"Even the most energetic champions of small farming," says Kautsky, "do not make the least attempt to show its superiority, as this would be a hopeless task. What they maintain is only the superiority of labor on one's own property to wage labor for a strange exploiter.... But if the large farm offers the greater possibility of lessening the work of the agricultural laborers, then it would be a betrayal of the latter to set before them as a goal, not the capture and technical development of large forms, but their break up into numerous small farms. That would mean nothing less than a willingness to perpetuate the drudgery under which the agricultural laborers and small farmers now suffer."[229]

But how shall Socialists aid small farmers without increasing the number of small farms? It might be thought that the nationalization of the land would solve the problem. The government, once become the general landlord, could use the rent fund to improve the condition of all classes of agriculturists, without unduly favoring any, agricultural evolution could take its natural course, and the most economical method of production, i.e. large farms or large cooeperative associations, would gradually come to predominate. But the capitalist collectivists who now control or will soon control governments, far from feeling any anxiety about the persistence of small-scale farming, believe that the small farmers can be made into the most reliable props of capitalism. Accordingly collectivist reformers either promote schemes of division of large estates and favor the creation of large masses of small owners by this and every other available means, such as irrigation or reclamation projects, or if they indorse nationalization of the land in order to get the unearned increment for their governments, they still make the leases on as small a scale and revaluations at as long intervals as possible, and so do almost as much artificially to perpetuate the small farm under this system as they could by furthering private ownership.

Although there is no necessary and immediate conflict of interest between wage earners and small farmers, it is evident that it is impossible for Socialists to offer the small farmers as much as the capitalist collectivists do,—for the latter are willing in this instance to promote, for political purposes, an uneconomic mode of production which is a burden on all society.

Here, however, appears an economic tendency that relieves the situation for the Socialist. Under private ownership or land nationalization with long leases and small-scale farms, it is only once in a generation or even less frequently that farms are subdivided. But the amount of capital and labor that can be profitably applied to a given area of land, the intensity of farming, increases very rapidly. The former self-employing farmer, everywhere encouraged by governments, soon comes to employ steadily one or more laborers. And it is notable that in every country of the world these middle-sized or moderate-sized farms are growing more rapidly than either the large-scale or the one-family farms. This has an economic and a political explanation. Though large farms have more economic advantages than small, the latter have nothing to expend for superintendence and get much more work from each person occupied. The middle-sized farms preserve these advantages and gradually come also to employ much of the most profitable machinery, that is out of reach of the small farmer. Politically their position is still stronger. They are neither rich nor few like the large landholders. Their employees are one, two, or three on each farm, and isolated.

Here, then, is the outcome of the agricultural situation that chiefly concerns the Socialist. The middle-sized farmer is a small capitalist and employer who, like the rest of his kind, will in every profound labor crisis be found with the large capitalist. His employees will outnumber him as voters and will have little hope that the government will intervene some day to make them either proprietors or possessors of long-term leases. The capital, moreover, to run this kind of farm or to compete with it, will be greater and greater and more and more out of their agricultural laborer's reach. These employees will be Socialists.

We are now in a position to understand the divisions among the Socialists on the agricultural question. The Socialist policy as to agriculture may be divided into three periods. During the ascendency of capitalistic collectivism it will be powerless to do more than to support the collectivist reforms, including partial nationalization of the land, partial appropriation of unearned increment by national or local governments, municipal and cooeperative production, and the numerous reforms already mentioned. In the second period, the approach of Socialism will hasten all these changes automatically through the rapid rise in wages, and in the third period, when the Socialists are in power, special measures will be taken still further to hasten the process until all land is gradually nationalized and all agricultural production carried on by governmental bodies or cooeperative societies of actual workers.

If the Socialists gain control of any government, or if they come near enough to doing this to be able to force concessions at the cost of capital, a double effect will be produced on agriculture. The general rise in wages will destroy the profits of many farmer employers, and it will offer to the smallest self-employing farmers the possibility of an income as wage earners so much larger, and conditions so much better, than anything they can hope for as independent producers that they will cease to prefer self-employment. The high cost of labor will favor both large scale production, either capitalistic or cooeperative, and national, state, county, and municipal farms. Without any but an automatic economic pressure, small-scale and middle-scale farming would tend rapidly to give place to these other higher forms, and these in turn would tend to become more and more highly organized as other industries have done, until social production became a possibility. Not only would there be no need of coercive legislative measures, but the automatic pressure would be, not that of misery or bankruptcy pressing the self-employing farmer from behind, but of a larger income and better conditions drawing the majority forward to more developed and social forms of production.

In France a considerable and increasing number of the Socialist members of Parliament are elected by the peasantry, and the same is true of Italy. In Herve the French have developed a world-famed ultra-revolutionary who always makes his appeal to peasants as well as workers, and in Compere-Morel, one of the most able of those economists and organizers of the international movement who give the agriculturists their chief attention. The latter has recently summed up the position of the French Party in a few incisive paragraphs—which show its similarity to that of the Americans. His main idea is to let economic evolution take its course, which, in proportion as labor is effectively organized, will inevitably lead towards collective ownership and operation and so pave the way for Socialism:—

"As to small property, it is not our mission either to hasten or to precipitate its disappearance. A product of labor, quite often being merely a tool of the one who is detaining it, not only do we respect it, we do something more yet, we relieve it from taxes, usury, scandalous charges on the part of the middlemen, whose victim it is. And this will be done in order to make possible its free evolution towards superior forms of exploitation and ownership, which become more and more inevitable.

"This means that there is no necessity at all to appeal to violence, to use constraint and power in order to inaugurate in the domain of rural production, the only mode of ownership fit to utilize the new technical agricultural tools: collective ownership.

"On the other hand, a new form of ownership cannot be imposed; it is the new form of ownership which is imposing itself.

"It is in vain that they use the most powerful, the most artificial, means to develop, to multiply, and animate the private ownership of the land; the social ownership of the land will impose itself, through the force of events, on the most stubborn, on the most obstinate, of the partisans of individual ownership of the rural domain."

The French Socialists do not propose to interfere with titles of any but very large properties, or even with inheritance. Whether they have to meet government ownership and 33-year leases now being tried on a small scale in New Zealand, or whether a capitalist collectivist government allows agricultural evolution and land titles to take their natural course, they expect to corner the labor supply, and in this way ultimately to urge agriculture along in the Socialist direction. From the moment they have done this, they expect a steady tendency on the part of agriculturists to look forward, as the workingmen have done, to the Socialist State:—

"The question arises, under a Socialist regime, will small property, the property cultivated by the owner and his family, be transmissible, allowed to be sold, or left as inheritance to the children, to the nephews, and even to very remote cousins? From the moment this property is not used as an instrument of exploitation—and in a Socialist society, labor not being sold, it could never become one—what do we care whether it changes hands every morning, whether it travels around through a whole family or country?"

For, since the Socialist State will furnish work for all that apply, at the best remuneration, and under the best conditions, especially as it will do this in its own agricultural enterprises, relatively few farmers will be able to pay enough to secure other workers than those of their own families.

In the United States the Party has definitely decided by a large majority, in a referendum vote, that it does not intend to try to disturb the self-employing farmer in any way in his occupation and use of the land. In a declaration adopted in 1909, when, by a referendum vote of nearly two to one, the demand for the immediate collective ownership of the land was dropped from the platform, the following paragraph was inserted:—

"There can be no absolute private title to land. All private titles, whether called fee simple or otherwise, are and must be subordinate to the public title. The Socialist Party strives to prevent land from being used for the purpose of exploitation and speculation. It demands the collective possession, control, or management of land to whatever extent may be necessary to attain that end. It is not opposed to the occupation and possession of land by those using it in a useful bona fide manner without exploitation." (My italics.)

