Part 16 (1/2)
”'Socialistic' ministers,” says Rappoport, ”have fallen below the level of progressive capitalistic governments. No 'Socialistic' minister has done near so much for democracy as honorable but narrow-minded democrats like Combes. 'Socialistic' ministers have before anything else sought the means of keeping themselves in office. In order to make people forget their past, they are compelled to give continuously new proofs of their zeal for the government.”
In France, where strong radical, democratic, and ”State Socialist”
parties already exist, ready to absorb those who put reform before Socialism, the likelihood that such desertions will lead to any serious division of the party seems small, especially since the Toulouse Congress, when a platform was adopted unanimously. Of course, the leading factor in this platform was Jaures, who stands as strongly for a policy of unity and conciliation within the party as he has for an almost uninterrupted conciliation and cooperation with the more or less radical forces outside of it.
If Jaures was able to get the French Party to adopt this unanimous program, it was because he is not the most extreme of reformists, and because he has. .h.i.therto placed party loyalty before everything. In the same way Bebel, voting on nearly every occasion with the revolutionists, is able to hold the German Party together because he is occasionally on the reformist side, as in a case to be mentioned below. Jaures looks forward, for instance, to a whole series of ”successful general strikes intervening at regular intervals,” and even to the final use of a great revolutionary general strike, whenever it looks as if the capitalists can be finally overthrown and the government taken into Socialist hands--though he certainly considers that the day for such a strike is still many years off. Nor does he hesitate to extend the hand of Socialist fellows.h.i.+p to the most revolutionary Socialists and labor unionists of his country, though he says to them, ”The more revolutionary you are, the more you must try to bring into the united movement not only a minority, but the whole working cla.s.s.” He says he is not against revolution, or the general strike, but that he is against ”a caricature of the general strike and an abortive revolution.”
It is only by actions, however, that men or parties may be judged, and though Jaures has occasionally been found with the revolutionists, in most cases he acts with their rivals and opponents, the reformists, and in fact is the most eminent Socialist reformer the world has produced.
No one will question that there are Socialists who are exclusively interested in reform at the present period, not because they are opposed to revolution, but because no greater movements are taking place at the present moment or likely to take place in the immediate future--and Jaures may be one of these. But it is very difficult, even impossible, to distinguish by any external signs, between such persons and those for whom the idea of anything beyond the reforms of ”State Socialism” is a mere ideal, which concerns almost exclusively the next or some future generation. Many of those who were formerly Jaures's most intimate a.s.sociates, like the ministers Briand and Millerand, the recent ministers Augagneur and Viviani, and many others, have deserted the Party and are now proving to be its most dangerous opponents, while several other deputies, who are still members like Brousse, recently Mayor of Paris, are accused by a large part of the organization of taking a very similar position. Surely this shows that, even if Jaures himself could be trusted and allowed to advocate principles and tactics so agreeable to the rivals and enemies of Socialism, there are certainly few other persons who can be safely left in such a compromising position.
In view of these great betrayals on the part of Jaures's a.s.sociates, the mere fact that his own position towards the Party has usually been correct in the end--after the majority have shown him just how far he can go--and will doubtless remain technically correct, becomes of entirely secondary importance. He has openly and repeatedly encouraged and aided those individuals and parties which later became the chief obstacles in the way of Socialist advance, as other Socialists had predicted. The result is, not that the Socialist Party has ceased to grow, but that a large part of the enthusiasm for Socialism, largely created by the party, has gone to elect so-called ”Independent Socialists” to the Chamber and to elevate to the control of the government men like Briand, who, it was agreed by Socialists and anti-Socialists alike, was the most formidable enemy the Socialists have had for many years.
The program unanimously adopted by the French at the Congress of Toulouse must be viewed in the light of this internal situation. ”The Socialist Party, the party of the working cla.s.s and of the Social Revolution,” it begins, ”seeks the conquest of political power for the emanc.i.p.ation of the proletariat [working cla.s.s] by the destruction of the capitalist regime and the suppression of cla.s.ses.” The goal of Socialism could not be more succinctly expressed than in these words: ”The destruction of the capitalist regime and the suppression of cla.s.ses.” Any party that lives up to this preamble in letter and spirit can scarcely stray from the Socialist road.
”It is the party which is most essentially, most actively reformist,”
continues another section, ”the only one which can push its action on to total reform; the only one which can give full effect to each working cla.s.s demand; the only one which can make of each reform, of each victory, the starting point and basis of more extended demands and bolder conquests....” Here we have the plank on which Jaures undoubtedly laid the greatest weight, and it was supported unanimously partly because of the necessity of party unity. For this is as much as to say that no reform will ever be brought to a point that wholly satisfies the working people except through a working cla.s.s government.
