Twentieth Century Socialism Part 27

[177] See _Hampton's Magazine_ for May and June, 1909.

[178] See p. 58.

[179] The occupation that furnishes most inmates to our asylums is farming.

[180] This limitation on property has already been enacted in the State of New York (Chap. 463, Laws of 1909), and bills of similar import have been introduced into the legislatures of California, Maine, and Pennsylvania. In Maine a hypothetical question as to the const.i.tutionality of such legislation was submitted to the supreme court, which reported favorably (19 Lawyers' Reports annotated [U.S.]

422).

[181] Farmers' Bulletin, No. 242.

[182] Something has been done in connection with the milk supply. Thus the milk producers of Boston have organized a union and have agreed to a price with the Milk Contractors' a.s.sociation. But although this effort at combination has cheapened milk for large consumers such as hotels, large restaurants, and even small stores, pint customers pay just as much in Boston as elsewhere; that is, 8 cents a quart.

(Industrial Commission Report, Vol. VI, p. 409.)

[183] See 13th Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor of U.S., p. 25, where the cost of producing wheat under the best conditions is approximately 30 cents per bushel.

[184] Book II, Chapter II.

[185] For example, it is generally believed that the President of the Steel Trust gets over $100,000 a year. Before the insurance investigation presidents of life insurance companies got similar salaries. Railroad presidents are also paid at similar rates.

[186] "Socialism in Theory and Practice," p. 133.

[187] "Socialism in Theory and Practice," p. 119.

[188] Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," p. 129.

[189] "Socialism in Theory and Practice," p. 164.

[190] See any daily newspaper between March 16, 1909, when the bill was introduced in the House, and Aug. 6, 1909, when the law went into effect.

[191] Obviously, until all the industries are socialized, a part of this minimum will have to be paid in gold. When, however, all the industries are socialized, the whole of the minimum will be paid in store checks.

[192] See Appendix, p. 431.

[193] Book II, Chapter I.

[194] I am not aware that Mr. Huxley has ever suggested any other objection to Socialism than this; but I may be mistaken.

[195] "Government," Vol. I, p. 339.

CHAPTER III

POLITICAL ASPECT OF SOCIALISM

The importance of the political aspect of Socialism depends upon the kind of Socialism selected for study. In Fourier's system, the social side altogether predominates--the political side is relatively unimportant. In state Socialism, on the other hand, the political side is the most important and the social side is subsidiary. In modern Socialism, the government takes an intermediary position; the functions of the state under modern Socialism would be in some respects less extended than in such a government as that of Prussia; while in other respects it would be more extended; but in no department would it a.s.sume the excessive power and interference generally a.s.sociated with Socialism in the public mind.

It cannot be too emphatically repeated that modern Socialism discards the idea of a common home or even of a common table except to the extent that a common table is sometimes found convenient in our own day. To just the same extent the cooperative commonwealth discards the idea of state ownership of industry and state ownership of land except within the limits set forth in the previous chapter.

The two great political objections to Socialism are: that it would give to the government a power destructive of individual liberty; and that the corruption in our existing government demonstrates the unwisdom of increasing the scope of its operations.

On the first of these objections it is not necessary to dwell; for it is obvious that the moment state Socialism is abandoned, this objection falls to the ground. The state no longer has the onerous and probably impossible function of a.s.signing tasks; the state no longer controls the hours of labor; the state no longer interferes in the private life of the individual any more than to-day. The relations of the government are not so much with the individual as with conglomerations of individuals in the respective industries; and even here, the government does no more than indicate the amount of a given thing that must be produced and the rate at which the thing so produced is to exchange with the other necessaries of life. It has been suggested that just as in France where commercial cases are brought before purely commercial courts and thus separated from civil and criminal cases, so all things pertaining to production and distribution might be determined by an industrial parliament that would determine such matters as the amount of a given thing to be produced and the rate at which this thing is to exchange with other necessaries, subject to the approval of Congress.

Such a system would have the great advantage of referring business matters to business men who would bring no other than business considerations to the solution of them. It would relieve Congress of the necessity of discussing commercial details with which its members are generally unfamiliar, and it would above all prevent that sacrifice of business interests to purely political considerations which often occurs to-day.

There will be an important role to be played in determining the amount of the various necessaries of life which the socialized industries will be called upon to produce, in distributing these products, exchanging surplus products with foreign markets, and distributing the proceeds of these exchanges. All this work is of a purely business character and should be confided to business men, who have shown themselves by their practical success in business fields most fitted therefor. It would seem wiser to refer these matters to a parliament composed of the representatives of a.s.sociated industries, of agricultural producers, and of distributing bodies. It would be the duty of such a parliament to appoint its own executive and cabinet, and it may be advisable to a.s.sociate with the representatives of agriculture and industry in such a parliament, representatives selected by the citizens at large, so as to minimize the possibility of combinations between powerful groups of industries for the purpose of determining questions of public interest to their particular advantage.