Those American Socialists who have given most attention to the subject, like Mr. Simons, have long since made up their minds that there is no hope whatever either for the victory or even for the rapid development of Socialism in this country unless it takes some root among the agriculturists. Mr. Simons insists that the Socialists should array against the forces of conservatism, privilege, and exploitation, "all those whose labor assists in the production of wealth, for all these make up the army of exploited, and all are interested in the abolition of exploitation."

"In this struggle," he continues, "farmers and factory wage workers must make common cause. Any smaller combination, any division in the ranks of the workers, must render success impossible. In a country where fundamental changes of policy are secured at the ballot box, nothing can be accomplished without united action by all classes of workers.... The better organization of the factory workers of the cities, due to their position in the midst of a higher developed capitalism and more concentrated industry, makes them in no way independent of their rural brothers. So long as they are not numerous enough to win, they are helpless. 'A miss is as good as a mile,' and coming close to a majority avails almost nothing."[230]

Looking at the question after this from the farmers' standpoint, Mr. Simons argues that many of the latter are well aware that the ownership of a farm is nothing more than the ownership of a job, and that the capitalists who own the mortgages, railroads, elevators, meat-packing establishments, and factories which produce agricultural machinery and other needed supplies, control the lives and income of the agriculturists almost as rigidly as they do those of their own employees. Mr. Simons's views on this point also are probably those of a majority of the party.

Mr. Victor Berger does not consider that farmers belong to that class by whom and for whom Socialism has come into being. "The average farmer is not a proletarian," he says, "yet he is a producer."[231] This would seem to imply that the farmer should have Socialist consideration, though perhaps not equal consideration with the workingman. Mr. Berger's main argument apparently was that the farmers must be included in the movement, not because this is demanded by principle but because "you will never get control of the United States unless you have the farming class with you," as he said at a Socialist convention.

Thus there are three possible attitudes of Socialists towards the self-employing farmer, and all three are represented in the movement. Kautsky, Vandervelde, and many others believe that after all he is not a proletarian, and therefore should not or cannot be included in the movement. The French Socialists and many Americans believe that he is practically a proletarian and should and can be included. The "reformists" in countries where he is very numerous believe he should be included, even when (Berger) they do not consider him as a proletarian. The Socialist movement, on the whole, now stands with Kautsky and Vandervelde, and this is undoubtedly the correct position until the Socialists are near to political supremacy. The French and American view, that the self-employing farmer is practically a wage earner, is spreading, and though this view is false and dangerous if prematurely applied (i.e. to-day) it will become correct in the future when collectivist capitalism has exhausted its reforms and the small farmer is becoming an employee of the highly productive government farms or a profit-sharer in cooeperative associations.

At the last American Socialist Convention (1910) Mr. Simons's resolution carefully avoided the "reformist" position of trying to prop up either private property or small-scale production, by the statement that, while "no Socialist Party proposes the immediate expropriation of the farm owner who is cultivating his own farm," that, on the other hand, "it is not for the Socialist Party to guarantee the private ownership of any productive property." He remarked in the Convention that the most prominent French Marxists, Guesde and Lafargue, had approved the action of the recent French Socialist Congress, which had "guaranteed the peasant ownership of his farm," but he would not accept this action as good Socialism. Mr. Berger offered the same criticism of the French Socialists, and added that the guarantee would not be worth anything in any case, because our grandchildren would not be ruled by it.

However, there is a minority ready to compromise everything in this question. Of all American States, Oklahoma has been the one where Socialists have given the closest attention to agricultural problems. The Socialists have obtained a considerable vote in every county of this agricultural State, and with 20,000 to 25,000 votes they include a considerable proportion of the electorate. It is true that their platform, though presented at the last national convention, has not been passed upon, and may later be disapproved in several important clauses, but it is important as showing the farthest point the American movement has gone in this direction. Its most important points are:—

The retention and constant enlargement of the public domain.

By retaining school and other public lands.

By purchasing of arid and overflow lands and the State reclamation of all such lands now held by the State or that may be acquired by the State.

By the purchase of all lands sold for the non-payment of taxes.

Separation of the department of agriculture from the political government.

Election of all members and officers of the Board of Agriculture by the direct vote of the actual farmers.

Erection by the State of grain elevators and warehouses for the storage of farm products; these elevators and warehouses to be managed by the Board of Agriculture.

Organization by the Board of Agriculture of free agricultural education and the establishment of model farms.

Encouragement by the Board of Agriculture of cooeperative societies of farmers—

For the buying of seed and fertilizers.

For the purchase and common use of implements and machinery.

For the preparing and sale of produce.

Organization by the State of loans on mortgages and warehouse certificates, the interests charges to cover cost only.

State insurance against disease of animals, diseases of plants, insect pests, hail, flood, storm, and fire.

Exemption from taxation and execution of dwellings, tools, farm animals, implements, and improvements to the amount of one thousand dollars.

A graduated tax on the value of rented land and land held for speculation.

Absentee landlords to assess their own lands, the State reserving the right to purchase such lands at their assessed value plus 10 per cent.

Land now in the possession of the State or hereafter acquired through purchase, reclamation, or tax sales to be rented to landless farmers under the supervision of the Board of Agriculture at the prevailing rate of share rent or its equivalent. The payment of such rent to cease as soon as the total amount of rent paid is equal to the value of the land, and the tenant thereby acquires for himself and his children the right of occupancy. The title to all such lands remaining with the commonwealth.[232]

I have italicized the most significant items. The preference given to landless farmers in the last paragraph shows that the party in Oklahoma does not propose to distribute its greatest favors to those who are now in possession of even the smallest amount of land. On the other hand, once the land is governmentally "owned" and speculation and landlordism (or renting) are provided against, the farmer passes "the right of occupancy" of this land on to his children. European Socialist parties, with one exception, have not gone so far as this, and it is doubtful if the American Party will sustain such a long step towards permanent private property. It may well be doubted whether the Socialist movement will favor giving to children the identical privileges their parents had, simply because they are the children of these parents, especially if these privileges had been materially increased in value during the parents' lifetime by community effort, i.e. if there has been any large "unearned increment." Nor will they grant any additional right after forty years of payments or any other term, but, on the contrary, as the land rises, through the community's efforts they would undoubtedly see to it that rent was correspondingly increased. Socialists demand, not penalties against landlordism, but the community appropriation of rent—whether it is in the hands of the actual farmer or landlord. Why, moreover, seek to discriminate against those who are in possession now, and then favor those who will be in possession after the new dispensation, by giving the latter an almost permanent title? May there not be as many landless agricultural workers forty years hence as there are now? Why should those who happen to be landless in one generation instead of the next receive superior rights?

Not only Henry George, but Herbert Spencer and the present governments of Great Britain (for all but agricultural land) and Germany (in the case of cities), recognize that the element of land values due to the community effort should go to the community. The political principle that gives the community no permanent claim to ground rent and is ready to give a "right of occupancy" for two or more lifetimes (for nothing is said in the Oklahoma program about the land returning to the government) without any provisions for increased rentals and with no rents at all after forty years, is reactionary as compared with recent land reform programs elsewhere (as that of New Zealand).

Even Mr. Roosevelt's Commission on Country Life goes nearly as far as the Oklahoma Socialists when it condemns speculation in farm lands and tenancy; while Mr. Roosevelt himself has suggested as a remedy in certain instances the leasing of parts of the national domain. Indeed, the "progressive" capitalists everywhere favor either small self-employing farmers or national ownership and leases for long terms and in small allotments, and as "State Socialism" advances it will unquestionably lean towards the latter system. There is nothing Socialistic either in government encouragement either of one-family farms or in a national leasing system with long-term leases as long as the new revenue received goes for the usual "State Socialistic" purposes.

The American Party, moreover, has failed so far to come out definitely in favor of the capitalist-collectivist principle of the State appropriation of ground rent, already indorsed by Marx in 1847 and again in 1883 (see his letter about Henry George, Part I, Chapter VIII). In preparing model constitutions for New Mexico and Arizona (August, 1910), the National Executive Committee took up the question of taxation and recommended graduated income and inheritance taxes, but nothing was said about the State taking the future rise in rents. This is not a reaction when compared to the present world status of non-Socialist land reform, for the taxation of unearned increment has not yet been extended to agricultural land in use, but it is decidedly a reaction when compared with the Socialists' own position in the past.

