Part 32 (1/2)
Socialists, on the contrary, believe that industrial reforms will never lead to equality of opportunity except when carried out wholly independently of the conservatives who will lose by them. They believe that such reforms as are carried out by the capitalists and their governments, beneficent, radical, and even stupendous as they may be, will not and cannot const.i.tute the first or smallest step towards industrial democracy.
Mr. Roosevelt's views are identical on this point with those of Mr.
Woodrow Wilson and other progressive leaders of the opposite party.
Mayor Gaynor of New York, for example, was quoted explaining the great changes that took place in the fall elections of 1910 on these grounds: ”We are emerging from an evil case. The flocking of nearly all the business men, owners of property, and even persons with $100 in the savings bank, to one party made a division line and created a contrast which must have led to trouble if much longer continued. The intelligence of the country is a.s.serting itself, and business men and property owners will again divide themselves normally between the parties, as formerly.” Here again is the fundamental ant.i.thesis to the Socialist view. Leaving aside for the moment the situation of persons with $100 in the savings bank, or owners of property in general (who might possess nothing more than a small home), Socialists are working, with considerable success, towards the day when at least one great party will take a position so radical that the overwhelming majority of business men (or at least the representatives of by far the larger part of business and capital) will be forced automatically into the opposite organization.
Without this militant att.i.tude Socialists believe that even the most radical reforms, not excepting those that sincerely propose equal opportunity or the abolition of social cla.s.ses _as their ultimate aim_, must fail to carry society forward a single step in that direction.
Take, as an example, Dr. Lyman Abbott, whose advanced views I have already referred to (see Part I, Chap. III). Notwithstanding his advocacy of industrial democracy, his attack on the autocracy of capitalism and the wages system, and his insistence that the distinction between non-possessing and possessing cla.s.ses must be abolished, Dr.
Abbott opposes a cla.s.s struggle. Such phrases amount to nothing from the Socialist standpoint, if all of these objects are held up merely as an ideal, and if nothing is said of the rate at which they ought to be attained or the means by which the _opposition_ of privileged cla.s.ses is to be overcome. No indors.e.m.e.nt of any so-called Socialist theory or reform is of practical moment unless it includes that theory which has survived out of the struggles of the movement, and has been tested by hard experience--a theory in which ways and means are not the last but the first consideration,--namely, the cla.s.s struggle.
Mr. Roosevelt and nearly all other popular leaders of the day denounce ”special privilege.” But the denouncers of special privilege, aside from the organized Socialists, are only too glad to a.s.sociate themselves with one or another of the cla.s.ses that at present possess the economic and political power. To the Socialists the only way to fight special privilege is _to place the control of society in the hands of a non-privileged majority. The practical experience of the movement_ has taught the truth of what some of its early exponents saw at the outset, that a majority _composed even in part_ of the privileged cla.s.ses could never be trusted or expected to abolish privileges. Neither Dr. Abbott, Mr. Roosevelt, nor other opponents of the Socialist movement, are ready to indorse this practical working theory. For its essence being that all those who by their economic expressions or their acts stand for anything less than equality of opportunity should be removed from positions of power, it is directed against every anti-Socialist. Dr. Abbott, for example, demands only ”opportunity,” instead of equal opportunity, and Mr. Roosevelt wishes merely ”to start all men in the race for life on a _reasonable_ equality.” (My italics.)[211]
Let us see what Marx and his successors say in explanation of their belief that the ”cla.s.s struggle” must be fought out to an end. Certainly they do not mean that each individual capitalist is to be regarded by his working people as their private enemy. Nor, on the other hand, can the expression ”cla.s.s struggle” be interpreted, as some Socialists have a.s.serted, to mean that there was no flesh and blood enemy to be attacked, but only ”the capitalist system.” To Marx capitalism was embodied not merely in inst.i.tutions, which embrace all cla.s.ses and individuals alike, but also in the persons of the capitalist cla.s.s. And by waging a war against that cla.s.s he meant to include each and every member of it who remained in his cla.s.s, and every one of its supporters.