No attempt will be made here to work out the details of such a system, the object of this book being rather to indicate the possibility of doing these things than to point out the particular method by which they should be done.

The objection that the corruption in our existing government demonstrates the unwisdom of increasing the scope of its operations seems at first sight a formidable one. If our government is as corrupt as our "yellow journals" make it out to be, it seems folly to extend its functions and give it larger opportunities for the exercise of this corruption and for the demoralization of the community which this corruption tends to produce. There are, however, many reasons for believing that the less government has to do, the more corrupt it is; and the more it has to do, the less corrupt it is.

For example, the Board of Aldermen in the city of New York was once the governing body of the city. It was a body to which men of importance belonged because its functions were important. When corruption crept into the Board of Aldermen the legislature was persuaded more and more to abridge its powers, and Tweed availed himself of this disposition to take practically all the powers of government out of the hands of the board and concentrate it in a small body of men called "supervisors," to which he took care that he and the members of his ring should belong. Some time after the Tweed ring was broken up the Board of Aldermen retained the right of confirming the appointments of the mayor; but this power too was taken from it by ex-President--then a.s.semblyman--Roosevelt in 1884, and from that year the Board of Aldermen became little more than a franchise-bestowing corporation. The board has consequently become so corrupt that the t.i.tle of Alderman, which used to be a t.i.tle of honor, is in New York a t.i.tle of disgrace. If we compare the Board of Aldermen to the board which corresponds to it in London, we shall find a totally different state of things. In London it is the County Council that governs the munic.i.p.ality, and accordingly we find on it men who stand first in the ranks of the business world.

But there is another consideration of vastly more importance than this. New York citizens continue to complain year after year of the low order of men selected by its citizens, not only to the Board of Aldermen, but to all elective offices, including the State a.s.sembly and the Senate. Yet they do not stop to inquire the reason for this, though it is obvious. What stake have the majority of New York citizens in the government of the city? The vast majority are not interested in the tax rates, for they do not pay taxes, or do not think they do. The majority are not interested in an efficient fire department, because they do not own property likely to be destroyed by fire and, indeed, it is said that it is members of this very majority that start most of the fires in New York. They are not interested in clean streets, for foul though our streets be, they are not as foul as the unwholesome tenements. They are not interested in an efficient police. They are not interested in a board of education, because all they want to get out of school for their children is reading, writing, and arithmetic--enough to get a job. It is difficult to see in what respect the large majority of our citizens are interested in good government at all.

What then are they interested in? They are interested in bad government. They want to get a brother or a cousin on the police force; and they want the police to be complaisant to a brother or a cousin in a liquor saloon. The retailer does not want to be disturbed in his encroachments on the sidewalk. The building trade does not want to be annoyed by a too conscientious building department. The German wants his beer on Sunday and barrooms want to do business on Sunday.

The peddler wants to violate street ordinances and stand his cart in the already too crowded streets. Churches want to receive per capita contributions to their asylums and have long made efforts to secure per capita contributions to their schools. The gambler wants to keep open his gambling den; and the people want the gambler to be undisturbed. The business man, the corporation, and the criminal want to be "let alone"; and those dregs of the population too low to be able to use the vote, want to sell it for a pittance on election day.

These are the conditions under which distinguished citizens and committees of one hundred expect to secure good government! And we go on ineffectually organizing munic.i.p.al leagues, good government clubs, and citizens' unions to this hopeless end. It is not reasonable to suppose that in a government determined by the majority we can expect the government to be good when the majority does not want the government good, but wants it bad.

Occasionally the government in New York gets so bad that it outrages even our outrageous majority, and the overthrow of bad government is regarded as a triumph for reform. But no reform movement has ever lasted more than one administration. The public has emphatically a.s.sured us, over and over again, that it does not want reform administration, and indeed it may be said that some of these reform administrations have been just as bad as those they were intended to reform.

Munic.i.p.al politicians want good laws, if at all, in order to use them for the purpose of levying blackmail, and the community is willing to pay the blackmail so long as it is not too extortionate. Business men find it cheaper to pay blackmail and be allowed to do what they want.

And the same is true all the way down the line until we get to the criminal cla.s.s, which has the biggest stake in bad government of all.

