Twentieth Century Socialism Part 2

Instead of the word "individualism," I shall use another French expression which has also become acclimated--that is to say, _laissez faire_; for _laissez faire_ are words adopted by the bourgeois to describe the system for which he generally stands. This expression is peculiarly appropriate to-day, when we hear our business men clamoring to be "let alone." Indeed were it not for the awkwardness of the expression "let-alone-ism," this literal translation of _laissez faire_ would just suit my purpose.

It is true that the _laissez faire_ of to-day differs from that of the last century. For there is at present a very wide belief in the possibility of controlling corporations, and whereas the _laissez faire_ of the last century went so far as to deny the necessity of government control, that of to-day very largely admits it. By laissez faire, therefore, I mean the controlled _laissez faire_ that now prevails as well as the uncontrolled _laissez faire_ of a century ago, the essential difference between _laissez faire_ and Socialism being that the former implies leaving the production and distribution of everything to private capital whether controlled or uncontrolled by government; whereas Socialism implies putting production and distribution of at least the necessaries of life into the hands of those who actually produce and distribute them without any intervention or control of private capital whatever.

I have been careful to take my facts and figures not from Socialist publications, but from government publications or economists of admitted authority. I have, too, in every case where it seems necessary quoted my authority so that there may be no doubt as to the source from which my facts are drawn.

In conclusion it must be stated that there are four very different standpoints from which Socialists start--the economic, the political, the scientific and the ethical.

Ethical writers began by disregarding the economic side of Socialism altogether, and some economic Socialists are therefore disposed to despise ethical and so-called Christian Socialism; whereas the ethical view is not only useful, but essential to a complete understanding of the subject.

The scientific view of Socialism has been comparatively little treated, but it is not for that reason the least important. On the contrary, Herbert Spencer and his school have built a formidable opposition to Socialism based upon pseudo-scientific grounds. It becomes, therefore, important to point out the extent to which Herbert Spencer was wrong and Huxley right in the application of science to this question.

My own conviction is that the highest Socialism is that which reconciles all four views--the economic, the political, the scientific and the ethical. But as this is a work of exposition rather than of controversy, I have abstained from insisting upon this view and have, on the contrary, endeavored to give a fair account of all four arguments, in the hope that those who are inclined to the economic view may adopt it for economic reasons; those inclined to the political view may adopt it for political reasons; those who are attracted by the scientific view may adopt it for scientific reasons; and those who are attracted by the ethical view may adopt it for ethical reasons, leaving it to time to determine whether the strongest argument for Socialism is not to be found in the fact that it is recommended by all four.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Capital," by Karl Marx.

[2] "Collectivism and Industrial Revolution," Emil Vandervelde.

[3] Engels and others have described Marxian or Economic Socialism as scientific, on the ground that Marx was the first to reduce Socialism to a science. But the word science has become so inseparably connected in our minds with chemistry, physics, biology, zoology, and geology, etc., that it seems wiser to define Marxian Socialism as economic and to keep the word scientific for that view of Socialism which is built on the sciences proper and princ.i.p.ally on biology.

[4] "Socialism in Theory and Practice." Macmillan, 1909.

[5] Book III, Chapter VI.

[6] See Appendix.

[7] "The Constructive Program of Socialism," Carl D. Thompson.

BOOK I

_WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT_

Socialism is not a subject which can be put into a nutsh.e.l.l. On the contrary it resembles rather a lofty mountain which has to be viewed from every point of the compa.s.s in order to be understood. Mont Blanc, approached from the North or Swiss side, presents the aspect of a round white dome of snow; approached from the South or Italian side it presents that of a sharp black peak of rock. Yet these totally different aspects belong to the same mountain. It takes a mountaineer about three days to go round Mont Blanc on foot; it takes an ordinary pedestrian who has to stick to roads about a week. It is probable, therefore, that the reader new to the subject will take at least a week to understand Socialism, which is quite as big a subject as Mont Blanc and considerably more important. He is likely, however, to take much more than a week if, as happens in most cases, he starts in a forest of prejudices any one of which is sufficient to obstruct his view. In the confusion in which the ordinary citizen finds himself, owing to this forest of prejudices which const.i.tutes the greatest obstacle to the understanding of Socialism, he may very possibly wander all his life, and the first duty, therefore, of a book on Socialism is to take him out of the forest which he cannot himself see "because of the trees."