To Marx the enemy was no abstraction. It was, as he said, ”the person, the living individual” that had to be contended with, but only as the embodiment of a cla.s.s. ”It is not sufficient,” he said, ”to fight the general conditions and the higher powers. The press must make up its mind to oppose _this_ constable, _this_ attorney, _this_ councilor.”[212] These individuals, moreover, he viewed not merely as the servants or representatives of a system, but as part and parcel of a cla.s.s.
The struggle that Marx had in mind might be called _a latent civil war_. It was not a mere preparation for revolution, since it was as real and serious in times of peace as in those of revolution or civil war.
But it was a civil war in everything except the actual physical fighting, and he was always ready to proceed to actual fighting when necessary. Throughout his life Marx was a revolutionist. And when his successors to-day speak of ”the cla.s.s struggle,” they mean a conflict of that depth and intensity that it may lead to revolution.
None of the cla.s.sical Socialist writers, however, has failed to grasp the absolute necessity to a successful social movement, and especially to a revolutionary one, of making the cla.s.s struggle broad, inclusive, and democratic. In 1851 Marx wrote to the Socialists: ”The forces opposed to you have all the advantages of organization, discipline, and habitual authority; unless you bring _strong odds_ against them you are defeated and ruined.” (The italics are mine.)
Edward Bernstein, while representing as a rule only the ultra-moderate element of the Party, expresses on this question the views of the majority as well. ”Social Democracy,” he says, ”cannot further its work better than by taking its stand unreservedly on the theory of democracy.” And he adds that in practice it has always favored cooperation with all the exploited, even if ”its literary advocates have often acted otherwise, and still often do so to-day.”
Not many years ago, it is true, there was still a great deal of talk in Germany about the desirability of a ”dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat,”
the term ”proletariat” being used in its narrow sense. That is, as soon as the working cla.s.s (in this sense) became a political majority, it was to make the government embody its will without reference to other cla.s.ses--it being a.s.sumed that the manual laborers will only demand justice for all men alike, and that it was neither safe nor necessary to consult any of the middle cla.s.ses. And even to-day in France much is said by the ”syndicalists” and others as to the power of well-organized and determined minorities in the time of revolution--it being a.s.sumed, again, that such minorities will be successful only in so far as they stand for a new social principle, to the ultimate interest of all (see Chapter V). It cannot be questioned that in these schemes the majority is not to be consulted. But they are far less widely prevalent than they were a generation ago.
The pioneer of ”reformist” Socialism in Germany (Bernstein) correctly defines democracy, not as the rule of the majority, but as ”an absence of cla.s.s government.” ”This negative definition has,” he says, ”the advantage that it gives less room than the phrase 'government by the people' to the idea of oppression of the individual by the majority, which is absolutely repugnant to the modern mind. To-day we find the oppression of the minority by the majority 'undemocratic,' although it was originally held up to be quite consistent with government by the people.... Democracy is in _principle_ the suppression of cla.s.s government, though it is not yet the _actual_ suppression of cla.s.ses.”[213]
Democracy, as we have hitherto known it, opposes cla.s.s _government_, but countenances the existence of cla.s.ses. Socialism insists that as long as social cla.s.ses exist, cla.s.s government will continue. The aim of Socialism, ”the end of cla.s.s struggles and cla.s.s rule,” is not only democratic, but the only means of giving democracy any real meaning.
”It is only the proletariat” (wage earners), writes Kautsky, ”that has created a great social ideal, the consummation of which will leave only one source of income, _i.e._ labor, will abolish rent and profit, will put an end to cla.s.s and other conflicts, and put in the place of the cla.s.s struggle the solidarity of man. This is the final aim and goal of the cla.s.s struggle by the Socialist Party. The political representatives of the cla.s.s interests of the proletariat thus become representative of the highest and most general interests of humanity.”[214]
It is expected that nearly all social cla.s.ses, though separated into several groups to-day, will ultimately be thrown together by economic evolution and common interests into two large groups, the capitalists and their allies on the one side, and the anti-capitalists on the other.
