Part 27 (1/2)
In Germany especially, Marx's co-workers and successors developed marked hostility to ”State Socialism” from the moment when it was taken up by Bismarck nearly a generation ago (1883). August Bebel's hostility to the existing State goes so far that he predicts that it will expire ”with the expiration of the ruling cla.s.s,”[180] while Engels contended that the very phrase ”the Socialist State” was valueless as a slogan in the present propaganda of Socialism, and scientifically ineffective.[181]
Engels had even predicted, as long ago as 1880, that the coming of monopolies would bring it about that the State, being ”the official representative of capitalistic society,” would ultimately have to undertake ”the protection of production,” and that this necessity would first be felt in the case of the railways and the telegraphs. Later events have shown that his prediction was so correct that even America and England are approaching the nationalization of their railways, while the proposal to nationalize monopolies is rapidly growing in popularity in every country in the world, and among nearly all social cla.s.ses.
Engels did not consider that such developments were necessarily in the direction of Socialism any more than the nationalization of the railways by the Czar or the Prussian government. On the contrary, he suggested that it meant the strengthening of the capitalism.
”The modern State,” he wrote in 1880, ”no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalistic machine, the State of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more it actually becomes the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wageworkers--proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.”[182] Engels did not think that State owners.h.i.+p necessarily meant Socialism; but he thought that it might be utilized for the purposes of Socialism if the working cla.s.s was sufficiently numerous, organized, and educated to take charge of the situation. ”State owners.h.i.+p of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that give the elements of the solution.”
As early as 1892 Karl Kautsky, at the present moment perhaps the greatest living Socialist editor and economist, wrote that the system of laissez-faire, for which ”State Socialism” offers itself as a remedy, had long ago lost whatever influence it once had on the capitalist cla.s.s--which was never very great. If, then, the theory that ”that government is best which governs least” had been abandoned by the capitalists themselves, there was no ground why Socialists should devote their time to the advocacy of a view (”State Socialism”) that was merely a reaction against an outworn standpoint. The theory of collectivism, that the functions of the State ought to be widely extended, had long been popular among the capitalists themselves.
”It has already been seen,” wrote Kautsky, ”that economic and political development has made necessary and inevitable the taking over of certain economic functions by the State.... It can by no means be said that every nationalization of an economic function or of an economic enterprise is a step towards Socialistic cooperation and that the latter would grow out of the general nationalization of all economic enterprises without making a fundamental change in the nature of the State.”[183] In other words, Kautsky denies that partial nationalization or collectivism is necessarily even a step towards Socialism, and a.s.serts that it may be a step in the other direction. The German Socialists acted on this principle when they opposed the nationalization of the Reichsbank, and it has often guided other Socialist parties.
Kautsky feels that it is often a mistake to transfer the power over industry, _e.g._ the owners.h.i.+p of the land, into the hands of the State as now const.i.tuted, since this puts a tremendous part of the national wealth at the disposal of capitalist governments, one of whose prime functions is to prevent the increase of the political and economic power of the working people. And, although the State employees would probably receive a somewhat better treatment than they had while the industry was privately owned, they would simply form a sort of aristocracy of labor opposed in general to the interests of the working people.
”Like every State,” says Kautsky, ”the modern State is in the first place a tool for the protection of the general interests of the ruling cla.s.ses. It changes its nature in no way if it takes over functions of general utility which aim at advancing the interests not only of the ruling cla.s.ses, but also of those of society as a whole _and_ of the ruling cla.s.ses, and on no condition does it take care of these functions in a way which might threaten the general interests of the ruling cla.s.ses or their domination.... If the present-day State nationalizes certain industries and functions, it does this, not to put limitations on capitalistic exploitation, but to protect and to strengthen the capitalistic mode of production, or in order itself to take a share in this exploitation, to increase its income in this way, and to lessen the payments that the capitalist cla.s.s must obtain for its own support in the way of taxes. And as an exploiter, the State has this advantage over private capitalists: that it has at its disposal to be used against the exploited not only the economic powers of the capitalists, but the political force of the State.” (My italics.)
As an ill.u.s.tration of Kautsky's reference to the lessening of taxes through the profits of government owners.h.i.+p, it may be pointed out that the German Socialists fear the further nationalization of industries in Germany on account of the danger that with this increased income the State would no longer depend on the annual grants of the Reichstag and would then be in a position to govern without that body. The king of Prussia and the Emperor of Germany could in that event rule the country much as the present Czar rules Russia.
As a rule, outside of Great Britain, the advocates of the collectivist program are also aware that their ”Socialism” is not that of the Socialist movement. In an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Mr. John Martin, for example, indicates the ”State Socialist” tendency of present-day reform measures in America, and at the same time shows that they are removed as far as possible from that anti-capitalist trend which is held by most Socialist Party leaders to be the essence of their movement. Mr. Martin points to the irrigation projects, the conservation of national resources, the railway policy of the national administration, the expansion of the Federal government, and the tendency towards compulsory arbitration since the interference of President Roosevelt in the coal strike of 1902, as being ”Socialistic”
and yet in no sense cla.s.s movements. They tend towards social reconstruction and to greater social organization and order; and there are no ”logical halting places,” says Mr. Martin, ”on the road to Collectivism.” But so far is this movement from a cla.s.s movement in Mr.
