Part 22 (1/2)
But there is also another difference of hardly less importance between the reformer and the revolutionary Socialist--a difference of method.
A bourgeois reformer has no preconceived plan of reform. He hits at every evil like an Irishman at a fair--as he sees it. Governor Hughes, who belongs to this cla.s.s, thought in 1908 that race track gambling was the greatest evil of existing conditions and devoted the entire session of the legislature to an anti-race track gambling bill which he triumphantly pa.s.sed, only to see it nullified at the first opportunity by the courts. In 1909 he thought that a primary election bill was the most important reform; but this primary election bill failed to pa.s.s. The legislature, very much under his guidance, spent two years in pa.s.sing a useless anti-race track gambling bill and refusing to pa.s.s a primary bill, although during these two years at least 200,000 men have been seeking employment and not finding it, and a population therefore of about a million[154] in New York State alone has been on the verge of starvation in consequence.
The most striking feature of the bourgeois reformer is his lack of sense of proportion; but there is a reason for it. Unemployment is not a popular subject with the cla.s.s to which Governor Hughes belongs. As an evil it is too merciless; as a resource it is too unavowable.[155]
So it is impossible to get any legislature in any State in this Union effectively to consider the subject of unemployment.
The Socialist, on the contrary, has a definite preconceived plan of legislative enactment. While the reformer, however well-intentioned and intelligent, is hacking away at random at the jungle of evils in which the compet.i.tive system encompa.s.ses him, and hardly ever attaining any substantial progress, the Socialist has his course directed for him by the polar star. He regards such bills as anti-race track gambling as a waste of time. Race-track gambling is a necessary and poisonous fruit of the compet.i.tive system. It is useless to attack the fruit and leave the tree standing. The only legislation, therefore, that interests the Socialist looks towards putting an end or a check to the compet.i.tive system that results in the exploitation of the Many by the Few. And of all the evils the one that has stood out most startling and appalling during the last two years is the evil of unemployment.
The immediate demands of the Socialist party published at the end of the Socialist platform,[156] indicate the character of measures which the Socialists urge. In one sense these are reforms, many of which Governor Hughes favors, but they all tend towards one definite end--the limitation and ultimate suppression of the compet.i.tive system with the exploitation of the Many by the Few. In one sense, therefore, Socialists are reformers, but revolutionary reformers; all their reforms look towards the transfer of political power from the Few who exploit political power for their individual benefit, to the Many who will utilize political power for the benefit of all.
Having indicated the difference between reform and revolution, let us consider how far the Socialist is justified in saying that the compet.i.tive system is so bad that it cannot be improved--that it must be replaced altogether.
When a wagon is thoroughly worn out, it is useless to repair it; for if one part is strengthened it throws the strain upon a neighboring part which breaks down; and if that part is strengthened it throws the strain upon another which again breaks down. It is possible by intelligently renewing various parts of the wagon upon a preconceived plan, eventually to replace the broken-down wagon by an entirely new one; but the difficulty of doing this is extreme, and the wagon when so reconstructed, being composed of parts of different ages, must again give way at its most worn part. So experience indicates that it is better to throw a fairly used-up wagon on the junk heap and build a new one in its place.
Reform measures such as we have had under former administrations resemble an effort to patch up a worn-out wagon; for a reform measure directed at one evil is found to produce other evils very apt to be as great, if not greater than those that the measure is trying to suppress. Not many years ago a society for the suppression of vice made a crusade in New York upon vicious resorts. Such resorts are abominable; they should not exist in an orderly community. But attacking these resorts, without attacking the conditions that created them, only distributed the evil all over the city, involving a pernicious contact with unperverted youth.
Again, the difficulty of reconciling Sunday closing of barrooms with furnis.h.i.+ng _bona fide_ travellers at hotels with refreshments was solved in New York by the Raines law, which defined a hotel by establis.h.i.+ng a minimum of bedrooms. The result was that to almost every barroom there is attached this minimum of bedrooms to permit of the sale of liquor on Sunday; and this effort to secure Sunday closing has resulted in converting the barroom into a house of prost.i.tution.