The final and complete victory of the latter, it is believed, can alone put an end to this great conflict. But in the meanwhile, even before our capitalist society is overthrown and cla.s.s divisions ended, the very fusing together of the several cla.s.ses that compose the anti-capitalist party is bringing about a degree of social harmony not seen before.
Already the Socialists have succeeded in this way in harmonizing a large number of conflicting cla.s.s interests. The skilled workingmen were united for the first time with the unskilled when the latter, having been either ignored or subordinated in the early trade unions, were admitted on equal terms into the Socialist parties. Then the often extremely discontented salaried and professional men of small incomes, having been won by Socialist philosophy, laid aside their sense of superiority to the wage earners and were absorbed in large numbers.
Later, many agricultural laborers and even agriculturists who did all their own work, and whose small capital brought them no return, began to conquer their suspicion of the city wage workers. And, finally, many of those small business men and independent farmers, the _larger part_ of whose income is to be set down as the direct result of their own labor and not a result of their owners.h.i.+p of a small capital, or who feel that they are being reduced to such a condition, are commencing in many instances to look upon themselves as non-capitalists rather than capitalists--and to work for equality of opportunity through the Socialist movement.
The process of building up a truly democratic society has two parts: first, the organization and union in a single movement of all cla.s.ses that stand for the abolition of cla.s.ses, and cla.s.s rule; and second, the overthrow of those social elements that stand in the way of this natural evolution, their destruction and dissolution _as cla.s.ses_, and the absorption of their members by the new society as individuals.
It becomes of the utmost importance in such a vast struggle, on the one hand, that no cla.s.ses that are needed in the new society shall be marked for destruction, and on the other that the movement shall not lean too heavily or exclusively on cla.s.ses which have very little or too little constructive or combative power. What, then, is the leading principle by which the two groups are to be made up and distinguished? Neither the term ”capitalist cla.s.ses” nor the term ”working cla.s.ses” is entirely clear or entirely satisfactory.
Mr. Roosevelt, for example, gives the common impression when he accuses the Socialists of using the term ”working cla.s.s” in the narrow sense and of taking the position that ”all wealth is produced by manual workers, that the entire product of labor should be handed over to the laborer.”[215] I shall show that Socialist writers and speakers, even when they use the expression ”working cla.s.s,” almost universally include others than the manual laborers among those they expect to make up the anti-capitalistic movement.
Kautsky's definition of the working cla.s.s, for example, is: ”Workers who are divorced from their power of production to the extent that they can produce nothing by their own efforts, and are therefore compelled in order to escape starvation to sell the only commodity they possess--their labor power.” In present-day society, especially in a rich country like America, it is as a rule not sheer ”starvation” that drives, but needs of other kinds that are almost as compelling. But the point I am concerned with now is that this definition, widely accepted by Socialists, draws no line whatever between manual and intellectual workers. In another place Kautsky refers to the industrial working cla.s.s as being the recruiting ground for Socialism, which might seem to be giving a preferred position to manual workers; but a few paragraphs below he again qualifies his statement by adding that ”to the working cla.s.s there belong, just as much as the wage earners, the members of the new middle cla.s.s,” which I shall describe below.[216]
In other statements of their position, it is the context which makes the Socialist meaning clear. The party Platform of Canada, for instance, uses throughout the simple term ”working cla.s.s,” without any explanation, but it speaks of the struggle as taking place against the ”capitalists,” and as it mentions no other cla.s.ses, the reader is left to divide all society between these two, which would evidently make it necessary to cla.s.sify many besides mere manual wage earners rather among the anti-capitalist than among the capitalist forces.