"The pure and simple unionist," says Kautsky, "is conservative, even when he behaves in a radical manner; on the other hand, every true and independent political party [Kautsky is speaking here of workingmen's organizations exclusively] is always revolutionary by its very nature, even when, according to its action, or even according to the consciousness of its members, it is still moderate." This again is the exact opposite of the syndicalists' position. They would say that a labor party unconnected with revolutionary economic action would necessarily be conservative, no matter how revolutionary it seemed. The truth from the broader revolutionary standpoint is doubtless that neither political nor economic action in isolation can long continue to be revolutionary. Exclusively economic action soon leads to exclusive emphasis on material and immediate gains, without reference to the relative position of the working class or its future; exclusively political action leads inevitably to concentration on securing democratic political machinery and reforms which by no means guarantee that labor is gaining on capital in the race for power.

To Kautsky a labor party, it would seem, might be sufficient in itself, even if economic action should, for any reason, become temporarily impossible:—

"The formation and the activity of a special labor party which wants to win political power for the working class already presupposes in a part of the laboring class a highly developed class consciousness. But the activity of this labor party is the most powerful means to awaken and to further class consciousness in the masses of labor, also. It knows only objects and tasks which have to do with the whole proletariat; the trade narrowness, the jealousies of single and separate organizations, find no place in it."[270]

It is easy to see how an equally strong case might be made out for the educative, unifying, and revolutionary effect of an aggressive labor union movement without any political features. The truth would seem to be that any form of organization that honestly represents the working class and is at the same time militant—and no other—advances Socialism. The objections to action exclusively political hold also against action exclusively economic. Both trade union action as such, which inevitably spends a large part of its energies in trying to improve economic conditions in our present society by trade agreements and other combinations with the capitalists, and political action as such, which is always drawn more or less into capitalistic efforts to improve present society by political means is fundamentally conservative. What Socialism requires is not a political party in the ordinary sense, but political organization and a political program; not labor unions, as the term has been understood, but aggressive and effective economic organization, available also for the most far-reaching economic and political ends.

It seems probable that the anti-political element in the new revolutionary unionism will soon be outgrown. When this happens, it will meet the revolutionary majority of the Socialists on an identical platform. For this revolutionary majority is steadily laying on more weight on economic organization.

FOOTNOTES:

[253] The New York Call, Nov. 13, 1911.

[254] Edmond Kelly, "Twentieth-Century Socialism," p. 152.

[255] The Socialist Review (London), September, 1910.

[256] Winston Churchill, op. cit., p. 73.

[257] The Socialist Review (London), October, 1911.

[258] The profound opposition between the "State Socialism" of the Labour Party and the revolutionary aims and methods of genuine Socialism and the new labor unionism appeared more clearly in the coal strike of 1912 than it had in the railway strike of the previous year. As Mr. Lloyd George very truthfully remarked in Parliament, no leaders of the Labour Party had committed themselves to syndicalism, while syndicalism and socialism [i.e. the socialism of the Labour Party] were mutually destructive. "We can console ourselves with the fact," said Mr. Lloyd George, "that the best policeman for the syndicalists is the socialist [i.e. the Labourite]."

The conduct of many of the Labour Party leaders during this strike, as during the railway strike, fully justified the confidence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. MacDonald, for example, spoke of syndicalism in much the same terms as those used by Mr. Lloyd George. He viewed it as evil, to be obviated by greater friendliness and consideration on the part of employers towards employees, a position fully endorsed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the other Radicals of the British Cabinet.

The coal strike throughout was, indeed, almost a repetition of the railway strike. What I have said of the one applies, with comparatively slight changes, to the other. Even the so-called Minimum Wage Law is essentially identical with the methods adopted to determine the wages of railway employees.

[259] The New York Call, April 17, 1910.

[260] The International Socialist Review, June, 1911.

[261] The Industrial Syndicalist (London), July and September, 1910.

[262] Le Mouvement Socialiste (Paris), 1909, article entitled, "Plechanoff contre les Syndicalistes."

[263] "Le Federation des Bourses de Travail de France," p. 67.

[264] Hubert Lagardelle, Le Socialisme Ouvrier (Paris), 1911.

[265] Le Mouvement Socialiste, 1909, article entitled, "Classe Sociale et Parti Politique."