Again, legislation for putting an end to the awful congestion and filth of the New York city tenements has by imposing upon the landlord expensive repairs, raised rents, so that, although the tenement dweller is little benefited because of evasion of the law, his rent has been uniformly raised.
In the chapters on the Scientific and Ethical Aspects of Socialism, an effort will be made to show why the compet.i.tive system is essentially bad and must remain bad so long as acquisitiveness is deliberately made the dominating motive of human activity; and how by modifying economic conditions we can secure all the benefits of a tempered acquisitiveness without the appalling results of an acquisitiveness that knows no bounds. This argument belongs, however, to the constructive argument for Socialism, and we have not yet completed the destructive argument against existing conditions. For there are two further ill.u.s.trations furnished by recent efforts to curb compet.i.tion which not only tend to demonstrate the hopelessness of the task, but throw light upon existing conditions and impending dangers. I refer to the rate law and legislation tending to control monopolies--to the inevitable tyrannies of the trust and the trade unions and the irreconcilable conflict between the two.
-- 3. POSSIBLE TRANSITIONAL MEASURES
I shall describe the cooperative commonwealth on the theory that it is to come gradually, not because I consider this the only way for Socialism to come, but one of the possible ways and the one most intelligible to the bourgeois mind.
Morris Hillquit and John Spargo have given good sketches of the Socialist state.[157] I shall adhere closely to their views, emphasizing and detailing them; and I am the more glad to adopt this plan because both are members of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist party and will not be accused of taking the bourgeois view of Socialism; whereas because I have been a bourgeois, I am likely to be accused of this.
Mr. Spargo begins by repudiating the idea of the Socialist state as a ”great bureaucracy” and declares the Socialist ideal to be a ”form of social organization in which every individual will enjoy the greatest possible amount of freedom for self-development and expression; and in which social authority will be reduced to the minimum necessary for the preservation and insurance of that right to all individuals.”
The rights of the individual Mr. Spargo summarizes as follows:
”There must be perfect freedom of movement, including the right to withdraw from the domain of the government, to migrate at will to other territories; immunity from arrest, except for infringing others'
rights, with compensation for improper arrest; respect of the privacy of domicile and correspondence; full liberty of dress, subject to decency; freedom of utterance, whether by speech or publication, subject only to the protection of others from insult, injury, or interference with their equal liberties. Absolute freedom of the individual in all that pertains to art, science, philosophy, and religion, and their teaching, or propaganda, is essential. The state can rightly have nothing to do with these matters; they belong to the personal life alone. Art, science, philosophy, and religion cannot be protected by any authority, nor is such protection needed.”
On the other hand, he summarizes the functions of the state as follows:
”The state has the right and the power to _organize_ and _control_ the economic system, comprehending in that term the production and distribution of all social wealth wherever private enterprise is dangerous to the social well-being, or is inefficient; the defence of the community from invasion, from fire, flood, famine, or disease; the relations with other states, such as trade agreements, boundary treaties, and the like; the maintenance of order, including the judicial and police systems in all their branches; and public education in all its departments.”
The state, according to Mr. Spargo, is not to _own_ all sources of production (this is state Socialism); but is to have the right and power to _organize_ and _control_ the economic system. There is between these two statements all that distinguishes the crude Socialism of the nineteenth century from the practical Socialism of to-day. This is emphasized by Mr. Spargo when he states that ”Socialism by no means involves the suppression of all private property and industry”; and the further recognition that the ”Socialist state will not be static”; that is to say, it will not once for all decide that certain industries must be socialized and certain other industries be left to individual initiative.
