Part 17 (1/2)
FOOTNOTES:
[101] Charles Rappaport, ”Das Ministerium Briand,” _Die Neue Zeit_ (1910).
[102] See _Die Neue Zeit_, April, 1911, p. 46. Article by Vandervelde.
[103] The _Avanti_, April, 1911.
[104] The _Avanti_, Oct. 18, 1911.
[105] _Critica Sociale_, Nov. 1, 1911.
[106] _Azione Socialista_, Nov. 19, 1911.
[107] _Avanti_, Dec. 2 and 3, 1911.
CHAPTER III
”LABORISM” IN GREAT BRITAIN
The British Socialist situation is almost as important internationally as the German. The organized workingmen of the world are indeed divided almost equally into two camps. Most of those of Australia, South Africa, and Canada, as well as a large majority in the United States, favor a Labour Party of the British type, and even the reformist Socialist leaders, Jaures in France, Vandervelde in Belgium, and Turati in Italy, often take the British Party as model. On the other hand the majority of the _Socialists_ everywhere outside of Great Britain, including the larger part of all the _working people_ in every country of continental Europe, look towards the Socialist Party of Germany as their model, the political principles and tactics of which are diametrically opposed to those of the British Labour Party.
Far from opposing their Socialism to the ”State Socialism” of the government, the British Socialists in general frankly admit that they also are ”State Socialists,” and seem not to realize that the increased power and industrial functions of the State may be used to the advantage of the privileged cla.s.ses rather than to that of the ma.s.ses. The Independent Labour Party even claims in its official literature that the ”degree of civilization which a state has reached may almost be measured by the proportion of the national income which is spent collectively instead of individually.”[108]
”Public owners.h.i.+p is Socialism,” writes Mr. J. R. MacDonald, until lately Chairman of the Labour Party,[109] while Mr. Philip Snowden says that the first principle of Socialism is that the interests of the State stand over those of individuals.[110]
”I believe,” says Mr. Keir Hardie, ”the collectivist state to be a preliminary step to a communist state. I believe collectivism or State Socialism is the next stage of evolution towards the communist state.”
”Every cla.s.s in a community,” he said in this same speech, ”approves and accepts Socialism up to the point at which its cla.s.s interests are being served.” It would appear, then, that Mr. Hardie means by ”Socialism” a program of reforms a part of which at least is to the benefit of every economic cla.s.s. He contends only that this ”Socialism”
could never be ”fully” established until the working cla.s.s intelligently cooperate with other forces at work in bringing Socialism into being.[111]
”State Socialism with all its drawbacks, and these I frankly admit,”
said Mr. Hardie, ”will prepare the way for free communism.” Mr. Hardie considers it to be the chief business of Socialists in the present day to fight for ”State Socialism,” and is fully conscious that this forces him to the necessity of defending the present-day State, as, for instance, when he writes elsewhere, ”It is not the State which holds you in bondage, it is the private monopoly of those means of life without which you cannot live.” Private property and war and not the State Mr.
Hardie believes to have been the ”great enslavers” of past history as of the present day, apparently ignoring periods in which the State has maintained a governing cla.s.s which consisted not so much of property owners as of State functionaries; to periods which may soon be repeated, when private property served merely as one instrument of an all-powerful State.
Mr. MacDonald still more closely restricts the word ”Socialism” to the ”State Socialist” or State capitalist period into which we are now entering. ”Socialism,” says MacDonald, ”is the _next_ stage in social growth,”[112] and throughout his writings and policy leaves no doubt that he means the very next stage, the capitalist collectivism of which I have been speaking. The international brotherhood of the nations, which many Socialist thinkers feel is an indispensable condition for the establishment of anything like democratic Socialism, Mr. MacDonald expects only in the distant future, while the end of government based on force, which is also considered essential by the majority of Socialist writers, Mr. MacDonald postpones to ”some far remote generation.”[113]
In other words, the position of the recent Chairman of the Labour Party is that what the world has. .h.i.therto known as Socialism can only be expected after a vast period of time, and his opinion accords with that of many bitter critics and opponents of the movement, who avoid a difficult controversy by admitting all Socialist arguments and merely asking for time--”Socialism, a century or two hence--but not now,”--for all practical purposes an endless postponement.
Mr. MacDonald, who is not only a leader of the Labour Party, but also one of the chief organizers also of the leading Socialist Party of that country, has given us by far the fullest and most significant discussion of that party's policy. He says that an enlightened bourgeoisie will be just as likely to be Socialist as the working cla.s.ses, and that therefore the cla.s.s struggle is merely ”a grandiloquent and aggressive figure of speech.”[114] Struggle of some kind, he concedes, is necessary. But the more important form of struggle in present-day society, he says, is the trade rivalry between nations and not the rivalry between social cla.s.ses.[115] Here at the outset is a complete reversal of the Socialist att.i.tude. Socialists aim to put an end to this overshadowing of domestic by foreign problems, princ.i.p.ally for the very reason that it aids the capitalists to obscure the cla.s.s struggle--the foundation, the guiding principle, and the sole reason for the existence of the whole movement.
Mr. MacDonald claims further that a cla.s.s struggle, far from uniting the working cla.s.ses, can only divide them the more; in other words, that it works in exactly the opposite direction from that in which the international organization believes it works. The only ”natural conflicts” in the present or future, within any given society, according to the spokesman of the Labour Party, represent, not the conflicting interests of certain economic cla.s.ses, but the ”conflicting views and temperaments” of individuals.[116] And the chief divisions of temperament and opinion, he says, will be between the world-old tendencies of action and inaction--a view which does not differ one iota from that of Mr. Roosevelt.
Mr. MacDonald a.s.serts that ”it is the _whole_ of society which is developing towards Socialism,” and adds, ”The consistent exponent of the cla.s.s struggle must, of course, repudiate these doctrines, but then the cla.s.s struggle is far more akin to Radicalism than to Socialism.”[117] I have already pointed out how the older Radicalism, or political democracy, no matter how individualistic and anti-Socialist it may be, is often, as Mr. MacDonald says, more akin to International Socialism than that kind of ”State Socialism” or State capitalism Mr. MacDonald represents.
Mr. MacDonald typifies the majority of British Socialists also in his opposition to every modern form of democratic advance, such as the referendum and proportional representation. Far from being disturbed, as so many democratic writers are, because minorities are suppressed where there is no plan of proportional representation, he opposes the second ballot, which has been adopted in the majority of the countries of Continental Europe--and, in the form of direct primaries, also in the United States. The princ.i.p.al thing that the electors are to do, he says, is to ”send a man to support or oppose a government.”
Mr. MacDonald finds that there is quite a sufficiency of democracy when the elector can decide between two parties; and far from considering the members of Parliament as delegates, he feels that they fill the chief political role, while the people perform the entirely subordinate task either of approving or of disapproving what they have already done.
Parliament ”first of all initiates ideas, suggests aims and purposes, makes proposals, and educates the community in these things with a view to their becoming the ideals and aims of the community itself.”[118]