Part 37 (1/2)
is still common in some Socialist quarters. Recently Kautsky wrote that the Socialist Party, besides occupying itself with the interests of the manual laborers, ”must also concern itself with all social questions, but that _its att.i.tude on these questions is determined by the interests of the manual laborers_.”
”The Socialist Party,” he continued, ”is forced by its cla.s.s position to expand its struggle against its own exploitation and oppression into a struggle against all forms of exploitation and oppression, to broaden its struggle for cla.s.s interests into a struggle for liberty and justice for all members of the community.” According to this interpretation, the Socialist Party, starting out from the standpoint of the economic interests of the ”manual laborers,” comes to represent the interests of all cla.s.ses, except the capitalists. We may doubt as to whether the other non-capitalist cla.s.ses will take kindly to this subordination or ”benevolent a.s.similation” by the manual workers.
Kautsky seems to have no question on this matter, however; for he considers that the abolition of the oppression and exploitation of the wage earners, _the cla.s.s at the bottom_, can only be effected by the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, and that therefore ”all friends of universal liberty and justice, whatever cla.s.s they may spring from, are compelled to join the proletariat and to fight its cla.s.s struggles.”[237] Even if this is true, these other cla.s.ses will demand that they should have an equal voice in carrying on this struggle in proportion to their numbers, and Socialist parties have usually (though not always) given them that equal voice.
The kernel of the working cla.s.s, ”the layers of the industrial proletariat which have reached political self-consciousness,” provides the chief supporters of the Socialist movement, according to Kautsky, although the latter is the representative ”not alone of the industrial wage workers, but of all the working and exploited layers of the community, that is, the great majority of the total population, what one ordinarily calls 'the people.'” While Socialism is to represent all the producing and exploited cla.s.ses, the industrial proletariat is thus considered as the model to which the others must be shaped and as by some special right or virtue it is on all occasions to take the forefront in the movement. This position leads inevitably to a considerably qualified form of democracy.
”The backbone of the party will always be the fighting proletariat, whose qualities will determine its character, whose strength will determine its power,” says Kautsky. ”Bourgeois and peasants are highly welcome if they will attach themselves to us and march with us, but the proletariat will always show the way.
”But if not only wage earners but also small peasants and small capitalists, artisans, middle-men of all kinds, small officials, and so forth--in short, the whole so-called 'common people'--formed the ma.s.ses out of which Social Democracy recruits its adherents, we must not forget that these cla.s.ses, with the exception of the cla.s.s-conscious wage-earners, are also a recruiting ground for our opponents; their influence on these cla.s.ses has been and still is to-day the chief ground of their political power.
”To grant political rights to the people, therefore, by no means necessarily implies the protection of the interests of the proletariat or those of social evolution. Universal suffrage, as it is known, has nowhere brought about a Social Democratic majority, while it may give more reactionary majorities than a qualified suffrage under the same circ.u.mstances. It may put aside a liberal government only to put in its place a conservative or catholic one....
”Nevertheless the proletariat must demand democratic inst.i.tutions under all circ.u.mstances, for the same reasons that, once it has obtained political power, it can only use its own cla.s.s rule for the purpose of putting an end to all cla.s.s rule. It is the bottommost of the social cla.s.ses. It cannot gain political rights, at least not in its entirety, except if everybody gets them. Each of the other cla.s.ses may become privileged under certain circ.u.mstances, but not the proletariat. The Social Democracy, the party of the cla.s.s-conscious proletariat, is therefore the surest support of democratic efforts, much surer than the bourgeois democracy.
”But if the Social Democracy is also the most strenuous fighter for democracy, it cannot share the latter's illusions. It must always be conscious of the fact that every popular right which it wins is a weapon not only for itself, but also for its opponents; it must therefore under certain circ.u.mstances understand that democratic achievements are more useful at first to the enemy than to itself; but only at first. For in the long run the introduction of democratic inst.i.tutions in the State can only turn out to the profit of Social Democracy. They necessarily make its struggle easier, and lead it to victory. The militant proletariat has so much confidence in social evolution, so much confidence in itself, that it fears no struggle, not even with a superior power; it only wants a field of battle on which it can move freely. The democratic State offers such a field of battle; there the final decisive struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat can best be fought out.”
The reader might understand this somewhat vacillating position on the whole to favor democracy, but only a few pages further on Kautsky explains his reasons for opposing the initiative and referendum, and we see that when the point of action arrives, his democratic idealism is abandoned:--
”In our opinion it follows from the preceding that the initiative and referendum do _not_ belong to those democratic inst.i.tutions which must be furthered by the proletariat in the interest of its own struggle for emanc.i.p.ation everywhere and under all circ.u.mstances. The referendum and initiative are inst.i.tutions which may be very useful under certain circ.u.mstances if one does not overvalue these uses, but under other circ.u.mstances may cause great harm. The introduction of the initiative and referendum is, therefore, not to be striven for everywhere and under all circ.u.mstances, but only in those places where certain conditions are fulfilled.