In a semiagricultural country like the United States it is natural that "State Socialism" should influence the Socialist Party in its treatment of the land question more than in any other direction, and this influence is, perhaps, the gravest danger that threatens the party at the present writing.

By far the most important popular organ of Socialism in this country is the Appeal to Reason of Girard, Kansas, which now circulates nearly half a million copies weekly—a large part of which go into rural communities. The Appeal endeavors, with some success, to reflect the views of the average party member, without supporting any faction. As Mr. Debs is one of its editors, it may be understood that it stands fundamentally against the compromise of any essential Socialist principle. And yet the exigencies of a successful propaganda among small landowners or tenants who either want to become landowners or to secure a lease that would amount to almost the same thing, is such as to drive the Appeal into a position, not only as to the land question, but also to other questions, that has in it many elements of "State Socialism."

A special propaganda edition (January 27, 1902) is typical. Along with many revolutionary declarations, such as that Socialism aims not only at the socialization of the means of production, but also at the socialization of power, we find others that would be accepted by any capitalist "State Socialist." Government activities as to schools and roads are mentioned as examples of socialization, while that part of the land still in the hands of our present capitalist government is referred to as being socialized. The use of vacant and unused lands (with "a fair return" for this use) by city, township, and county officials in order to raise and sell products and furnish employment, as was done by the late Mayor Pingree in Detroit, and even the public ownership of freight and passenger automobiles, are spoken of as "purely Socialist propositions." And, finally, the laws of Oklahoma are said to permit socialization without a national victory of the Socialists, though they provide merely that a municipality may engage in any legitimate business enterprise, and could easily be circumscribed by state constitutional provisions or by federal courts if real Socialists were about to gain control of municipalities and State legislature. For such Socialists would not be satisfied merely to demand the abolition of private landlordism and unemployment as the Appeal does in this instance, since both of these "institutions" are already marked for destruction by "State capitalism," but would plan public employment at wages so high as to make private employment unprofitable and all but impossible, so high that the self-employing farmer even would more and more frequently prefer to quit his farm and go to work on a municipal, State, or county farm.

The probable future course of the Party, however, is foreshadowed by the suggestions made by Mr. Simons in the report referred to, which, though not yet voted upon, seemed to meet general approval:—

"With the writers of the Communist Manifesto we agree in the principle of the 'application of all rents of land to public purposes.' To this end we advocate the taxing of all lands to their full rental value, the income therefrom to be applied to the establishment of industrial plants for the preparing of agricultural products for final consumption, such as packing houses, canneries, cotton gins, grain elevators, storage and market facilities."[233]

There is no doubt that Mr. Simons here indorses the most promising line of agrarian reform under capitalism. But there is no reason why capitalist collectivism may not take up this policy when it reaches a somewhat more advanced stage. The tremendous benefits the cities will secure by the gradual appropriation of the unearned increment will almost inevitably suggest it to the country also. This will immensely hasten the development of agriculture and the numerical increase of an agricultural working class. What is even more important is that it will teach the agricultural laborers that far more is to be gained by the political overthrow of the small capitalist employing farmers and by claiming a larger share of the benefit of these public funds than by attempting the more and more difficult task of saving up the sum needed for acquiring a small farm or leasing one for a long term from the government.

The governmental appropriation of agricultural rent and its productive expenditure on agriculture will in all probability be carried out, even if not prematurely promised at the present time, by collectivist capitalism. Moreover, while this great reform will strengthen Socialism as indicated, it will strengthen capitalism still more, especially in the earlier stages of the change. Socialists recognize, with Henry George, that ground rent may be nationalized and "tyranny and spoliation be continued." For if the present capitalistic state gradually became the general landlord, either through the extension of the national domain or through land taxation, greater resources would be put into the hands of existing class governments than by any other means. If, for example, the Socialists opposed the government bank in Germany they might dread even more the present government becoming the universal landlord, though it would be useless to try to prevent it.

It is clear that such a reform is no more a step in Socialism or in the direction of Socialism than the rest of the capitalist collectivist program. But it is a step in the development of capitalism and will ultimately bring society to a point where the Socialists, if they have in the meanwhile prepared themselves, may be able to gain the supreme power over government and industry.

Socialists do not feel that the agricultural problem will be solved at all for a large part of the agriculturists (the laborers) nor in the most satisfactory manner for the majority (self-employing farmers) until the whole problem of capitalism is solved. The agricultural laborers they claim as their own to-day; the conditions I have reviewed lead them to hope also for a slow but steady progress among the smaller farmers.

FOOTNOTES:

[223] Karl Kautsky, "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, p. 127.

[224] Karl Kautsky, "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 126-128.

[225] Quotations from Kautsky following in this chapter are taken chiefly from his "Agrarfrage."

[226] Emile Vandervelde, "Le Socialisme Agraire."

[227] Die Neue Zeit, June 16, 1911.

[228] Proceedings of 1910 Convention of the Socialist Party of the United States.

[229] Die Neue Zeit, June 16 and 30, 1911.

[230] A. M. Simons, "The American Farmer," pp. 160-162.

[231] The 1908 Convention of the Socialist Party of the United States.

[232] Reprinted at frequent intervals by the Industrial Democrat, Oklahoma City.

[233] Mr. Simons's resolution also contains another proposition, seemingly at variance with this, which would postpone Socialist action indefinitely:—

"In the field of industry what the Socialist movement demands is the social ownership and control of the socially operated means of production, not of all means of production. Only to a very small extent is it [the land] likely to be, for many years to come, a socially operated means of production."

On the contrary, it would seem that "State Socialism," the basis on which Socialists must build, to say nothing of Socialism, will bring about a large measure of government ownership of land in the interest of the farmer of the individually operated farm. Socialism, it is true, requires besides government ownership, governmental operation, and recognizes that this is practicable only as fast as agriculture becomes organized like other industries. In the meanwhile it recognizes either in gradual government ownership or in the taxation of the unearned increment, the most progressive steps that can be undertaken by a capitalist government and supports them even where there is no large-scale production or social operation. For "wherever individual ownership is an agency of exploitation," to quote Mr. Simons's own resolution, "then such ownership is opposed by Socialism," i.e. wherever labor is employed.

The Socialist solution, it is true, can only come with "social operation," but that does not mean that Socialism has nothing to say to-day. It still favors the reforms of collectivist capitalism. Where extended national ownership of the land is impracticable there remains the taxation of the future unearned increment. To drop this "demand" also is to subordinate Socialism completely to small-scale capitalism.



CHAPTER III

SOCIALISM AND THE "WORKING CLASS"

If the majority of Socialists are liberal in their conception of what constitutes the "working class," they are equally broad in their view as to what classes must be reckoned among its opponents. They are aware that on the other side in this struggle will be found all those classes that are willing to serve capitalism or hope to rise into its ranks.

In its narrow sense the term "capitalist class" may be restricted to mean mere idlers and parasites, but this is not the sense in which Socialists usually employ it. Mere idlers play an infinitely less important part in the capitalist world than active exploiters. It is even probable that in the course of a strenuous struggle the capitalists themselves may gradually tax wholly idle classes out of existence and so actually strengthen the more active capitalists by ridding them of this burden. Active exploiters may pass some of their time in idleness and frivolous consumption, without actual degeneration, without becoming mere parasites. All exploitation is parasitism, but it does not follow that every exploiter is nothing more than a parasite. He may work feverishly at the game of exploitation and, as is very common with capitalists, may be devoted to it for its own sake and for the power it brings rather than for the opportunity to consume in luxury or idleness. If pure parasitism were the object of attack, as certain Socialists suppose it to be, all but an infinitesimal minority of mankind would already be Socialists.