[266] Hubert Lagardelle, "Syndicalisme et Socialisme" (Paris), p. 52.

[267] Hubert Lagardelle, "Syndicalisme et Socialisme" (Paris), p. 50.

[268] Paul Louis, "Le Syndicalisme contre l'Etat," pp. 4-7.

[269] Paul Louis, "Le Syndicalisme contre l'Etat," p. 244.

[270] Karl Kautsky, "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," pp. 136 and 137.



CHAPTER VI

THE "GENERAL STRIKE"

Nearly all strikes are more or less justified in Socialist eyes. But those that involve neither a large proportion of the working class nor any broad social or political question are held to be of secondary importance. On the other hand, the "sympathetic" and "general" strikes, which are on such a scale as to become great public issues, and are decided by the attitude of public opinion and the government rather than by the employers and employees involved, are viewed as a most essential part of the class struggle, especially when in their relation to probable future contingencies.

The social significance of such sympathetic or general strikes is indeed recognized as clearly by non-Socialists as by Socialists—even in America, since the great railroad strike of 1894. The general strike of 1910 in Philadelphia, for instance, was seen both in Philadelphia and in the country at large as being a part of a great social conflict. "The American nation has been brought face to face for the first time with a strike," said the Philadelphia North American, "not merely against the control of an industry or a group of allied industries, but a strike of class against class, with the lines sharply drawn.... And it is this antagonism, this class war, intangible and immeasurable, that constitutes the largest and most lamentable hurt to the city. It is, moreover, felt beyond the city and throughout the entire nation." (My italics). It goes without saying that all organs of non-Socialist opinion feel that such threatening disturbances are lamentable, for they certainly may lead towards a revolutionary situation. Both in this country and Great Britain the great railway strike of 1911 was almost universally regarded in this light.

The availability of a general strike on a national scale as a means of assaulting capitalism at some future crisis or as a present means of defending the ballot or the rights of labor organizations or of preventing a foreign war, has for the past decade been the center of discussion at many European Socialist congresses. The recent Prime Minister of France, Briand, was long one of the leading partisans of this method of which he said only a few years before he became Premier: "It has the seductive quality that it is after all the exercise of an incontestable right. It is a revolution which commences with legality. In refusing the yoke of misery, the workingman revolts in the fullness of his rights; illegality is committed by the capitalist class when it becomes a provocator by trying to violate a right which it has itself consecrated." That Briand meant what he said is indicated by the advice he gave to soldiers who might be ordered to fire against the strikers in such a crisis. "If the order to fire should persist," said Briand, "if the tenacious officer should wish to constrain the will of the soldiers in spite of all.... Oh, no doubt the guns might go off, but it might not be in the direction ordered"—and the universal assumption of all public opinion at that time and since was that he was advising the soldiers that under these circumstances they would be justified in shooting their officers.

The Federation of Labor of France has long adopted the idea of the general strike as appropriate for certain future contingencies, as has also the French Socialist Party—"To realize the proposed plan," the Federation declares, "it will be necessary first of all to put the locomotives in a condition where they can do no harm, to stop the circulation of the railways, to encourage the soldiers to ground their arms."

As thus conceived by Briand and the Federation, few will question the revolutionary character of the proposed general strike. But in what circumstances do the Socialists expect to be able to make use of this weapon? The Socialists of many countries have given the question careful consideration in hundreds of writings and thousands of meetings, including national and international congresses. Through the gradual evolution of the plans of action developed in all these conferences and discussions, they have come to distinguish sharply between a really general strike, e.g. a nation-wide railroad strike, when used for revolutionary purposes, and other species of widespread strikes which have merely a tendency in a revolutionary direction, such as the Philadelphia trouble I have mentioned, and they have decided from these deliberations, as well as considerable actual experience, just what forms of general strike are most promising and under what contingencies each form is most appropriate. Henriette Roland-Holst has summed up the whole discussion and its conclusions in an able monograph (indorsed by Kautsky and others) from which I shall resume a few of the leading points.[271] She concludes that railroad strikes for higher wages, unless for some modest advance approved by a large part of the public, like the recent British strike (which, in view of the rising cost of living, was literally to maintain "a living wage"), can only lead to a ferocious repression. For a nation-wide railroad strike is paid for by the whole nation, and its benefits must be nation-wide if it is to secure the support of that part of the public without which it is foredoomed to failure. Otherwise, says Roland-Holst, "the greater has been the success of the working people at the beginning, the greater has been the terror of the middle classes," and as a consequence the measures of repression in the end have been proportionately desperate. But this applies only when such strikes are for aggressive ends, like that of 1910 in France, and promise nothing to any element of society except the employees immediately involved.

