peace and plenty, owning in common the things which must be used in common, which are needed in common; leaving to private ownership the things which can be privately owned without injury to society. _And that is Socialism._

I have explained the philosophy of social evolution upon which modern Socialism is based as clearly as I could do in the s.p.a.ce at my disposal. I want you to think it out for yourself, Jonathan. I want you to get the enthusiasm and the inspiration which come from a realization of the fact that progress is the law of Nature; that mankind is ever marching upward and onward; that Socialism is the certain inheritor of all the ages of struggle, suffering and acc.u.mulation.

And above all, I want you to realize the position of your cla.s.s, my friend, and your duty to stand with your cla.s.s, not only as a union man, but as a voter and a citizen.

As a system of political economy I need say little of Socialism, beyond recounting some of the things we have already considered. A great many learned ignorant men, like Mr. Mallock, for instance, are fond of telling the workers that the economic teachings of Socialism are unsound; that Karl Marx was really a very superficial thinker whose ideas have been entirely discredited.