Part 6 (1/2)
”The workingman is no fool. He knows that a great party like ours can, with his help, do things for him he could not hope to accomplish for himself without its aid. It brings to his a.s.sistance the potent influences drawn from the great middle cla.s.ses of this country, which would be frightened into positive hostility by a _purely cla.s.s organization_ to which they do not belong. No party could ever hope for success in this country which does not win the confidence of a _large portion_ of this middle cla.s.s....
”You are not going to make Socialists in a hurry out of farmers and traders and professional men of this country, but you may scare them into reaction.... They are helping us now to secure advanced Labor legislation; they will help us later to secure land reform and other measures for all cla.s.ses of wealth producers, and we need all the help they give us. But if they are threatened with a cla.s.s war, then they will surely sulk and harden into downright Toryism.
What gain will that be for Labor?” (My italics.)[44]
The Chancellor of the Exchequer here bids for Labor's political support on the plea that what he was doing for Labor meant an expense and not a profit to the middle cla.s.s, and that these reforms would only be a.s.sented to by that cla.s.s as the necessary price of the Labor vote. I have shown grounds for believing that the chief motives of the new reforms have nothing to do with the Labor vote. However much Mr. Lloyd George, as a political manager, may desire to control that vote, he knows he can do without it, as long as it is cast _against_ the Tories.
The Liberals will hold the balance of power, and their small capitalist followers will continue to carry out their capitalistic progressive and collectivist program--even without a Labor alliance. Nor does he fear that even the most radical of reforms, whether economic or political, will enable Labor to seize a larger share of the national income or of political power. On the contrary, he predicted in 1906 that it would be a generation before Labor could even hope to be sufficiently united to take the first step in Socialism. ”Does any one believe,” he asked, ”that within a generation, to put it at the very lowest, we are likely to see in power a party pledged forcibly to nationalize land, railways, mines, quarries, factories, workshops, warehouses, shops, and all and every agency for the production and distribution of wealth? I say again, within a generation? He who entertains such hopes must indeed be a sanguine and simple-minded Socialist.”[45]
Mr. Lloyd George sought the support of Labor then, not because it was all-powerful, but because, for a generation at least, it seemed doomed to impotence--except as an aid to the Liberals. The logic of his position was really not that Labor ought to get a price for its political support, but that _having no immediate alternative_, being unable to form a majority either alone or with any other element than the Liberals, they should accept gladly anything that was offered, for example, a material reform like his Insurance bill--even though this measure is at bottom and in the long run purely capitalistic in its tendency.
And this is practically what Labor in Great Britain has done. It has supported a government all of whose acts strengthen capitalism in its new collectivist form, both economically and politically. And even if some day an isolated measure should be found to prove an exception, it would still remain true that the present policies _considered as a whole_ are carrying the country rapidly and uninterruptedly in the direction of State Capitalism. And this is equally true of every other country, whether France, Germany, Australia, or the United States, where the new reform program is being put into execution.
Many ”Socialistic” capitalists, however, are looking forward to a time when through complete political democracy they can secure a permanent popular majority of small capitalists and other more or less privileged cla.s.ses, and so build their new society on a more solid basis. Let us a.s.sume that the railways, mines, and the leading ”trusts” are nationalized, public utilities munic.i.p.alized, and the national and local governments busily engaged on ca.n.a.ls, roads, forests, deserts, and swamps. Here are occupations employing, let us say, a fourth or a fifth of the working population; and solvent landowning farmers, their numbers kept up by land reforms and scientific farming encouraged by government, may continue as now to const.i.tute another fifth. We can estimate that these cla.s.ses together with those among the shopkeepers, professional elements, etc., who are directly dependent on them will compose 40 to 50 per cent of the population, while the other capitalists and their direct dependents account for another 10 per cent or more. Here we have the possibility of a privileged _majority_, the logical goal of ”State Socialism,” and the nightmare of every democrat for whom democracy is anything more than an empty political reform. With government employees and capitalists (large and small)--and their direct dependents, forming 50 per cent or more of the population, and supported by a considerable part of the skilled manual workers, there is a possibility of the establishment of an iron-bound caste society solidly intrenched in majority rule.
There are strong reasons, which I shall give in later chapters, for thinking that some great changes may take place before this day can arrive.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] William Allen White in the _American Magazine_, January, 1911.
[36] Dr. Lyman Abbott in a series of articles published in the _Outlook_, 1910, ent.i.tled ”The Spirit of Democracy,” now in book form.
[37] _New York Journal_, Aug. 2, 1910.
[38] The _Outlook_, Sept. 10, 1910.
[39] In his enthusiasm for these undemocratic measures, Dr. Abbott has retrogressed more than the Southern States, which do not require both a property and educational qualification, but only one of the two.
Moreover, by the ”grandfather” and ”understanding” clauses they seek to exempt as many as possible of the whites, _i.e._ a majority of the population in most of these States, from any substantial qualification whatever. Nor does it seem likely that even in the future they will apply freely; against the poor and illiterate of the white race, the measures Dr. Abbott advocates. Just such restricted suffrage laws were repealed in many Southern States from 1820 to 1850, and it is not likely that the present reaction will go back that far.
[40] The _Outlook_, May 24, 1911.
[41] Governor Woodrow Wilson, Speech in Portland, Oregon, May 18, 1911.
[42] Speech in Senate, May 24, 1911.
[43] Miss Jessie Wallace Hughan in her ”American Socialism of the Present Day” (page 184) has quoted me as saying (in the _New York Call_ of December 12, 1909) that the amendability of the Const.i.tution by majority vote is a demand so revolutionary that it is exclusively Socialist property. Within the limitations of a very brief journalistic article I believe this statement was justified. It holds for the United States to-day. It does not hold for agrarian countries like Australia, Canada, or South Africa, for backward countries like Russia, or dependent countries like Switzerland or Denmark, where there is no danger of Socialism. And before it can be put into effect, which may take a decade or more, the increased proportion in the population of well-paid government employees and of agricultural lessees of government lands and similar cla.s.ses, may make a democratic const.i.tution a safe capitalistic policy, for a while, even in the United States.
[44] Lloyd George, _op. cit._, pp. 33, 34.
[45] Lloyd George, _op. cit._, p. 35.
CHAPTER IV
”STATE SOCIALISM” AND LABOR
State Capitalism has a very definite principle and program of labor reform. It capitalizes labor, views it as the princ.i.p.al resource and a.s.set of each community (or of the cla.s.s that controls the community), and undertakes every measure that is not too costly for its conservation, utilization, and development--_i.e._ its development to fill those positions ordinarily known as _labor_, but not such development as might enable the laborers or their children to compete for higher social functions on equal terms with the children of the upper cla.s.ses.
On the one hand is the tendency, not very advanced, but unmistakable and almost universal, to invest larger and larger sums for the scientific development of industrial efficiency--healthy surroundings in childhood, good food and healthy living conditions, industrial education, model factories, reasonable hours, time and opportunity for recreation and rest, and on the other a rapidly increasing difficulty for either the laborer or his children to advance to other social positions and functions--and a restriction of the liberty of laborers and of labor organizations, lest they should attempt to establish equality of opportunity or to take the first step in that direction by a.s.suming control over industry and government. From the moment it approaches the labor question the ”Socialist” part of ”State Socialism” completely falls away, and nothing but the purest collectivist capitalism remains.