If a nation-wide railroad strike or a prolonged coal strike is aggressive, it will inevitably be lost unless it has a definite public object. And the only aggressive political aim that would justify, in the minds of any but those immediately involved, all the suffering and disorder a railroad strike of any duration would entail, would be a social revolution to effect the capture of government and industry. The only other circumstances in which such a strike might be employed with that support of a part at least of the public which is essential to its success would be as a last resort, when some great social injustice was about to be perpetrated, like a declaration of war, or an effort to destroy the Socialist Party or the labor unions. Jaures says rightly, that even then it would be "a last and desperate means less suited to save one's self than to injure the enemy."

These conclusions as to the possibilities and limitations of the general strike are based on a careful study of the military and other powers of the existing governments. "The power of the modern State," says Roland-Holst, "is superior to that of the working class in all its material bases either of a political or of an economic character. The fact of political strikes can change this in no way. The working class can no more conquer economically, through starvation, than it can through the use of powers of the same kind which the State employs, that is, through force. In only one point is the working class altogether superior to the ruling class—in purpose.... Governmental and working class organizations are of entirely different dimensions. The first is a coercive, the second a voluntary, organization. The power of the first rests primarily on its means of physical force; that of the latter, which lacks these means, can break the physical superiority of the State only by its moral superiority." It is almost needless to add that by "moral superiority" Roland-Holst means something quite concrete, the willingness of the working people to perform tasks and make sacrifices for the Socialist cause that they would not make for the State even under compulsion. It is only through advantages of this kind, which it is expected will greatly increase with the future growth of the movement, that Socialists believe that, supported by an overwhelming majority of the people, a time may arrive when they can make a successful use of the nation-wide general strike. It is hoped that the support of the masses of the population will then make it impossible for governments to operate the railroads by military means, as they have hitherto done in Russia, Hungary, France, and other countries. It is thought by many that the general strike of 1905 in Russia, for example, might have attained far greater and more lasting results if the peasants had been sufficiently aroused and intelligent to destroy the bridges and tracks, and it is not doubted that a Socialist agricultural population consisting largely of laborers (see Chapter II) would do this in such a crisis.

Here, then, are the two conditions under which it is thought by Roland-Holst and the majority of Socialists that the general strike may some day prove the chief means of bringing about a revolution: the active support of the majority of the people, and the superior organization and methods and the revolutionary purpose of the working classes.

In the preparation of the working people to bring about a general strike when the proper time arrives, lies a limitless field for immediate Socialist activity. Both Jaures and Bebel feel that it is even likely that the general strike will also have to be used on a somewhat smaller scale even before the supreme crisis comes. Jaures thinks that it will be needed to bring about essential reforms or to prevent war, and Bebel believes that it will very likely have to be used to defend existing political and economic rights of the working class; in other words, to protect the Party and the unions from destruction. At the Congress at Jena in 1905 the conservative trade union official, von Elm, together with a majority of the speakers, argued that it was possible that an attempt would be made to take away from the German working people the right of suffrage, the freedom of the press and assemblage and the right of organization. In such a case he and others advocate a general strike, though he said he fully realized it would be a bloody one. "We must reckon with this," he said. "As a matter of course, we wish to shed no blood, but our enemies drive us into the situation.... The moment comes when you must be ready to give up your blood and your property [here he was interrupted by stormy applause]. Prepare yourselves for this possibility. Our youths must be brought up so that among the soldiers here and there will be a man who will think twice before he shoots at his father and mother [as Kaiser Wilhelm publicly insists he must], and at the same time at freedom." The reception of von Elm's speech showed that his words represented the feeling of the whole German movement. Bebel spoke with the same decision, advocating the use of the general strike under the same conditions as did von Elm, while at the next congress at Mannheim he declared that it would also be justified, under certain circumstances, not only for protecting existing rights, but for extending them, e.g. for the purpose of obtaining universal and equal suffrage in Prussia. Bebel did not think that the party or the unions were strong enough at that moment to use the general strike for other than defensive purposes, but he said that, if they were able to double their strength,—and it now seems they will have accomplished this within a very few years,—then the time would doubtless arrive when it would be worth while to risk the employment of this rather desperate measure for aggressive purposes also.