Nor do Socialists imagine that the capitalist ranks will ever be restricted to the actual capitalists, those whose income is derived chiefly from their possessions. Take, for example, the class of the least skilled and poorest-paid laborers such as the so-called "casual laborers," the "submerged tenth"—those who, though for the most part not paupers, are in extreme poverty and probably are unable to maintain themselves in a state of industrial efficiency even for that low-paid and unskilled labor to which they are accustomed. Mr. H. G. Wells and other observers feel that this class is likely to put even more obstacles in the path of Socialism than the rich: "Much more likely to obstruct the way to Socialism," says Mr. Wells, "is the ignorance, the want of courage, the stupid want of imagination in the very poor, too shy and timid and clumsy to face any change they can evade! But even with them popular education is doing its work; and I do not fear but that in the next generation we will find Socialists even in the slums."[234]

"Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralyzing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering," says Oscar Wilde. "They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great employers of labor against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them."[235] It is the "very poor" who disbelieve the agitators. They must be embraced in every plan of social reconstruction, but they cannot be of much aid. The least skilled must rather be helped and those who can and do help them best are not any of their "superiors," but their blood brothers and sisters of the economic class just above them—the great mass of the unskilled workers.

The class of casual workers and the able-bodied but chronically under-employed play a very serious role in Socialist politics. It is the class from which, as Socialists point out, professional soldiers, professional strike breakers, and, to some extent, the police are drawn. Among German Socialists it is called the "lumpen proletariat," and both for the present and future is looked at with the greatest anxiety. It is not thought possible that any considerable portion of it will be brought into the Socialist camp in the near future, though some progress has been made, as with every other element of the working class. It is acknowledged that it tends to become more numerous, constantly recruited as it is from the increasing class of servants and other dependents of the rich and well-to-do.

But Socialists understand that the mercenary hirelings drawn from this class, and directly employed to keep them "in order," are less dangerous than the capitalists' camp followers. Bernard Shaw calls this second army of dependents "the parasitic proletariat." But he explains that he means not that they do not earn their living, but that their labor is unproductive. They are parasitic only in the sense that their work is done either for parasites or for the parasitical consumption of active capitalists. Nor is there any sharp line between proletarian and middle class in this element, since parts of both classes are equally conscious of their dependence. Shaw makes these points clear. His only error is to suppose that Socialists and believers in the class war theory, have failed to recognize them.

"Thus we find," says Shaw, "that what the idle man of property does is to plunge into mortal sin against society. He not only withdraws himself from the productive forces of the nation and quarters himself on them as a parasite: he withdraws also a body of propertyless men and places them in the same position except that they have to earn this anti social privilege by ministering to his wants and whims. He thus creates and corrupts a class of workers—many of them very highly trained and skilled, and correspondingly paid—whose subsistence is bound up with his income. They are parasites on a parasite; and they defend the institution of private property with a ferocity which startles their principal, who is often in a speculative way quite revolutionary in his views. They knock the class war theory into a cocked hat [I shall show below that class war Socialists, on the contrary, have always recognized, the existence of these facts, "whilst the present system lasts."—W. E. W.] by forming a powerful conservative proletariat whose one economic interest is that the rich should have as much money as possible; and it is they who encourage and often compel the property owners to defend themselves against an onward march of Socialism. Thus we have the phenomenon that seems at first sight so amazing in London: namely, that in the constituencies where the shopkeepers pay the most monstrous rents, and the extravagance and insolence of the idle rich are in fullest view, no Socialist—nay, no Progressive—has a chance of being elected to the municipality or to Parliament. The reason is that these shopkeepers live by fleecing the rich as the rich live by fleecing the poor. The millionaire who has preyed upon Bury and Bottle until no workman there has more than his week's sustenance in hand, and many of them have not even that, is himself preyed upon in Bond Street, Pall Mall, and Longacre.

"But the parasites, the West End tradesman, the West End professional man, the schoolmaster, the Ritz hotel keeper, the horse dealer and trainer, the impresario and his guinea stalls, and the ordinary theatrical manager with his half-guinea ones, the huntsman, the jockey, the gamekeeper, the gardener, the coachman, the huge mass of minor shopkeepers and employees who depend on these or who, as their children, have been brought up with a little crust of conservative prejudices which they call their politics and morals and religion: all these give to Parliamentary and social conservatism its real fighting force; and the more 'class conscious' we make them, the more they will understand that their incomes, whilst the present system lasts, are bound up with those of the proprietors whom Socialism would expropriate. And as many of them are better fed, better mannered, better educated, more confident and successful than the productive proletariat, the class war is not going to be a walkover for the Socialists."[236]

If we take into account both this "parasitic proletariat" and the "lumpen proletariat" previously referred to, it is clear that when the Socialists speak of a class struggle against the capitalists, they do not expect to be able to include in their ranks all "the people" nor even all the wage earners. This is precisely one of the things that distinguishes them most sharply from a merely populistic movement. Populist parties expect to include all classes of the "common people," and every numerically important class of capitalists. Socialists understand that they can never rely on the small capitalist except when he has given up all hope of maintaining himself as such, and that they are facing not only the whole capitalist class, but also their hirelings and dependents.

Socialists as a whole have never tended either to a narrowly exclusive nor to a vaguely inclusive policy. Nor have their most influential writers, like Marx and Liebknecht, given the wage earners a privileged position in the movement. I have quoted from Liebknecht. "Just as the democrats make a sort of a fetish of the words 'the people,'" wrote Marx to the Communists on resigning from the organization in 1851, "so you may make one of the word 'proletariat.'"

But it cannot be denied that many of Marx's followers have ignored this warning, and the worship of the words "proletariat" or "working class" 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 attitude on these questions is determined by the interests of the manual laborers."

"The Socialist Party," he continued, "is forced by its class 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 class 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 classes, except the capitalists. We may doubt as to whether the other non-capitalist classes will take kindly to this subordination or "benevolent assimilation" 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 class 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 class they may spring from, are compelled to join the proletariat and to fight its class struggles."[237] Even if this is true, these other classes 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 class, "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 classes, 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 masses out of which Social Democracy recruits its adherents, we must not forget that these classes, with the exception of the class-conscious wage-earners, are also a recruiting ground for our opponents; their influence on these classes 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 circumstances. It may put aside a liberal government only to put in its place a conservative or catholic one....

"Nevertheless the proletariat must demand democratic institutions under all circumstances, for the same reasons that, once it has obtained political power, it can only use its own class rule for the purpose of putting an end to all class rule. It is the bottommost of the social classes. It cannot gain political rights, at least not in its entirety, except if everybody gets them. Each of the other classes may become privileged under certain circumstances, but not the proletariat. The Social Democracy, the party of the class-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 circumstances 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 institutions 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 institutions which must be furthered by the proletariat in the interest of its own struggle for emancipation everywhere and under all circumstances. The referendum and initiative are institutions which may be very useful under certain circumstances if one does not overvalue these uses, but under other circumstances may cause great harm. The introduction of the initiative and referendum is, therefore, not to be striven for everywhere and under all circumstances, 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 masses 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 class 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 constitute 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 classes that are not too crushed to revolt, those whose chief means of support is socially useful labor and not the ownership 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 class. 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 class 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 class movement. But Socialism is something more than this, it is a class movement of a certain definite character, composed of classes 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 classes opposed to the capitalist class, the working class alone represents an invincible factor of social progress," and social democracy "addresses itself principally 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, asserts boldly, "We have no leaning towards democracy; all we want is a short supply of working-class autocracy."

Some of the ultra-revolutionists have gone so far in their hostility to all social classes 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."

"The skilled workingman," he says, "is not a proletarian. He has an interest to conserve, he has that additional skill for which he receives compensation in addition to his ordinary labor power."

Mr. Sladden adds that the real proletarian is "uncultured and uncouth in appearance," that he has "no manners and little education," and that his religion is "the religion of hate." Of course this is a mere caricature of the attitude of the majority of Socialists.