The great enemy to a sound understanding of Socialism used to be ignorance; to-day, however, there is less ignorance, but a great deal more confusion; and the confusion arises from two sources: confusion deliberately created by false denunciations of Socialism, and confusion unconsciously created by personal interests and prejudice.

The confusion arising from these two sources may be described as subjective obstacles to Socialism because they exist within ourselves.

They are to be distinguished from objective obstacles to Socialism which exist outside of ourselves. For example, if a majority of us were in favor of adopting Socialism, we should still find many objective obstacles to it; for example, if we proposed to expropriate the trusts, we should undoubtedly be enjoined by the courts; we should find ourselves confronted with federal and State const.i.tutions; we perhaps would have to amend these const.i.tutions. These difficulties are outside of us. But before we reach these obstacles, we have to overcome others that exist within us and are to-day by far the most formidable. These subjective obstacles reside in our minds and are created there by vested interests, property, ignorance and misrepresentation. We are all of us under a spell woven about us by the economic conditions under which we live.

For example, the workingman who has saved a few hundred dollars and goes out West to take up land, thinks that by so doing he will escape from wage slavery. He does not know that he is not escaping slavery at all, but only changing masters. Instead of being the slave of an employer, he becomes the slave of his own farm. And the farm will prove an even harder taskmaster than a Pittsburg steel mill, for it will exact of him longer hours during more days of the year and seldom give him as high a wage. Nevertheless, the fact that he owns the farm--that the farm is his property--awakens in him the property instinct that tends to rank him on election day by the side of the bourgeois.

So also the store-keeper who, because he owns his stock, buys goods at a low price and sells them at a high, and makes profit, considers himself superior to the wage-earner, unmindful of the fact that his store adds to long hours and low wage the anxieties of the market and that, thanks to trusts and department stores, he is kept perpetually on the ragged edge of ruin.

The clerk, too, whose only ambition is to rise one grade higher than the one which he occupies, is prevented by the narrowness of his economic field from appreciating the extent to which he is exploited.

Instead of being bound by cla.s.s consciousness with his fellow clerks, he is, on the contrary, in perpetual rivalry with them, and is likely to be found on election day voting with the owner who exploits them all.

And even the wage-earner, the factory hand, who is the most obviously exploited of all, is in America still so absorbed by his trade union, by his fight with his employer, that he has not yet learned to recognize how much stronger he is in this fight on the political than on the economic field. So he too, instead of recognizing the salvation offered to him by Socialism as his fellow workingmen in Germany do, allows himself regularly to be betrayed into voting for one of the capitalist parties which his employer alternately controls.

And the darkness in which these men are regarding matters of vital interest to them is still further darkened by their own ignorance, by the ignorance of those around them and, I am afraid I must add, by deliberate misrepresentation.

Let us begin by extricating ourselves from the forest of prejudice that makes all clearness of vision impossible and, when we can see with our eyes, we shall take a rapid walk around this mountain of Socialism, as all climbers do, if only to choose the best points from which to climb it.

CHAPTER I

SUBJECTIVE OBSTACLES TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIALISM

VESTED INTERESTS

There is in the archives of the House of Commons a pet.i.tion filed by the gardeners of Hammersmith in opposition to a proposed improvement of the country roads, which would enable gardeners further removed from London to compete with Hammersmith gardeners on the London market. They regarded themselves as having a vested right in bad roads and actually took these so-called rights sufficiently seriously to pet.i.tion Parliament not to improve roads which were going to bring them into compet.i.tion with gardeners already at a disadvantage by being further removed from the market than themselves.

This is an ill.u.s.tration of the extent to which the human mind can be perverted by personal interest. But there is another ill.u.s.tration of so-called vested interests much more revolting in its nature and yet perhaps more justified in fact. When the cholera broke out in Paris, in 1830, and it was believed to have been brought into the country through rags, a bill was presented before the French Parliament for the destruction of all deposits of rags in the city. This was violently opposed by the rag pickers, who pointed out that these rags const.i.tuted their only source of existence, and they found many members of the French Parliament to support their view. We, who can dispa.s.sionately consider the situation of these rag pickers, have to admit that, if they could earn their living in no other way than rag picking, it would be a mistake for Parliament to deprive them of their source of living without giving them some other employment. But it would be worse still were Parliament to allow Paris to be decimated by cholera because the rag pickers claimed a vested right in pestiferous rags.