While Socialism is thus traveling steadily in the direction of a revolutionary general strike, capitalist governments are coming to regard every strike of the first importance as a sort of rebellion. In discussing the Socialist possibilities of a national railroad strike, Roland-Holst, representing the usual Socialist view, says that it makes very little difference whether the roads are nationally or privately owned; in either case such a strike is likely to be considered by capitalistic governments as something like rebellion.

But while this applies only to the employees of the most important services like railroads, when privately operated, it applies practically to all government employees; there is an almost universal tendency to regard strikes against the government as being mutiny—an evidence of the profoundly capitalistic character of government ownership and "State Socialism" which propose to multiply the number of such employees. Here, too, the probable governmental attitude towards a future general strike is daily indicated.

President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, has written that any strike of "servants of the State, in any capacity—military, naval, or civil," should be considered both treason and mutiny.

"In my judgment loyalty and treason," he writes, "ought to mean the same thing in the civil service that they do in military and naval services. The door to get out is always open if one does not wish to serve the public on these terms. Indeed, I am not sure that as civilization progresses loyalty and treason in the civil services will not become more important and more vital than loyalty and treason in the military and naval services. The happiness and the prosperity of a community might be more easily wrecked by the paralysis of its postal and telegraph services, for example, than by a mutiny on shipboard.... President Roosevelt's attitude on all this was at times very sound, but he wabbled a good deal in dealing with specific cases. In the celebrated Miller Case at the Government Printing Office he laid down in his published letter what I conceive to be the sound doctrine in regard to this matter. It was then made plain to the printers that to leave their work under pretense of striking was to resign, in effect, the places which they held in the public service, and that if those places were vacated they would be filled in accordance with the provisions of the civil service act, and not by reappointment of the old employees after parley and compromise.... To me the situation which this problem presents is, beyond comparison, the most serious and the most far-reaching which the modern democracies have to face." Dr. Butler concludes that this question "will wreck every democratic government in the world unless it is faced sturdily and bravely now, and settled on righteous lines." (My italics.)[272]

Our Ex-President, however, has ceased apparently to "wabble." In Mr. Roosevelt's medium, the Outlook, an editorial on the strike of the municipal street cleaners of New York City reads in part as follows:—

Men who are employed by the public cannot strike. They can, and sometimes they do, mutiny. When they should be treated not as strikers but as mutineers.

This issue was presented by the refusal of the men to do what they were ordered to do. When soldiers do that in warfare they are given short shrift. Of course, in combating accumulating dirt and its potent ally, disease, an army of street cleaners is not face to face with any such acute public dangers as those confronting a military force; and therefore insubordination among street cleaners does not call for any such severity as that which is absolutely necessary in war times; but the principle in the one case is the same as that in the other—those who disrupt the forces of public defense range themselves on the side of the public enemy. They are not in any respect on the same basis as the employees of a private employer. They are wage earners only in the sense that soldiers are wage earners.[273]

When Senator La Follette indorsed the right of railway mail clerks to organize, President Taft said (May 14, 1911):—

"This presents a very serious question, and one which, if decided in favor of the right of government employees to strike and use the boycott, will be full of danger to the government and to the republic.

"The government employees of France resorted to it and took the government by the throat. The executive was entirely dependent upon these employees for its continuance.

"When those in executive authority refused to acquiesce in the demands, the government employees struck, and then with the helplessness of the government and the destruction of all authority and the choking of government activities it was seen that to allow government employees the use of such an instrument was to recognize revolution as a lawful means of securing an increase in compensation for one class, and that a privileged class, at the expense of all the public....

"The government employees are a privileged class whose work is necessary to carry on the government and upon whose entry into the government service it is entirely reasonable to impose conditions that should not be and ought not to be imposed upon those who serve private employers."