The dominant factor that will determine these things is the public welfare. When private property in a particular thing is found injurious to public welfare, it will be taken over by the state for the purpose of being socialized, as will hereafter be explained. When it is deemed that private property in a public industry is injurious to public welfare, this industry will be socialized. When, on the contrary, it is found that by socializing an industry the advance of that industry tends to be paralyzed, private initiative will be encouraged to enter into that industry. Indeed, the economic structure of the commonwealth will be such that inefficiency in a socialized industry will automatically give rise to the compet.i.tion of private initiative therein.
I have used the expression ”socialized industry.” It is above all things important that we should be clear as to what these words mean; for it is the socialization of industry which is the modern subst.i.tute for the Socialist state. We cannot understand this better than by taking a concrete example.
Let us a.s.sume that the public has become convinced that a few individuals have already too long grown inordinately rich out of the refining and distribution of oil, and that the time has come for this industry to be socialized. The old theory was that the state would expropriate this industry and become the employer of all engaged in it. It is argued in favor of such a system that if the state can be entrusted with the distribution of letters, it can also be entrusted with the distribution of oil; and this is undoubtedly true. But if this same argument is applied to all industries it will expose the state to two great dangers: the state will be overburdened by the multiplicity and vastness of these tasks; and the state will become despotic. And because this task is greater than any one set of men can properly perform; even though the intentions of the members of the government be the best possible, errors of judgment and errors of detail will involve the state in injustice and discontent.
This difficulty can be met by not putting all these functions upon the state, but by so providing that the men shown in the past best able to handle a particular industry should continue to handle it. The socialization of the Standard Oil industry would simply mean the elimination of capitalistic control and exploitation. In taking over the oil industry, the state would doubtless adopt the method already adopted in taking over railroads, etc. A board would be appointed to take expert testimony as to the valuation of the industry, to determine the real value of every share. It would be called upon to value every stockholding with a view to determining to what compensation each stockholder was ent.i.tled; because a distinction will have to be made between various cla.s.ses of stockholders. Some stockholders have purchased their stock out of the economies of an industrious lifetime. They depend upon the dividends from such stock to support their old age. To cut down the income they derive from this stock might not only work an injustice, but work an injury to the commonwealth; for if these stockholders had not sufficient income to support themselves, they would become a burden on the state. Other stockholders would be found to have sufficient wealth to support a considerable reduction in the valuation of their stock without hards.h.i.+p. Others again would have such enormous wealth, that, having much more income than they can possibly spend, the reduction of their income would mean no hards.h.i.+p save that of depriving them of _power_ for the most part exerted at the present time injuriously to the commonwealth.
Experts, therefore, appointed by the state to make estimates with a view to the transfer of an industry from private to social owners.h.i.+p will have two distinct functions to perform: the function that boards of experts in similar cases perform to-day, to estimate the actual value of the property; and to estimate the wealth of the respective stockholders and cla.s.sify stockholders according to wealth with the view of effecting the transfer from private to social owners.h.i.+p without injustice to the individual or injury to the commonwealth. It is probable that compensation to stockholders will consist of annuities rather than lump sums. The advantage of compensation by annuity rather than by cash payment is considerable. As the state is taking over industries it will be more difficult for individuals to find investment for lump sums than to-day. As the state is looking forward to taking over industries to a sufficient extent to eliminate pure capitalism[158] altogether, it is to be hoped that future generations will not feel the need of capital of their own and will be all the more ready to enter into the cooperative scheme of industry if, having no capital, they have to work each in his own industry under the new and prosperous conditions which cooperative production ought by that time to have brought about.
Cases will undoubtedly be found where wealthy parents have worthless or defective children and grandchildren. Again, some parents have so contributed to the development of industry of the nation, as in the case of Mr. John D. Rockefeller and Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, that it may seem proper that the compensation given in the shape of an annuity to them should not end abruptly at their death; but that a part of it should be continued to their offspring. This question is one of conscience as well as of social welfare; and in view of the enormous importance of it to the wealthy of to-day, it is a pity that they confine themselves to denouncing Socialism, and by so doing, leave the elaboration of the Socialist program to a party of discontented which is likely to deal with them when the day of expropriation arrives, not only without mercy, but without justice.