Some of the partisans of revolutionary unionism in this country are little less extreme. The late Louis Duchez, for example, reminds us that Marx spoke of the proletariat as "the lowest stratum of our present society," those "who have nothing to lose but their chains," and that he said that "along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, grows the revolt of the working class." It is true that Marx said these things and said them with emphasis. But he did not wish to make any rigid or dogmatic definition of "the proletariat" and much that he has said pointed to an entirely different conception than would be gained from these quotations.

In speaking of "the lowest stratum of society" Marx was thinking, not of a community divided into numerous strata, but chiefly of three classes, the large capitalists, the workers, and the middle class. It was the lowest of these three, and not the lowest of their many subdivisions, that he had in mind. From the first the whole Socialist movement has recognized the almost complete hopelessness, as an aid to Socialism, of the lowest stratum in the narrow sense, of what is called the "lumpen proletariat," the bulk of the army of beggars and toughs. Mr. Duchez undoubtedly would have accepted this point, for he wishes to say that the Socialist movement must be advanced by the organization of unions not among this class, but among the next lowest, economically speaking, the great mass of unskilled workers. This argument, also, that the unskilled have a better strategic position than the skilled on account of their solidarity and unity is surely a doubtful one. European Socialists, as a rule, have reached the opposite conclusion, namely, that it is the comparatively skilled workers, like those of the railways, who possess the only real possibility of leading in a general strike movement (see Chapters V and VI).

FOOTNOTES:

[234] H. G. Wells, "This Misery of Boots," p. 34.

[235] Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man under Socialism", (brochure).

[236] Bernard Shaw's series in the New Age (1908).

[237] Karl Kautsky, the New York Call, Nov. 14, 1909.

[238] Karl Kautsky, "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," pp. 124, 125, 138.

[239] Emile Vandervelde, "Le Socialisme Agraire," p. 236.



CHAPTER IV

SOCIALISM AND THE LABOR UNIONS

One of the grounds on which it is proposed by some Socialists to give manual labor a special and preferred place in the movement is that it is supposed to be the only numerically important non-capitalist element that is at all well organized or even organizable. Let us see, then, to what degree labor is organized and what are the characteristics of this organization.

First, the labor unions represent manual wage earners almost exclusively—not by intention, but as a matter of fact. They include only an infinitesimal proportion of small employers, self-employing artisans, or salaried employees.

Second, the unions by no means include all the manual wage earners, and only in a few industries do they include a majority. Those organized are, as a rule, the more developed and prosperous, the skilled or comparatively skilled workers.

Third, their method of action is primarily that of the strike and boycott—economic and not political. They demand certain legislation and in several cases have put political parties in the field; they exert a political pressure in favor of government employees. But their chief purpose, even when they do these things, is to develop an organization that can strike and boycott effectively; and to secure only such political and civil rights as are needed for this purpose.

The unions are primarily economic, and the Socialist Party is primarily political—both, to have any national power, must embrace a considerable proportion of the same industrial wage-earning class. It is evident that conflict between the two organizations is unnecessary and we find, indeed, that it arises only in exceptional cases. Many Socialists, however, look upon the unions primarily as an economic means, more or less important, of advancing political Socialism—while many unionists regard the Socialist parties primarily as political instruments for furthering the economic action of the unions.

There are several groups of Socialists, on the other hand, who ascribe to the economic action of the unions a part in attaining Socialism as important or more important than that they ascribe to the political action of the party. These include, first, all those for whom Socialism is to be brought about almost exclusively by wage earners, whether by political or by economic action; second, those who do not believe the capitalists will allow the ballot to be used for anti-capitalistic purposes; third, those who believe that, in spite of all that capitalists and capitalistic governments can do, strikes and boycotts cannot be circumvented and in the end are irresistible.

Other Socialists, agreeing that economic action, and therefore labor unions, both of the existing kind and of that more revolutionary type now in the process of formation, are indispensable, still look upon the Socialist Party as the chief instrument of Socialism. As these include nearly all Party members who are not unionists as well as a considerable part of the unionists, they are perhaps a majority—internationally.

As the correct relationship between Party and unions, Mr. Debs has indorsed the opinion of Professor Herron, who, he said, "sees the trend of development and arrives at conclusions that are sound and commend themselves to the thoughtful consideration of all trade unionists and Socialists." Professor Herron says that the Socialist is needed to educate the unionists to see their wider interests:—

"He is not to do this by seeking to commit trade-union bodies to the principles of Socialism. Resolutions or commitments of this sort accomplish little good. Nor is he to do it by taking a servile attitude towards organized labor nor by meddling with the details or the machinery of the trade unions. It is better to leave the trade unions to their distinctive work, as the workers' defense against the encroachments of capitalism, as the economic development of the worker against the economic development of the capitalist, giving unqualified support and sympathy to the struggles of the organized worker to sustain himself in his economic sphere. But let the Socialist also build up the character and harmony and strength of the Socialist movement as a political force, that it shall command the respect and confidence of the worker, irrespective of his trade or his union obligations. It is urgent that we so keep in mind the difference between the two developments that neither shall cripple the other."[240]

Here is a statement of the relation of the two movements that corresponds closely to the most mature and widespread Socialist opinion and to the decisions of the International Socialist Congresses.

This view also meets that of the unions in most countries. The President of the American Federation, Mr. Gompers, understands this thoroughly and quotes with approval the action taken recently by the labor unions in Sweden, Hungary, and Italy, which demand the enforcement of this policy of absolute "neutrality." Formerly the federation of the unions of Sweden, for example, agreed to use their efforts to have the local unions become a part of the local organization of the Social Democratic Party. These words providing for this policy were struck out of the constitution by the Convention of 1909, which at the same time adopted (by a considerable majority) a resolution that "by this decision it was not intended to break up the unity and solidarity of labor's forces, for the convention considers the Social Democratic Party as the natural expression of the political ambitions of the Swedish workers." A similar relation prevails in nearly every country of the Continent.

The Secretary of the German Federation (who is its highest officer)—a man who is at the same time an active Socialist,—has defined accurately the relation between the two organizations in that country. He says that the unions cannot accomplish their purposes without securing political representation "through a Party that is active in legislative bodies." This is also the view now of the British unions, which in overwhelming majority support the Labor Party. And they do this for the same purposes mentioned by Legien: to protect the working people from excessive exploitation, to enact into law the advantages already won by the unions, and so to smooth the way for better labor conditions. Similarly, the American Federation of Labor secures representation on legislative bodies, and hesitates to form a national Labor Party, not on principle, but only because American conditions do not in most localities promise that it would be effective.

Mr. Mitchell expresses the position of the American Federation when he says that the "wage earners should in proportion to their strength secure the nomination and the election of a number of representatives to the governing bodies of city, State, and nation," but that "a third Labor Party is not for the present desirable, because it would not obtain a majority and could not therefore force its will upon the community at large." The European Socialists would perhaps not understand the political principle of our governmental system, which requires a plurality in the State or nation in order to obtain immediate results. For in this country the more important branches of the government are the executive and judges, and these, unlike the legislatures, cannot as a rule be divided, and therefore give no opportunity for the representation of minorities, and are necessarily elected by State or national pluralities and usually by majorities. In the monarchical countries of the Continent either such officials are not elected, or their powers are circumscribed, and even England lies in this respect halfway between those countries and the United States. What Mr. Mitchell says is in so far true; it would certainly require a large number of elections before a party beginning on the basis of a minority of representatives in Congress or the legislatures could win enough control over the executive and judges to "force its will upon the community at large." Mr. Mitchell and the other leaders of the Federation are, it is seen, unwilling to undertake a campaign so long and arduous, and, since they have no means of attracting the votes of any but wage-earning voters, so doubtful as to its outcome.