Here the Socialists join issue squarely with the almost universally prevalent non-Socialist opinion. They do not consider government employment a "privilege" nor any strike whatever as "mutiny," "treason," or "rebellion." Socialists believe that the only possible means of maintaining democracy at all in this age when government employees are beginning to increase in numbers more rapidly than those of private industry, is that they should be allowed to maintain their right to organize and to strike—no matter how great difficulties it may involve. To decide the question as President Butler wishes, or as President Taft implies it should be decided, Socialists believe, would mean to turn every government into a military organization. The time is not far distant when in all the leading nations a very large part and in some cases a majority of the population will be in government employment. If even the present limited rights of organization are done away with, and the military laws of subordination are applied, Socialists ask, shall we not have exactly that military and autocratic bureaucracy, that "State Socialism" which Spencer so rightly feared? The fact that these perfectly legal and necessary strikes may some day lead to revolution is capitalism's misfortune, which society will not permit it to cure by turning the clock back to absolutism. The question of the organization of government employees, one of the most important to-day, will, as President Butler says, be the crucial question of the near future.

It is in France that the question has come to the first test, not because the French bureaucracy is more numerous than that of Prussia and some other Continental countries, but because of the powerful democratic and Socialist tendency that has grown up along with this bureaucracy and is now directed against it. Especially interesting is the fact that Briand, who not long ago advocated the Socialist general strike and certainly realized its danger to present government as well as its possibilities for Socialism, has, as Premier, evolved measures of repression against organizations of State employees more stringent than have been introduced in any country making the slightest pretension to democratic or semi-democratic government.

The world first became aware of the importance of this issue at the time of the organization and the strike of the French telegraphers and post office employees in the early part of 1909, and again in the railway strike in 1910. As early as 1906 the organized postal employees had been definitely refused the right to strike, and it became manifest that if they attempted to use this weapon to correct the very serious grievances under which they suffered, it would be looked upon as "a kind of treason against the State." At the end of 1908, however, after having discussed the matter for many years, a congress of all the employees of the State was held. More than twenty different associations participated and decided unanimously to claim the full rights of other labor organizations. Finally, when these organizations appealed to the General Federation of Labor to help them, there came the strike of 1909. Unfortunately for the postmen, the French railway and miners' unions were at the moment still in relatively conservative hands, and the majority of their members were as yet by no means anxious to aid in the general strike movement. After a brilliant success in their first effort, a second strike a few weeks later proved a total failure.

The government then began to make it clear that public employees were to be allowed no right to strike, and Jaures pointed out that it was trying to carry this new repressive legislation by accompanying it by new pension laws and other concessions to the State employees,—a repetition of the old policy of more bread and less power, which is likely to play a more and more important role every year as we enter into the State capitalistic period.

The character of the organizations allowed for government employees, under the new laws, would remind one of Prussia or Russia rather than France. While certain forms of association are permitted, the right to strike is precluded, and the various associations of government employees are forbidden either to form any kind of federation or to unite with other unions outside of government employments. "Councils of discipline are created where the employees are represented," but "in the case of a collected or concerted cessation of work all disciplinary penalties may be inflicted without the intervention of the councils of discipline; courts may order the dissolution of any union at the request of the ministry," which means that at any moment a police war may be instituted against these organizations, in the true Russian style.

The reply of the postmen's organization to this kind of legislation is, that the administration of the post office is an industrial and commercial administration; that it is a vast enterprise of general utility; that the notion of loyalty or treason is entirely misplaced in this field. They have declared that the new legislation is wrong "because it perpetuates the bureaucratic tradition; because with a contempt for all the necessities of modern life it discountenances organization of labor; because it has constituted a repressive legal condition for wage earners; and because it is an act of authority which has nothing in common with free contract."

Here we see the public employees, supported by the Socialists, insisting on industrial and commercial considerations, on the rights of individuals and on free contract, as against the capitalists and governing classes, who claim to defend these very principles from supposed Socialist attacks, but abandon them the moment they threaten capitalist profits and capitalist rule. This attitude of the French Socialist shows the very heart of the Socialist situation. In fact, it is only as private capitalism becomes State capitalism, or "State Socialism," that Socialists will be able to show what their position really is. It is only then that the coercive aspect of capitalism, which is now partly latent and partly obscured by certain functions that it has still to fill in the development of society, will become visible to all eyes.

The French railroad strike of October, 1910, brought the question of organizations of government employees still more into international prominence. Until the recent British upheaval it was, perhaps, the greatest and most menacing strike in modern history. It is true that its apparent object was only a few just, and relatively insignificant economic concessions—which were granted for the most part immediately after the struggle. But behind these, as every one realized, lay the question of the right of government employees to organize and to strike and the determination of the French Socialists and labor unionists to use the opportunity to take a step towards the "general strike."