”Among these conditions precedent we reckon, above all, the preponderance of the city population over that of the country--a condition which at the present moment has only been reached in England. A further condition precedent is a highly developed political party life which has taken hold of the great ma.s.ses of the population, so that the tendency of direct legislation to break up parties and to bridge over party opposition are no more to be feared.
”But the weightiest condition precedent is the lack of an overwhelmingly centralized governmental power, standing independently against the people's representatives.”[238] (My italics.)
The first condition mentioned I have discussed in the previous chapter; the second indicates that Kautsky, speaking for many German Socialists, for the present at least, puts party above democracy.
The industrial proletariat is supposed to have the mission of saving society. Even when it is not politically ”self-conscious,” or educated to see the great role it must play in the present and future transformation of society, it is supposed that it is _compelled_ ultimately ”by the logic of events” to fill this role and attempt the destruction of capitalism and the socialization of capital. This prediction may _ultimately_ prove true, but time is the most vital element in any calculation, and Kautsky himself acknowledges that the industrial proletariat ”had existed a long time before giving any indication of its independence,” and that during all this long period ”no militant proletariat was in existence.”
The chief practical reason for relying so strongly on the industrial wage earners as stated by Bebel and other Socialists is undoubtedly that ”the proletariat increases more and more until it forms the overwhelming majority of the nation.” No doubt, in proportion as this tendency exists, the importance of gathering certain parts of the middle cla.s.s into the movement becomes less and less, and the statement quoted, if strongly insisted upon, even suggests a readiness to attempt to get along entirely without these elements. The figures of the Census indicate that in this country, at least, we are some time from the point when the proletariat will const.i.tute even a bare majority, and that it is not likely to form an overwhelming majority for decades to come. But the European view is common here also.
The moderate Vandervelde also says that the Socialist program has been ”formulated by or for the workingmen of large-scale industry.”[239] This may be true, but we are not as much interested to know who formulated the program of the movement as to understand its present aim. Its aim, it is generally agreed, is to organize into a single movement all anti-capitalistic elements, all those who want to abolish capitalism, those exploited cla.s.ses that are not too crushed to revolt, those whose chief means of support is socially useful labor and not the owners.h.i.+p of capital or possession of some privileged position or office. In this movement it is generally conceded by Socialists that the workingmen of industry play the central part. But they are neither its sole origin nor is their welfare its sole aim.
The best known of the Socialist critics of Marxism, Edward Bernstein, shares with some of Marx's most loyal disciples in this excessive idealization of the industrial working cla.s.s. Indeed, he says, with more truth than he realizes, that in proportion as revolutionary Marxism is relegated to the background it is necessary to affirm more sharply the cla.s.s character of the Party. That is to say, if a Socialist Party abandons the principles of Socialism, then the only way it can be distinguished from other movements is by the fact that it embraces other elements of the population, that it is a cla.s.s movement. But Socialism is something more than this, it is a cla.s.s movement of a certain definite character, composed of cla.s.ses that are naturally selected and united, owing to certain definite characteristics.
”The social democracy,” says Bernstein, ”can become the people's party, but only in the sense that the workingmen form the _essential_ kernel around which are grouped social elements having identical interests....
Of all the social cla.s.ses opposed to the capitalist cla.s.s, the working cla.s.s _alone_ represents an invincible factor of social progress,” and social democracy ”addresses itself princ.i.p.ally to the workers.” (My italics.)
Perhaps the most orthodox Socialist organ in America, and the ablest representative in this country of the international aspects of the movement (the _New Yorker Volkszeitung)_, insists that ”the Socialist movement consists in the fusion of the Socialist doctrine with the labor movement and in nothing else,” and says that students and even doctors have little importance for the Party. The less orthodox but more revolutionary _Western Clarion_, the Socialist organ of British Columbia, where the Socialists form the chief opposition party in the legislature, a.s.serts boldly, ”We have no leaning towards democracy; all we want is a short supply of working-cla.s.s autocracy.”
Some of the ultra-revolutionists have gone so far in their hostility to all social cla.s.ses that do not work with their hands, that they have completed the circle and flown into the arms of the narrowest and least progressive of trade unionists--the very element against which they had first reacted. The Western Socialist, Thomas Sladden, throwing into one single group all the labor organizations from the most revolutionary to the most conservative, such as the railway brotherhoods, says that all ”are in reality part of the great Socialist movement,” and claims that whenever ”labor” goes into politics, this also is a step towards Socialism, though Socialist principles are totally abandoned. Mayor McCarthy of San Francisco, for instance, satisfied his requirements.
”McCarthy declares himself a friend of capital,” says Sladden, but, he asks defiantly, ”Does any sane capitalist believe him?” Here we see one of the most revolutionary agitators becoming more and more ”radical”
until he has completed the circle and come back, not only to ”labor right or wrong,” but even to ”labor working in harmony with capital.”