Martin's opinion that its advance guard consists in part of millionaires like Mr. Carnegie and Mrs. Sage, ”who aim at a social betterment of both getting and spending of fortunes,” while ”behind them, uncommitted to any far-reaching theory, but patriotic and zealous for an improved society, there are marching philanthropists, doctors, lawyers, business men, and legislators, people of distinction.” And finally the army is completed by millions of common privates ”_for_ whose children the better order will be the greatest boon.” (The italicizing is mine.) The privates apparently figure rather as mere recipients of public and private benefactions than as active citizens.[184]
Some of the reformers openly advise joining the Socialist movement with the hope of using it for the purpose of reform and without aiding it in any way to reach a goal of its own. Professor John Bates Clark, one of America's most prominent economists, says of the Socialist Party that it is legitimate because ”it represents the aspirations of a large number of workingmen” and because ”its immediate purposes are good.”
”It has changed the uncompromising policy of opposing all halfway measures,” continues Professor Clark. ”It welcomes reforms and tries to enroll in its members.h.i.+p as many as possible of the reformers.... In short, the Socialist and the reformer may walk side by side for a considerable distance without troubling themselves about the unlike goals which they hope in the end to reach.... What the reformers will have to do is to take the Socialistic name, walk behind a somewhat red banner, and be ready to break ranks and leave the army when it reaches the dividing of the ways.”[185]
Professor Clark, it will be seen, has no difficulty in suggesting a ”logical halting place on the road to collectivism”; namely, when the Socialists turn from collectivist reforms and start out towards Socialism.
Anti-Socialists may share the Socialist _ideal_ and even favor all the reforms that the capitalists can permit to be put into practice without resigning their power and allowing the overthrow of capitalism. But Socialists have long since seen a way to mark off all such idealists and reformers--by presenting Socialism for what it really is, not as an ideal, nor a program of reform under capitalist direction, but as a method, and the only practical method, of ending capitalist rule in industry and government.
When Liebknecht insists on ”the extreme importance of tactics and the necessity of maintaining the party's cla.s.s struggle character,” he makes ”tactics,” or the practical methods of the movement, _identical_ with its basic principle, ”the cla.s.s struggle.” Kautsky does the same thing when he says that Socialism is, _both in theory and practice_, a revolution against capitalism.
”Those who repudiate political revolution as the princ.i.p.al means of social transformation, or wish to confine the latter to such measures as have been granted by the ruling cla.s.s,” says Kautsky, ”are social reformers, no matter how much their social ideas may antagonize existing forms of society.”
The Socialists' wholly practical grounds against ”reformism” have been stated by Liebknecht, in his ”No Compromise.” ”This political Socialism, which in fact is only philanthropic humanitarian radicalism, has r.e.t.a.r.ded the development of Socialism in France exceedingly,” he wrote in 1899, before Socialist politicians and ”reformists” had come into prominence in other countries than France. ”It has diluted and blurred principles and weakened the Socialist Party because it brought into it troops upon which no reliance could be placed at the decisive moment.” If, in other words, Socialism is a movement of non-capitalists against capitalists, nothing could be more fatal to it than a reputation due chiefly to success in bringing about reforms about which there is nothing distinctively Socialistic. For this kind of success could not fail ultimately to swamp the movement with reformers who, like Professor Clark, are not Socialists and never will be.
It must not be inferred from this that Socialists are indifferent to reform. They are necessarily far more anxious about it than its capitalist promoters. For while many ”State Socialist” reforms are profitable to capitalism and even strengthen temporarily its hold on society, they are in the long run indispensable to Socialism. But this does not mean that Socialism is compelled to turn aside any of its energies from its great task of organizing and educating the workers, in order to hasten these reforms. On the contrary, the larger and the more revolutionary the Socialist army, the easier it will be for the progressive capitalists to overcome the conservatives and reactionaries.
Long before this army has become large enough or aggressive enough to menace capitalism and so to throw all capitalists together in a single organization wholly devoted to defensive measures, there will be a long period--already begun in Great Britain, France, and other countries--when the growth of Socialism will make the progressive capitalists supreme by giving them _the balance of power_. In order, then, to hasten and aid the capitalistic form of progress, Socialists need only see that their own growth is sufficiently rapid. As the Socialists are always ready to support every measure of capitalist reform, the capitalist progressives need only then secure enough strength in Parliaments so that their votes added to those of the Socialists would form a majority. As soon as progressive capitalism is at all developed, reforms are thus automatically aided by the Socialist vote, without the necessity of active Socialist partic.i.p.ation--thus leaving the Socialists free to attend to matters that depend wholly on their own efforts; namely, the organization and education of the non-capitalist ma.s.ses for aggressive measures leading towards the overthrow of capitalism.
Opposition to the policy of absorption in ordinary reform movements is general in the international movement outside of Great Britain. Eugene V. Debs, three times presidential candidate of the American Socialist Party, is as totally opposed to ”reformism” as are any of the Europeans.
”_The revolutionary character of our party and of our movement_,” he said in a personal letter to the present writer, which was published in the Socialist press, ”_must be preserved in all its integrity at all cost, for if that be compromised we had better cease to exist_.... If the trimmers had their way we should degenerate into bourgeois reformers.... But they will not have their way.” (Italics mine.)
No American Socialist has more ably summarized the dangers opportunism brings to the movement than Professor George D. Herron in his pamphlet, ”From Revolution to Revolution,” taken from a speech made as early as 1903. Later events, it will be noted, have strikingly verified his predictions as to the growing popularity of the word ”Socialism” with nearly all political elements in this country.
”Great initiatives and revolutions,” Herron says, ”have always been robbed of definition and issue when adopted by the cla.s.s against which the revolt was directed....