Never has the issue between capitalism and Socialism been more sharply defined than in Premier Briand's impulsively frank declaration after the strike (though it was later retracted): "I say emphatically, if the laws have not given the government the means of keeping the country master of its railways and the national defense, it would not have hesitated to take recourse to illegality."

This is almost the exact declaration of Ex-President Roosevelt in his Decoration Day speech in 1911, when he said that really revolutionary men dreaded and hated him because they knew that he wouldn't let the Constitution stand in the way of punishing them if they did wrong.

Milder but no less positive expressions of an intention to use illegal means to coerce labor, if it does not act as present authorities dictate, were to be heard from responsible sources both in England and America after the recent British railway strike. The non-Socialist press then came almost unanimously to the conclusion that an attempt must be made to take away the sole weapon by which labor is able to protect itself or advance its position as soon as "the public" is damaged by its use—which amounts to reducing wage earners to the status of children, soldiers, or other wards of the community. "If railroad and telegraph strikes are many and violent," said Collier's Weekly, "they will encourage government ownership without unionization."[274]

The Outlook stopped short of government ownership, but announced a similar principle: "The railways are public highways; they must be controlled by the nation for the public good; the operation of the railways must not be stopped because of disputes; and, as a corollary to this last law of necessity, the government must furnish an adequate and just method of settling railway disputes."[275] Every step in government control is to be accompanied by a step in the control of labor, and restriction of the power of labor unions. The right of employees to protect themselves by leaving their work in a body is to be taken away completely, while the right to discharge or punish is to remain intact in persons over whom the employees can have little or no control.

Governments are evidently ready to proceed to illegality for the sake of self-preservation—even from a perfectly legal attack, if it threatens to destroy them or to transfer the government into the hands of the non-capitalist classes. Of course a capitalist government can pass "laws," e.g. martial law, under which anything it chooses to do against its opponents becomes "legal" and anything effective its opponents do becomes illegal. In the present age of general enlightenment, however, this method does not even deceive Russian peasants. But the French government is now turning to this device. Briand explained away his sensational declaration above quoted, and then proposed a law by which striking on a railway becomes a crime and almost a felony. This met universal approval in the capitalistic press and universal denunciation in that of the Socialists and labor unions. The Boston Herald, for example, said: "The Executive must be armed with greater authority than he now possesses. No Premier must be forced to say, as M. Briand did recently, that, with or without law, national supremacy will be preserved in case it is challenged by allied workers for the State, as well as by other toilers." Here there is no effort to disguise the fact that the new legal form is the exact equivalent of the illegal force formerly proposed.

Now the peasants and the lower middle classes of France, as well as the working people (land and opportunities being more and more difficult to obtain), are becoming extremely radical. Though they do not send Socialist deputies to the Chamber, they send representatives who are very suspicious of arbitrary, undemocratic, and centralized authority. Only 215 members of the Chamber could be induced to approve of the government's conduct during the strike of 1910, while more than 200 abstained from voting on this point, and 166 voted in the negative. The proposed measures of repression were carried by a small majority, but it is not likely that they can be enforced many years without bringing about another and far more revolutionary crisis. Briand and his associates, Millerand and Viviani, were forced to resign, partly on account of their conduct in this strike, and it is possible that after another election or two the Chamber will no longer give its consent to this relegation of workingmen to the status of common soldiers. Only six months after the strike, Briand's successor, Monis, with the consent of the Chamber, was bringing governmental pressure to bear on the privately owned railways to force them to take back dismissed strikers. In the next ministry, that of Caillaux, the Minister of Labor, Augagneur, the former Socialist, pursued the same policy of pressing for the reinstatement of a large part of the discharged employees of the private railroads while insisting that the employees of government railroads could not be allowed to strike. And again, at the end of 1911, the government secured only 286 votes in favor of this policy, to 193 against it.[276]