Mr. Mitchell says that the workingmen in a separate party could not even secure a respectable minority of the legislators. The numerical strength of the Unions in proportion to the voting population is scarcely greater than it was when he wrote (1903), and what he said then holds true as ever to-day.

Mr. Gompers has also stated that labor would not be able to secure more than twenty-five or fifty Congressmen by independent political action. This is undoubtedly true, and we may take it for granted, therefore, that, unless the unions most unexpectedly increase their strength, there will be no national or even State-wide Trade Union or Labor Party in this country, though the San Francisco example of a city Labor party may be repeated now and then, and State organizations of the Socialist Party, which enjoy a large measure of autonomy, may occasionally, without changing their present names, reduce themselves to mere trade-union parties in the narrow sense of the term. President Gompers has claimed that 80 per cent of the voting members of the American Federation of Labor followed his advice in the election of 1908, which was, in nearly every case, to vote the Democratic ticket. There were not over 2,000,000 members of the Federation at this time, and of these (allowing for women, minors, and non-voting foreigners) there were not more than 1,500,000 voters. About 60 per cent of this number have always voted Democratic, so that if Mr. Gompers's claim were conceded it would mean a change of no more than 300,000 votes. It is true that such a number of voters could effect the election or defeat of a great many Democrats or Republican Congressmen, but, as Mr. Gompers says, it could only elect a score or two of Independents, a number which, as the example of Populism has shown, would be impotent under our political system. Moreover, as such a Congressional group would be situated politically not in the middle, but at one of the extremes, it could never hold the balance of power in this or any other country until it became a majority.

Mr. Mitchell is careful to qualify his opposition to the third party (or Labor Party) idea. He writes: "I wish it to be understood that this refers only to the immediate policy of the unions. One cannot see what the future of the dominant parties in the United States will be, and should it come to pass that the two great American political parties oppose labor legislation, as they now favor it, it would be the imperative duty of unionists to form a third party in order to secure some measure of reform."[241] Certainly both parties are becoming more and more willing to grant "some measure" of labor reform, so that Mr. Mitchell is unlikely to change his present position.

Whether the unions form a separate party or not, is to them a matter not of principle, but of ways and means, of time and place. Where they are very weak politically they seek only to have their representatives in other parties; where they are stronger they may form a party of their own to cooeperate with the other parties and secure a share in government; where they are strongest they will seek to gain control over a party that plays for higher stakes, brings to the unions the support of other elements, and remains in opposition until it can secure undivided control over government, e.g. the Socialist Party. Whether the unions operate through all parties or a Labor Party or a Socialist Party, is of secondary importance also to Socialists; what is of consequence is the character of the unions, and the effect of their political policy on the unions themselves. In all three cases the principles of the unions may be at bottom the same, and in any of the three cases they may be ready to use the Socialist Party for the sole purpose of securing a modest improvement of their wages—even obstructing other Party activities—as some of the German union leaders have done. They may also use a Labor Party for the same purpose—as in Great Britain. Or they may develop a political program without really favoring any political party or having any distinctive political aim—as in the United States.

The labor unions, even the most conservative, have always and everywhere had some kind of a political program. They have naturally favored the right to organize, to strike and boycott, free speech and a free press. They have demanded universal suffrage, democratic constitutions, and other measures to increase the political power of their members. They have favored all economic reform policies of which working people got a share, even if a disproportionately small one, and all forms of taxation that lightened their burdens.[242] And, finally, they have usually centered their attacks on the most powerful of their enemies, whether Emperor, Church, army, landlords, or large capitalists.

In economic and political reform, the American unions, like those of other countries, support all progressive measures, including the whole "State Socialist" program. As to political machinery, they favor, of course, every proposal that can remove constitutional checks and give the majority control over the government, such as the easy amendment of constitutions and the right to recall judges and all other officials by majority vote. Like the Socialists, they welcome the "State Socialist" labor program, government insurance for workingmen against old age, sickness, accidents, and unemployment, a legal eight-hour day, a legal minimum wage, industrial education, the prohibition of child labor, etc.

The unions and the parties they use also join in the effort of the small capitalist investors and borrowers, consumers and producers, to control the large interests—the central feature of the "State Socialist" policy. But the conservative unions do not stop with such progressive, if non-Socialist, measures; they take up the cause of the smaller capitalists also as competitors. The recent attack of the Federation of Labor on the "Steel Trust" is an example. The presidents of the majority of the more important unions, who signed this document, became the partisans not only of small capitalists who buy from the trust, sell to it, or invest in its securities, but also of the unsuccessful competitors that these combinations are eliminating. The Federation here spoke of "the American institution of unrestricted production," which can mean nothing less than unrestricted competition, and condemned the "Steel Trust" because it controls production, whereas the regulation or control of production is precisely the most essential thing to be desired in a progressive industrial society—a control, of course, to be turned as soon as possible to the benefit of all the people.

The Federation's attack was not only economically reactionary, but it was practically disloyal to millions of employees. It applies against the "trust," which happens to be unpopular, arguments which apply even more strongly to competitive business. The trust, it said, corrupts legislative bodies and is responsible for the high tariff. As if all these practices had not begun before the "trusts" came into being, as if the associated manufacturers are not even more strenuous advocates of all the tariffs—which are life and death matters to them—than the "trusts," which might very well get along without them. Finally, the Federation accuses the "Steel Trust" of an especially oppressive policy towards its working people, apparently forgetting its arch enemy, the manufacturer's association. It is notorious, moreover, that the smallest employers, such as the owners of sweat shops, nearly always on the verge of bankruptcy and sometimes on the verge of starvation themselves, are harder on their labor than the industrial combinations, and that in competitive establishments, like textile mills, the periods when employers are forced to close down altogether are far more frequent, making the average wages the year round far below those paid by any of the trusts. The merest glance at the statistics of the United States census will be sufficient evidence to prove this. For not only are weekly wages lower in the textile mills and several other industries than they are in the steel corporation, but also employment year in and year out is much more irregular. Here we see the unions adopting the politics of the small capitalists, not only on its constructive or "State Socialist" side, but also in its reactionary tendency, now being rapidly outgrown, of trying to restore competition, and actually working against their own best interests for this purpose.

A writer in the Federationist demands "a reduction of railway charges, express rates, telegraph rates, telephone rates," and a radical change in the great industrial corporations such as the Steel Trust, which is to be subjected to thorough regulation. Swollen fortunes are to be broken up, together with the power of the monopolists, of "the gamblers in the necessities of life, etc."[243] In this writer's opinion (Mr. Shibley), the monopolists are the chief cause of high prices and the only important anti-social group, and all the other classes of society have a common interest with the wage earners. But business interests, manufacturers, the owners of large farms, and employers in lines where competition still prevails, would also, with the fewest exceptions, take sides against the working people in any great labor conflict—as the history of every modern country for the past fifty years has shown. It is not "Big Business" or "The Interests," but business in general, not monopolistic employers, but the whole employing class, against which the unions have contended and always must contend—on the economic as well as the political field. Mr. Gompers and his associates, like Mr. Bryan and Senator La Follette, demand that the people shall rule, but they all depend upon the hundreds of thousands of business men as allies, who, if opposed to government by monopolies, are still more opposed to government by their employees or by the consumers of their products, and are certain to fight any political movement of which they are a predominating part.

The American Federation of Labor, and the majority of the labor unions comprising it, are thus seen to have a political program scarcely distinguishable from that of the radical wing of either of the large parties,—for it seeks little if any more than to join in with the general movement against monopolists and large capitalists in a conflict that can never be won or lost, since the leaders in the movement are themselves indirectly and at the bottom a part of the capitalist class.

