Part 33 (1/2)

”To be sure, in the economic sense of the term, then, the new middle cla.s.s are proletarians; but they form a very special group of wage workers, a group that is so sharply divided from the _real_ proletarians that they form a special cla.s.s with a special position in the cla.s.s struggle.... Immediate need does not _compel_ them as it does the real proletarians to attack the capitalist system.

Their position may arouse discontent, but that of the workers is unendurable. For them Socialism has many advantages, for the workers it is an _absolute_ necessity.” (My italics.)[220]

The phrase ”absolute necessity” is unintelligible. It is comparatively rarely that need arises to the height of actual compulsion, and when it does instances are certainly just as common among clerks as they are among bricklayers.

Pannekoek introduces a variety of arguments to sustain his position. For instance, that ”the higher strata among the new middle cla.s.s have a definitely capitalistic character. The lower ones are more proletarian, but there is no sharp dividing line.”

This is true--but the high strata in every cla.s.s are capitalistic.

The statement applies equally well to railway conductors, to foremen, and to many cla.s.ses of manual workers.

”And then, too,” Pannekoek continues, ”they, the new middle cla.s.s, have more to fear from the displeasure of their masters, and dismissal for them is a much more serious matter. The worker stands always on the verge of starvation, and so unemployment has few terrors for him. The high-cla.s.s employee, on the contrary, has comparatively an easy life, and a new position is difficult to find.”

Now it is precisely the manual laborer who is most often blacklisted by the large corporations and trusts; and the brain-working employee is better able to adapt himself to some slightly different employment than is the skilled worker in any of the highly specialized trades.

”For the cause of Socialism we can count on this new middle cla.s.s,” says Pannekoek, ”even less than on the labor unions. For one thing, they have been set over the workers, as superintendents, overseers, bosses, etc. In these capacities they are supposed to speed up the workers to get the utmost out of them.”

Is it not even more common, we may ask, that one manual worker is set over another than that a brain worker is set over a manual laborer?

”They [the new middle cla.s.s] are divided,” writes Pannekoek, ”into numberless grades and ranks arranged one above the other; they do not meet as comrades, and so cannot develop the spirit of solidarity. Each individual does not make it a matter of personal pride to improve the condition of his entire cla.s.s; the important thing is rather that he personally struggles up into the next higher rank.”

If we remember the more favorable hours and conditions under which the brain workers are employed, the fact that they are not so exhausted physically and that they have education, we may see that they have perhaps even greater chances ”to develop their solidarity” and to understand their cla.s.s interests than have the manual workers. It is true that they are more divided at the present time, but there is a tendency throughout all the highly organized industries to divide the manual laborers in the same way and to secure more work from them by a similar system of promotions.

Pannekoek accuses the brain workers of having something to lose, again forgetting that there are innumerable groups of more or less privileged manual laborers who are in the same position. And finally, he contends that their superior schooling and education is a disadvantage when compared to the lack of education of the manual laborers:--

”They have great notions of their own education and refinement, feel themselves above the ma.s.ses; it naturally never occurs to them that the ideals of these ma.s.ses may be scientifically correct and that the 'science' of their professors may be false. As theorizers seeing the world always with their minds, knowing little or nothing of material activities, they are fairly convinced that mind controls the world.”

On the contrary, nearly all influential Socialist thinkers agree that present-day science, _poorly as it is taught_, is not only an aid to Socialism, but the very best basis for it.

Pannekoek is right, for instance, when he says that most of the brain workers in the Socialist movement come from the circles of the small capitalists and bring an anti-Socialist prejudice with them, but he forgets that, on the other side, the overwhelming majority of the world's working people are the children of farmers, peasants, or of absolutely unskilled and illiterate workers, whose views of life were even more prejudiced and whose minds were perhaps even more filled up with the ideas that the ruling cla.s.ses have placed there.