France is by no means the only country where the question of strikes of government employees has become all-important. When the railways were nationalized in Italy there was considerable Socialist opposition on the ground that the employees were likely to lose a part of such rights as they had had when in private employment, and it turned out just as was feared. The position of the Italian Socialists on the subject is as interesting as that of the French. The Congress at Florence in 1908 resolved that "considering the fact that a strike of municipalized or nationalized services represents, not the struggle of the proletariat against a private capitalistic enterprise, but the conflict of a class against the collectivity, whence the difficulty of its success, the employees in public service ought to be advised not to proclaim a strike unless urged on by the most compelling motives and when every other means have failed;" but "taking it into consideration at the same time that in the present condition of society the working people in public service have no other means to guarantee the defense of their rights, and that in critical moments of history the suspension of public services is among the most efficacious arms of which the proletariat can avail itself to disorganize the defense of the government, any disposition to bring into legislation the principle of the abolition of the right to strike is dangerous" and "any attempt in that direction" must be defeated.

The gulf between those who consider the collective refusal of the organizations of government employees to work under conditions they do not accept, as being "treason" and "mutiny," and those who feel that such an organization is the very basis of industrial democracy of the future and the sole possible guarantee of liberty, is surely unbridgeable.

The clash between the classes on this question of livelihood and liberty is already momentous, but its full significance can only be realized when the Socialist aim is recalled. As employees of railroads, of governments, and of industries become Socialists, they will not only be ready to strike to raise their wages, or to protect the unions and the Socialist Party, or to prevent military reaction, but also—when they have the majority with them—to take possession of government.

An editorial in the New York Call (October 31, 1911) shows how most American Socialists expect the general strike to work:—

"The failure of one 'general' strike, or any attempt to carry out a general strike, does not bankrupt or destroy the working class, for the reason that it is that class which holds the future in its hands. Nor does such failure help capitalism—the decaying system—in any way. On the contrary, it helps disintegrate it, and the failure itself is merely the necessary prelude to a still stronger assault by the same method. The general strike seems to be like what is said of democracy, that the cure for democracy is still more democracy. In the same way the cure for the general strike is to make it still more 'general' in character. The less 'general' it is, the less chance has it of success, and the more 'general' it can be made, the more certain is it of success.

"And that success may not, and very likely will not, take the form hoped for by those who advocate it as a means of immediate or even ultimate social revolution. But even this, if true, is no argument against its use. It will, however, bring the social revolution nearer in other ways.

"We hardly, for instance, expect to see the capitalists, paralyzed by the most 'general' of general strikes surrender their property offhand to the victorious proletariat in despair of being able to operate it themselves. Much as we would like to see the working class march in and take possession of the abandoned factories and workshops in this manner, and commence operations under their collective ownership, the vision can only remain while other factors are disregarded. There is possibly much more flexibility and elasticity in the capitalist system than is usually imagined by Socialists. As William Morris tells old John Ball, the 'rascal hedge-priest,' 'Mastership hath many shifts' before it finally goes down and out.

"If we were to venture an opinion, the course and procedure of the general strike, with special reference to the railroads and allied industries, will follow something in this order.

"General strikes will succeed one another intermittently, each becoming more 'general,' the method finally establishing itself as a settled policy of the workers in enforcing their demands. Some may fail, but from time to time they will grow more 'general' and more powerful, and will wrest more concessions from the owners, until the point is reached where the railroad business will return practically no private profits to its owners. And when this point is reached, or the certainty of its being reached is plainly seen, then mastership will make its next shift. There will be two alternatives.

"The first is literal, physical suppression, by the armed forces of the nation still under control of the capitalists, and greatly augmented for the purpose. This, however, for a multitude of reasons, is a most dangerous policy and much more 'impossible' than the general strike. Instead of postponing social revolution, it rather accelerates its approach.

"The other alternative, and the one by all means most likely to be adopted, is government ownership of the railroads, with the capitalists, of course, as owners of the government. This will undoubtedly be ushered in as 'State Socialism.' Laws will be passed constituting the railroad workers as direct servants of the State, and forbidding the general strike or any other kind of strike.

"The prohibition will not have the desired effect. If attempted to be enforced, it merely throws capitalist society back on the first dangerous alternative policy we have mentioned. But it will give capitalism a breathing spell, and a chance to 'spar for wind' for a while, which is the best it can expect. The general strike will still be utilized to assail the capitalist State and its property.

"The final struggle will be a political one, for the capture of the State from the hands of the capitalists, and such capture will mean the transfer of capitalist State-owned property to collective property and the establishment of industrial democracy, or Socialism."