The President of the American Federation views this partly reactionary and partly "State Socialist" program as being directed against "capitalism." "The votes of courageous and honest citizens in all civilized lands," says Mr. Gompers, "are cutting away the capitalistic powers' privilege to lay tribute on the producers. Capitalism, as a surviving form of feudalism,—the power to deprive the laborer of his product,—gives signs of expiring."[244] Democratic reform and improvement in economic conditions are apparently taken by Mr. Gompers as a sign that capitalism is expiring and that society is progressing satisfactorily to the wage earners. Although the constitution of the Federation says that the world-wide "struggle between the capitalist and the laborer" is a struggle between "oppressors and oppressed," Mr. Gompers gives the outside world to understand that the unions have no inevitable struggle before them, but are as interested in industrial peace as are the employers. He has expressed his interpretation of the purpose of the Federation in the single word "more." He sees progress and asks a share for the unionists as each forward step is taken. He does not ask that labor's share be increased in proportion to the progress made—to say nothing of asking that this share should be made disproportionately large in order gradually to make the distribution of income more equal. A capitalism inspired by a more enlightened selfishness might, without any ultimate loss, grant all the Federation's present demands, political as well as economic. Therefore, Mr. Gompers, quite logically, does not see any necessity for an aggressive attitude.

"Labor unions," says Mr. John Mitchell, who takes a similar view, "are for workmen, but against no one. They are not hostile to employers, not inimical to the interests of the general public. They are for a class, because that class exists and has class interests, but the unions did not create and do not perpetuate the class or its interests and do not seek to evoke a class conflict."[245] Here it is recognized that the working class exists as a class and has interests of its own. But, if, as Mr. Mitchell adds, the unions do not wish to perpetuate this class or its interests, then surely they must see to it, as far as they are able, that members of this class have equal industrial opportunities with other citizens, and that its children should at least be no longer compelled to remain members of a class from which, as he expressly acknowledges, there is at present no escape.

Both Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell have gone to the defense of the leading anti-Socialist organization in this country, Civic Federation—and nothing could draw in stronger colors than do their arguments the complete conflict of the Gompers-Mitchell labor union policy to that of the Socialists. Mr. Gompers defends the Federation as worthy of labor's respect on the ground that many of its most active capitalist members have shown a sustained sincerity, "always having in mind the rights and interests of labor," which is the very antithesis to the Socialist claim that nobody will always have in mind the rights and the interests of labor, except the laborers—and least of all those who buy labor themselves, or are intimately associated with those who buy labor.

Mr. Mitchell says that through the Civic Federation many employers have become convinced that their antagonism to unions was based on prejudice, and have withdrawn their opposition to the organization of the men in their plants. No doubt this is strictly true. It shows that the unions had been presented to the employers as being profitable to them. This, Socialists would readily admit, might be the case with some labor organizations as they have been shaped by leaders like Mr. Mitchell and conferences like those of the Civic Federation. To Socialists organizations that create this impression of harmony of interests do exactly what is most dangerous for the workers—that is, they make them less conscious and assertive of their own interests.

The Civic Federation, composed in large part of prominent capitalists and conservatives, endeavors to allay the discontent of labor by intimate association with the officers of the unions. Socialists have long recognized the tendency of trade-union leaders to be persuaded by such methods to the capitalist view. Eight years ago at Dresden, August Bebel had already seen this danger, for he placed in the same class with the academic "revisionists" those former proletarians who had been raised into higher positions and were lost to the working classes through "intercourse with people of the contrary tendency." It is this class of leaders, according to the Socialists, which, up to the present, has dominated the trade unions of Great Britain and the United States and occasionally of other countries.

No Socialist has been more persistent in directing working-class opinion against all such "leaders" than Mr. Debs, who does not mince matters in this direction. "The American Federation of Labor," he writes, "has numbers, but the capitalist class do not fear the American Federation of Labor; quite the contrary. There is something wrong with that form of unionism whose leaders are the lieutenants of capitalism; something is wrong with that form of unionism that forms an alliance with such a capitalist combination as the Civic Federation, whose sole purpose is to chloroform the working class while the capitalist class go through their pockets.... The old form of trade unionism no longer meets the demands of the working class. The old trade union has not only fulfilled its mission and outlived its usefulness, but is now positively reactionary, and is maintained, not in the interest of the workers who support it, but in the interest of the capitalist class who exploit the workers who support it."

In a recent speech Mr. Debs related at length the Socialist view as to how, in his opinion, this misleading of labor leaders comes about:—

"There is an army of men who serve as officers, who are on the salary list, who make a good living, keeping the working class divided. They start out with good intentions as a rule. They really want to do something to serve their fellows. They are elected officers of a labor organization, and they change their clothes. They now wear a white shirt and a standing collar. They change their habits and their methods. They have been used to cheap clothes, coarse fare, and to associating with their fellow workers. After they have been elevated to official position, as if by magic they are recognized by those who previously scorned them and held them in contempt. They find that some of the doors that were previously barred against them now swing inward, and they can actually put their feet under the mahogany of the capitalist.

"Our common labor man is now a labor leader. The great capitalist pats him on the back and tells him that he knew long ago that he was a coming man, that it was a fortunate thing for the workers of the world that he had been born, that in fact they had long been waiting for just such a wise and conservative leader. And this has a certain effect upon our new-made leader, and unconsciously, perhaps, he begins to change—just as John Mitchell did when Mark Hanna patted him on the shoulder and said, 'John, it is a good thing that you are at the head of the miners. You are the very man. You have the greatest opportunity a labor leader ever had on this earth. You can immortalize yourself. Now is your time.' Then John Mitchell admitted that this capitalist, who had been pictured to him as a monster, was not half as bad as he had thought he was; that, in fact, he was a genial and companionable gentleman. He repeats his visit the next day, or the next week, and is introduced to some other distinguished person he had read about, but never dreamed of meeting, and thus goes on the transformation. All his dislikes disappear, and all feeling of antagonism vanishes. He concludes that they are really most excellent people, and, now that he has seen and knows them, he agrees with them there is no necessary conflict between workers and capitalists. And he proceeds to carry out this pet capitalist theory, and he can only do it by betraying the class that trusted him and lifted him as high above themselves as they could reach.

"It is true that such a leader is in favor with the capitalists; that their newspapers write editorials about him and crown him a great and wise leader; and that ministers of the gospel make his name the text for their sermons, and emphasize the vital point that if all labor leaders were such as he, there would be no objections to labor organizations. And the leader feels himself flattered. And when he is charged with having deserted the class he is supposed to serve, he cries out that the indictment is brought by a discredited labor leader. And that is probably true. The person who brings a charge is very likely discredited. By whom? By the capitalist class, of course; and its press and pulpit and 'public' opinion. And in the present state of the working class, when he is discredited by the capitalists, he is at once repudiated by their wage slaves."[246]

Mr. Debs's attitude toward Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Gompers is by no means exceptional among Socialists. Mr. Gompers visited Europe in 1909, spoke at length in Paris and Berlin, and was viewed by the majority of the European Socialists and unionists almost exactly as he is by Mr. Debs. Among other things he said there, was that the very kernel of the difference between the European and the American labor movement and the reason why the wages are so much better in America than in Europe was the friendlier relations between the government and the working people in this country—this after all the recent court decisions against the unions, decisions which, even when outwardly milder, have precisely the same effect as the hostile legislation and administration of the Continent. Mr. Gompers, while in Europe, said that it was unnecessary that governments and the working people should misunderstand one another, and asked, "Is there not for us all the common ground of the fatherland, of common interest and the wish that we feel to make our people more prosperous, happier and freer?" "I do not know what I will see there [in Hungary]," he continued, "but this much I will say, that I know that nothing will convince me that this readiness of the workingmen to fight against the government and of the government to fight against the workingmen can bring anything good to either side."[247]

Such expressions naturally aroused the European Socialist and Labor press, and Kautsky even devoted a special article to Gompers in the Neue Zeit.[248] It was not necessary in a Socialist periodical to say anything against Gompers's preaching of the common interests of capital and labor, since there is practically no Socialist who would not agree that such a belief amounts to a total blindness to industrial and political conditions. But Kautsky feared that the German workingmen might give some credit to Gompers's claim that the non-Socialist policy of the American unions was responsible for the relatively greater prosperity of the working people in America. "The workingmen," he explained, referring to this country, "have not won their higher wages in the last decade, but have inherited them from their forefathers. They were principally a result of the presence of splendid lands from which every man who wanted to become independent got as much as he needed."