But it cannot be denied that there are certain changes of very great importance to the working people, like those mentioned in previous chapters, which are at the same time even more valuable to the capitalists, and would be carried out to the end even if there were no Socialists in existence. If the revolutionary wing of the French Party once conceded to capitalism itself this possibility of bringing about certain reforms, they would be in a position effectively to oppose the reformist tactics of Jaures within the Party. By giving full credit to the semi-democratic and semi-capitalistic reform parties for certain measures, they would go as far as he does in the direction of conciliation and common sense in politics; by denying the possibility of the slightest cooperation with non-Socialists on other and _still more important questions_, they could constantly intensify the political conflict, and since Jaures is a perpetual compromiser, put him in the minority in every contested vote within the party. By attacking the capitalists blindly and on all occasions they have created the necessity of a conciliator--the role that Jaures so ably and effectively fills.
But, however friendly the Toulouse program may have seemed to Jaures's reform tactics, it is not on that account any less explicit in its indors.e.m.e.nt of revolutionary methods whenever the moment happens to be propitious. It states that the Socialist Party ”continually reminds the proletariat [working cla.s.s] by its propaganda that they will find salvation and entire freedom only in a collectivist and communist regime”; that ”it carries on this propaganda in all places in order to raise everywhere the spirit of demand and of combat,” and that ”the Socialists not only indorse the general strike for use in economic struggles, but also for the purpose of finally absorbing capitalism.”
”Like all exploited cla.s.ses throughout history,” it concludes, ”the proletariat affirms its right to take recourse at certain moments to insurrectionary violence.”
The Toulouse Congress showed, not the present position of the French Party or of the International, but the points on which Socialist revolutionists and reformers, everywhere else at sword's point, can agree. The reformers do not object to promising the revolutionaries that they shall have their own way in the relatively rare crises when revolutionary means are used or contemplated. The revolutionaries are willing to allow the reformers to claim all the credit for all reforms beneficial to the workers that happen to be enacted. Neither gives up their first principle, whether it be revolution or reform, but in the matter of secondary importance, reform or revolution, each side tolerates in the party an att.i.tude in diametrical opposition to its principles and the tactics it requires. Both do this doubtless in the belief that by this opportunism they will some day capture the whole party, and that a split may thus be avoided in the meanwhile.
Since the Toulouse Congress the divisions within the French Party have become much more acute. Briand's conduct in the great railway strike in 1911 is discussed below. Yet in spite of this experience of how much the government is ready to pay for railways and how little it is ready to do to their employees, Jaures's followers at the Party Congresses of 1911 and 1912 stood again for the policy of nationalization, and Guesde was impelled to warn the party that Briand's ”State Socialism” was the gravest danger to the movement.
Briand's positive achievements are also defended by Jaures. The recent workingmen's pension law, unlike that of England, demands a direct contribution from the employees. Nevertheless, it contained some slight advantages, and of the seventy-five Socialist members of the Chamber of Deputies, only Guesde voted against it. Even when the Federation of Labor was conducting a campaign against registration to secure these ”benefits,” Jaures's organ, _L'Humanite_ took the other side. The working people, as usual, followed their unions. Less than 5 per cent registered; in Paris only 2.5 per cent, and in Brest 22 out of 10,000.
The experience with Millerand and Briand has made it impossible for Jaures to tie the French Party to ”reformism.” But reformism has brought it about that the Party is often split in its votes in the Chamber of Deputies. In the Party Congresses, however, Jaures is outvoted where a clear difference arises, an outcome he does his best to avoid. The Congress of 1911 (at St. Quentin) reaffirmed the international decision at Amsterdam which prevents the party going in for reform as a part of a non-Socialist administration. It declared that ”Socialists elected to office are the representatives of a party of fundamental and absolute opposition to the whole of the capitalist cla.s.s, and to the State, its tool.” And Vaillant said that since the Amsterdam Congress in 1904 the question of partic.i.p.ation in capitalist ministries had ceased to exist in France.
It is true that Jaures secured at this Congress, by a narrow majority, an indors.e.m.e.nt of his policy of accepting the government pension offer.
But the orthodox followers of Guesde and the revolutionary disciples of Herve joined to secure its condemnation first by the Paris organization, and later by the National Council of the Party by the decisive vote of 87 to 51. This resolution which marks a great turning point in the French Party, is in part as follows:--
”The National Council declares that each time a labor question is to be decided, the Socialist Party should act in accord with the General Confederation of Labor.”
As the Confederation has indorsed Socialism both as an end and as a means, few, if any, Socialist parties would object to this resolution.
But the Confederation is also revolutionary, and this policy, if adhered to, marks an end to the influence of the ”reformism” of Jaures.
The precise objections to the government's insurance proposal are also significant. The National Council protested against the following features:--
(1) The compulsory contributions.
(2) The capitalization (of the fund).
(3) The ridiculous smallness of the pension.
(4) The age required to obtain the pension.
(5) The reestablishment of workingmen's certificates.
Among the working people there is no doubt that the first feature was the chief cause of unpopularity. But Socialists know that, through indirect taxes or the automatic fall in wages or rise in prices, the same object of charging the bill to the workers may be reached. The capitalization refers to the investment and management of the large fund required by a capitalist government, thereby increasing its power. The last point has to do with the tendency to restrict the workers' liberty in return for the benefits granted--a tendency more visible with the pensions of the railway employees which were almost avowedly granted to sweeten the bitter pill of a law directed against their organizations.