A similar situation presents itself in the city of New York to-day.

The tenement-house commission has imposed upon tenement-house owners certain obligations which involve an expenditure of considerable sums of money, and many of our best citizens are indignant because the tenement-house law is not always rigidly enforced. Yet all who have followed the recent rent strike on the East Side, know that the tenement houses there are in large part owned by men as poor as those who live in them. The immense congestion in this district brought about such compet.i.tion for lodgings that speculators were enabled to buy tenement houses at their utmost value and to sell them at a still higher price by persuading the thriftiest of the inhabitants of the district that, if they purchased these tenement houses and acted as their own janitors and agents, they could earn more money than was then being earned. Victims were found who have put all their savings into these tenement houses, leaving the larger part of the purchase on mortgage. These new landlords raise the rent in order to make the houses pay for themselves. These pauper tenement-house owners are in the same position to-day as the Paris rag pickers of 1830.

The question of what, if any, compensation should be paid when the state interferes with vested rights cannot be decided by any general rule. The demand for compensation by the Hammersmith gardeners was absurd; but that of the rag pickers was justified; that of poor tenement-house owners on the East Side seems also to be justified; but if the state in taking over these unwholesome tenements were to find one in the hands of a speculator, would compensation be to the same degree justified?

So these questions seem to become questions of detail; they cannot be disposed of by a general rule: "there shall be compensation" or "there shall not be compensation." Above all things, these so-called general rules must not be erected into dogmas or "principles" under the standard of which Socialists are to group themselves and fight one another.

It is interesting to consider in connection with this subject the geographical character of the objections to Socialism as ill.u.s.trated by the att.i.tude taken by England and America respectively on the subject of munic.i.p.al ownership.

In England, munic.i.p.al ownership of gas is the rule rather than the exception. Indeed Manchester has owned its own gas plant from 1843, and has furnished the public with gas at 60 cents per thousand cubic feet, and even at that price[8] made a net profit in 1907-8 of 57,609, which has been applied to the diminution of rates and extension of the service. Birmingham, which had to pay an extravagant price for its gas plant, nevertheless immediately reduced the price of gas and brought it down from $1.10 under private ownership to 50 cents to-day. In England, therefore, it is perfectly respectable to approve of munic.i.p.al ownership of gas. But inasmuch as water has been until very lately furnished to London in great part by a private company chartered by James I. the stock of which has increased in value a thousand per cent and which counts among its stockholders royalty itself, anybody until very lately who proposed munic.i.p.al ownership of water in London, was regarded as a dangerous anarchist.

The New York situation is just the reverse. For New York, after having tried private ownership of water and abandoned it as early as 1850 on account of the corruption that resulted therefrom, undertook public ownership of water with such success that no disinterested citizen to-day wants to go back to the old plan. So a New Yorker can advocate munic.i.p.al ownership of water and still be regarded as a perfectly respectable citizen; but should he venture to favor munic.i.p.al ownership of gas he is at once cla.s.sed with those whose heads are only fit to be beaten with a club.

How long are we going to allow our opinions to be manufactured for us by water companies in London and gas companies in New York? Obviously we cannot take an impartial and intelligent view of this great question until we have divested ourselves of the prejudices created by vested interests. If the propertied cla.s.s, which is committed to existing conditions by the fact that it profits by them, is willing to yield no inch to the rising tide of popular dissatisfaction and the awakening of popular conscience, it is probable that the revolutionary wing of the Socialist party will prevail, if only because under these circ.u.mstances the evolutionary wing will not be allowed to prevail.

If, on the other hand, the propertied cla.s.s become alive not only to the danger of undue resistance, but also to the reasonableness and justice of the Socialist ideal, there is no reason why vested interests, save such as owe their existence to downright robbery and crime, should materially suffer in the process of Socialist evolution.

If this be true the words "menace of Socialism" will turn out to be inappropriate and unfounded. Sound Socialism has no menace for any but evil-doers.

Having now climbed out of the forest of prejudices created by private or so-called vested interests, let us next consider the different points of view created by temperament and economic conditions, from which the subject of Socialism tends to be regarded.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] "Munic.i.p.al Year Book," 1909, p. 482.