Then he proceeded to show by the statistics of the Department of Labor that daily real wages, measured in terms of what they would buy, had actually decreased for the majority of American workingmen during the last decade. It is true, as Mr. Gompers replied, that the hours have become somewhat less, and that therefore the amount of real wages received per hour of work has slightly increased, though there are few working people who will count themselves very fortunate in a decrease of hours if it is paid for even in a part by a decrease of the real wages received at the end of the day. And even if we compare the early nineties with the last years of the recent decade, we find that the slight increase in the purchasing power of the total wages received (i.e. real wages) amounted at the most to no more than two or three per cent in these fifteen years. In a word, the disproportion between the prosperity of the wage earning and capitalist classes has in the past two decades become much greater than ever before.

The basis of the Socialist economic criticism of existing society—and one that appeals to the majority of the world's labor unionists also—is that while the proportion of the population that consists of wage earners is everywhere increasing, the share of the national income that goes to wages is everywhere growing less. There is no more striking, easily demonstrable, or generally admitted fact in modern life. The whole purpose of Socialism—in so far as it can be expressed in terms of income, is to reverse this tendency and to keep it reversed until private capital is reduced to impotence, as far as the control of industry is concerned.

Contrast with the position of Gompers and Mitchell the chief official of the German unions, Karl Legien, a relatively conservative representative of Continental unionism.

"The unions," he says, "are based on the conviction that there is an unbridgeable gulf between capital and labor. This does not mean that the capitalists and laborers may not, as men, find points of contact; it means only that the accumulation of capital, resting as it does on keeping from the laborer a part of the products of his labor, forces a propertyless proletariat to sell its labor at any price it can get. Between those who wish to maintain these conditions and the propertyless laborers there is a wall which can be done away with only by the abolition of wage labor. Here the views prevailing in the unions are at one with those of the Social Democratic Party."

"The unions are chiefly occupied in the effort to use their power to shape the labor contract in their favor, and do not consider it as their task to propagate this view, but holds the propaganda as being the task rather of the Social Democratic Party and its organizations."

Even the struggle for higher wages and shorter hours carried on by the unions, Legien says, is fought in the consciousness that it will make labor "more capable of the final solution of the social problem." He reminds us that the overwhelming majority of the German unionists are Socialists, and says that the labor conflict itself must have led to this result, though he does not want the unions to support the party as unions. In other countries of the Continent, unionists go even farther. In Austria, Belgium, and elsewhere the two organizations act as a single body, and in France, not satisfied with working for Socialism as members of the party, unionists also make it a declared end of their unions, independently of all political action, and shape their everyday policies accordingly.

It is only when we come to Great Britain that we find the unions in a conciliatory relation with employers such as has hitherto prevailed in the United States. The relation between the unions and capitalistic "State Socialists" of Great Britain has been friendly. As I have already noted, the enthusiasm of the British unions for the social reforms of the Liberal Party and government has hitherto been so great that they consented that the increase of the taxation needed to pay for these reforms should fall on their shoulders, while the wealthy classes made the world ring with epithets of "revolution" because a burden of almost exactly the same weight was placed on them to pay for the Dreadnoughts they demanded, and because land was nationally taxed for the first time, Mr. Churchill himself conceded that his social reform budget "draws nearly as much from the taxation of tobacco and spirits, which are the luxuries of the working classes, who pay their share with silence and dignity, as it does from those wealthy classes upon whose behalf such heart-rending outcry is made."[249]

Perhaps the fact that the labor unions of Great Britain up to 1910 spent less than a tenth part of their income on strikes was a still stronger ground for Mr. Churchill's admiration, since he had to deal with the strikers as President of the Board of Trade. While the national income of the country has been increasing enormously in the past two decades, and the higher or taxed incomes have more than doubled (which is a rate of increase far greater than the rise in prices), the income even of unionized workers has not kept up with this rise. In a word, the propertied classes are getting a larger and larger share of the national income (see Mr. Churchill's language in preceding chapter). Now should the unions continue in the moderation of their demands,—or even should they obtain a 10 or 20 per cent increase (as some have done since the railway and seamen's strike of 1911),—the propertied classes would still have been getting a larger and larger share of the national income. From 1890 to 1899 prices in England are estimated to have fallen 5 per cent, while wages of organized working-men rose 2 per cent; from 1900 to 1908 prices rose 6 per cent, while these wages fell 1 per cent. A 7 per cent improvement in the first decade was followed by a 7 per cent retrogression in the second—among organized workers.[250] There is then no probability that the British unions will check the constant decrease in the share of the total wealth of the country that goes to the wage earner, until they have completed the reversal of older policies now in progress. That this may soon occur is indicated by the great strikes of 1911 (which I shall consider in the next chapter).

The American unions also are beginning to take a more radical and Socialistic attitude. At its Convention at Columbus, Ohio (January, 1911), the United Mine Workers, after prolonged discussion, passed by a large majority an amendment to their constitution, forbidding their officers from acting as members of the Civic Federation. This resolution was confessedly aimed at Mr. John Mitchell, as Vice President of the Civic Federation, and resulted in his resignation from that body. It marks a crisis in the American Labor movement. The Miners' Union had already indorsed Socialism, its Vice President is a party Socialist, and its present as well as its former President vote the Socialist ticket. Having forced the Federation of Labor to admit the revolutionary Western Federation of Miners into the Federation of Labor Congresses, the element opposed to Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell's conservative tactics has, for the first time, become formidable, embracing one third of the delegates, and is likely to bring about great changes within a few years, both as to the Federation's political and as to its labor-union policy.

This action of the Miners was followed a few months later by the election to office of several of Mr. Gompers's Socialist opponents in his own union (the Cigarmakers). Then another of Mr. Gompers's most valued lieutenants (after Mr. Mitchell), Mr. James O'Connell, for many years President of the very important Machinists' Union, was defeated by a Socialist, Mr. W. H. Johnston,—after a very lively contest in which Socialism and the Civic Federation, and their contrasting the labor policies, played a leading part. The old conservative trade unionism is not only going, but it is going so fast that one or two more years like the last would overwhelm it in the national convention of the Federation of Labor and revolutionize the policy of the whole movement.

The change in the political attitude of the American unions has been equally rapid. Until a few years ago the majority of them were opposed to cooeperation with any political party. Then they decided almost unanimously to act nationally, and for the time being with the Democrats, and this decision still holds. More recently several local labor parties have been formed, and the Socialist Party has occasionally been supported. The only question that interests us, however, is the purpose behind these changing political tactics.

It is natural that unionists on entering into the Socialist Party should seek to control it. Socialists make no objection at this point. The only question relates to their purpose in seeking control. A prominent Socialist miner, John Walker, has frankly advocated a Labor Party of the British type, while others wish to turn the Socialist Party into that sort of an organization; while the Secretary of the Oklahoma Federation of Labor, on joining the Party said: "Let us get into the Socialist Party—on the inside—and help run it as we think it should be run," and then gave an idea of how he proposed to run it by accusing the Party of containing too many people "who are Socialists before anything else." This is a common feeling among new labor-union recruits in the Party. It is difficult to see the difference between those who share Walker's view and want to carry out the present non-Socialist political program of the unions through a non-Socialist Labor Party and those who, like this other union official, expect to use the Socialist Party for the same purpose. Let us notice the similarity of certain arguments used in favor of each method.

"The Socialist Party," says the organ of the Garment Workers' Union, "does not command the confidence of American labor to the extent of becoming a national power in our day and generation, and it is, therefore, necessary that the working class should turn its attention to the formation of a party that will be productive of practical results in sweeping away the legislative and the legal obstacles that now stand in the way of our rights and progress."[251]