The arguments of the American Socialist, Thomas Sladden, representing as they do the views of _many thousands of revolutionary workingmen in this country_, are also worthy of note. His bitterness, it will be seen, is leveled less against capitalism itself than against what he considers to be intrusion of certain middle-cla.s.s elements into Socialist ranks.

”We find in the United States to-day,” writes Sladden, ”that we have created several new religions, one of the most interesting of which is called Socialism, and is the religion of a decadent middle cla.s.s. This fake Socialism or middle-cla.s.s religion can readily be distinguished from the real Socialist movement, which is simply the wage working cla.s.s in revolt on both the industrial and political fields against present conditions.... Yesterday I was a bad capitalist--to-day I am a good Socialist, but I pay my wage slaves the same wages to-day as I did yesterday.... They never take the answer of Bernard Shaw, who, when asked by a capitalist what he could do, saying that he could not help being a capitalist, was answered in this manner: You can go and crack rock if you want to; no one forces you to be a capitalist, but you are a capitalist because you want to be. No one forces Hillquit to be a lawyer; he could get a job in a lumber yard. There is no more excuse for a man being a capitalist or a lawyer than there is for him being a Pinkerton detective. He is either by his own free will and accord.

The system,--they acclaim in one breath,--the system makes us do what we do not wish to do. The system does nothing of the kind; the system gives a man the choice between honest labor and dishonest labor skinning, and a labor skinner is a labor skinner because he wishes to be, just the same as some men are pickpockets because they wish to be.”

It can readily be realized that such arguments will always have great weight with the embittered elements of the working cla.s.s. Nor do the most representative Socialists altogether disagree with Sladden. They, too, feel that if the war is not levied against individuals, neither is it levied against a mere abstract system, but against a ruling cla.s.s.

However, they make exceptions for such capitalists as the late Paul Singer, who definitely abandon their cla.s.s and throw in their lot with the Socialist movement, while Sladden would admit neither Singer, nor those other millions mentioned by Liebknecht (see above), for he demands that the Socialist Party must declare that ”no one not eligible to the labor unions of the United States is eligible to the Socialist Party.”

The high-water mark of this brand of revolutionism was reached in the State of Was.h.i.+ngton, when these revolutionary elements in the Socialist Party withdrew to form a new workingmen's party, the chief novelty of which was a plank dividing the organization into ”an active list and an a.s.sistant list, only wage workers being admitted to the active list.”

The wage workers were defined as the cla.s.s of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. These are the active list, and they alone hold office and vote. ”The a.s.sistant list cannot hold office and cannot vote,” and the Party will ”do active organizing work among wage earners alone.” This reminds one very much of the notorious division into active and pa.s.sive citizens at the early stages of the French Revolution, which gave such a splendid opportunity to the Jacobines to organize a revolt of the pa.s.sive citizens and was one of the chief causes leading up to the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic reaction that followed. The Was.h.i.+ngton plan, however, has been a complete failure. It has had no imitators in the Socialist movement, nor is it likely to have.

On the other hand, the most influential representatives of the extreme revolutionary wing of the movement, like Herve in France, have championed the non-wage-earning elements of the movement as fearlessly as the reformists.

”In the ranks of our party,” writes Herve, ”are to be found small merchants, small employers, wretched, impoverished, educated people, small peasant proprietors, none of whom on account of occupation can enter into the general Federation of Labor, which only admits those receiving wages and salaries. These are revolutionary elements which cannot be neglected; these volunteers of the Revolution who have often a beautiful revolutionary temperament would be lost for the Revolution if our political organization was not at hand to nourish their activity. Besides, the General Federation of Labor is a somewhat heavy ma.s.s; it will become more and more heavy as it comprises the majority of the _working cla.s.s which is by nature rather pacific at the bottom_.”

While there is no sufficient reason for the accusation that the Socialist movement neglects the brain workers of the salaried and professional cla.s.ses, there is somewhat more solid ground, in spite of the above quoted declarations of Liebknecht and Herve, for the accusation that it antagonizes those sections of the middle cla.s.ses which are, even to a slight degree, small capitalists, as, for example, especially the farmers.