Yet the strange anomaly of existing conditions is that while the majority of the citizens of New York have shown year after year for a century that they want bad government and mean to have it, these citizens are not bad men, but want to be good. It is the folly of our economic conditions that makes them want bad government, and no more pitiable sight was ever presented to G.o.ds and men than this city of New York, or indeed any other of our great cities, full of citizens animated with the best intentions, forced by economic conditions to be bad. It has not yet seemed to dawn upon the reformers of the present day that, if they want to have good government, the majority of the citizens must be interested in the government being good; and not, on the contrary, interested in its being bad as at this present time.

There are two ways of accomplishing this. One way has been pointed out; to put an end to the compet.i.tive system that sets every man at the throat or pocket of his neighbor. The other is to enlarge the functions of the government sufficiently to make it important to every citizen that the government be good; then only will public spirit become stronger than private interest.

This conflict between public spirit and private interest is not a matter about which there can be any longer any doubt. When a group was engaged in organizing the City Club, we were told not once but a dozen times by a dozen different men of high standing in the community, that the whole question of good government to them resolved itself into this: "Can I by contributing money or time to reform sufficiently reduce taxes to make it worth my while to give my time and my money to this thing; or is it not better for me to use my money in purchasing protection from the organization that now controls the city and devote my time to my own private affairs?" To these men the question of good government was simply a question of tax rate, and these citizens are the ones least touched by political conditions. When we come to citizens whose business puts them continually in contact with political conditions, we find the contrast between public spirit and private interest still more marked; in the corporations that want franchises, in the builders who want their plans approved, and in the citizens already described who have an interest in keeping on good terms with the powers that be.

If now we remove the temptation on the one hand and give a motive for good government on the other, is it not reasonable to suppose that we are more likely to obtain good government than now?

Temptation can be removed in many ways. Altogether the greatest motive for corruption is that furnished by the eagerness of corporations to secure franchises. Indeed the city was at one time governed by the owners of our city transportation system. The temptation to violate building laws would be removed if it were the city who built and not the private individual. The temptation to vote for a corrupt police force would be removed if the city instead of private barrooms sold alcoholic drinks. The temptation to vote for corruptible milk inspectors would be removed if the city instead of private dealers supplied milk. In a word, if the city were to undertake the tasks heretofore suggested, practically all temptation for graft would be eliminated.

The same process would not only eliminate temptation for graft, but would give the citizens a stake in good government. If the city distributed milk the citizen would be interested in having pure milk at a low price; if the city owned tramways, the citizen would be interested in having transportation effective and cheap; if the city manufactured gas and electric light, the citizen would be interested in having good heat and light at proper prices; and so at last the dream of the reformer that all citizens of the same city regard themselves as stockholders in the same corporation, would cease to be a dream and would be realized. They would have the same interest in the gas plant, electric plant, ice plant, milk plant, transportation plant of their city as a stockholder to-day has in the dividends which these respective industries accord him, though the dividends would not be paid in gold, but in wholesome service at cheap prices. Then only would the conflict between public spirit and private interest come to an end, for a man would find it more to his interest that the government be carried on honestly and efficiently than he does now to secure a government that is dishonest and inefficient. In a word, as Mr. Mill said that the cure for the abuse of liberty is more liberty, so the cure for the abuse of government is more government. This must not be understood as a relapse in favor of state Socialism. It cannot be too often repeated that it would be as great an error to confide too much to the state as, at present, it is an error to confide too little to it. The solution is to be found in taking the middle course: _medio tutissimus ibis_. Give to the government the work it is fitted to do and no more. What work it is fitted to do and what work it is not fitted to do has already been explained.[196]

Amongst the tasks for which it is fitted is the work of Education:

-- 1. EDUCATION

There is no reason why the present system of education should be much changed in a cooperative commonwealth. In its nature it would remain very much the same and would only be extended in time; that is, all children who show themselves capable of profiting by education will have the opportunity of extending their education as far as their abilities justify. Education need by no means be confined to the state. There is no reason why the existing universities should not continue their work of education even though they be maintained by Rockefellers and Carnegies, and throw all their weight in support of the compet.i.tive system against the cooperative. Socialism stands for light, and if at any period in its development it turns out that the community is not fitted for the phase of Socialism which it has attempted, it may be important to correct the perfunctoriness of official administration by a larger dose of private initiative; and in such case let privately endowed schools and universities be there to preach this doctrine.

Nor need there be any objection to sectarian schools. Once the human mind is freed from the shackles of economic servitude, it can be trusted to choose its religion, whether educated by sectarian schools or not.

The essential difference between the educational system in a cooperative commonwealth and under existing conditions will be that, inasmuch as child labor in compet.i.tive industries will be absolutely forbidden, no child will be deprived of education by economic conditions. Every child, therefore, will have an equal opportunity for mental development.