FOOTNOTES:

[271] The following quotations are taken from the brochure, "Der Generalstreik," by Henriette Roland-Holst (Dresden, 1905).

[272] From a private letter published editorially in the New York Sun.

[273] The Outlook, Nov. 25, 1911.

[274] Collier's Weekly, Sept. 2, 1911.

[275] The Outlook, Aug. 26, 1911.

[276] Die Neue Zeit, Oct. 27, 1911.



CHAPTER VII

REVOLUTION IN DEFENSE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT

"The workers do not yet understand," says Debs, "that they are engaged in a class struggle, and must unite their class and get on the right side of that struggle economically, politically, and in every other way—strike together, vote together, and, if necessary, fight together."[277] Socialists are prepared to use force when governments resort to arbitrary violence—for example, to martial "law." In the Socialist view no occasion whatever justifies the suspension of the regular government the people has instituted—and even if such an occasion could arise there is no authority to which they would consent to give arbitrary power. Military "government" is not government, but organized violence.

Tolstoi's masterly language on this matter will scarcely be improved upon:—

"The slavery of the working people is due to this, that there are governments. But if the slavery of the laborers is due to the government, the emancipation is naturally conditioned by the abolition of the existing governments and the establishment of new governments,—such as will make possible the liberation of the land from ownership, the abolition of taxes, and the transference of the capital and the factories into the power and control of the working people.

"There are men who recognize this issue as possible, and who are preparing themselves for it.... So long as the soldiers are in the hands of the government, which lives on taxes and is connected with the owners of land and of capital, a revolution is impossible. And so long as the soldiers are in the hands of the government, the structure of life will be such as those who have the soldiers in their hands want it to be.

"The governments, who are already in possession of a disciplined force, will never permit the formation of another disciplined force. All the attempts of the past century have shown how vain such attempts are. Nor is there a way out, as the Socialists believe, by means of forming a great economic force which would be able to fight successfully against the consolidated and ever more consolidating force of the capitalists. Never will the labor unions, who may be in possession of a few miserable millions, be able to fight against the economic power of the multimillionaires, who are always supported by the military force. Just as little is there a way out as is proposed by other Socialists, by getting possession of the majority of the Parliament. Such a majority in the Parliament will not attain anything, so long as the army is in the hands of the governments. The moment the decrees of the Parliament are opposed to the interests of the ruling classes, the government will close and disperse such a parliament, as has been so frequently done and as will be done so long as the army is in the hands of the government."

Tolstoi, in spite of his contrary impression, here reaches conclusions which are the same as those of the Socialists; for they are well aware that armies are likely to be used to dissolve Parliaments and labor unions.

"The introduction of socialistic principles into the army will not accomplish anything," Tolstoi continues. "The hypnotism of the army is so artfully applied that the most free-thinking and rational person will, so long as he is in the army, always do what is demanded of him. Thus there is no way out by means of revolution or in Socialism."

Here Tolstoi is again mistaken, for at this point also Socialists agree with him completely. The soldier, they agree, must be reached, and some think must even be led to act, before he reaches the barracks—whether he is about to enter them for military training in times of peace or for service in times of war.

"If there is a way out," concludes Tolstoi, "it is the one which has not been used yet, and which alone incontestably destroys the whole consolidated, artful, and long-established governmental machine for the enslavement of the masses. This way out consists in refusing to enter into the army, before one is subjected to the stupefying and corrupting influence of discipline.

"This way out is the only one which is possible and which at the same time is inevitably obligatory for every individual person."[278]

Socialists differ from the great Russian, not in their analysis of the situation, but in their more practical remedy. They would organize the campaign against military service instead of leaving it to the individual, and after they had converted a sufficient majority to their views they would not hesitate to use any kind of force that seemed necessary to put an end to government by force. But they would not proceed to such lengths until their political and economic modes of action were forcefully prevented from further development. If civil government is suspended to combat the great general strike towards which Socialists believe society is moving they will undertake to restore it or to set up a new one to replace that which the authorities have "legally" destroyed. I say legally because all capitalist governments have provided for this contingency by giving their executives the right to suspend government when they please—on the pretext that its existence is threatened by internal disorder. It has been generally and publicly agreed among capitalist authorities that this power shall be used in the case of a general strike—as the British government declared, at the time of the recent railway strike, whether there is extensive popular violence or not.

I have shown that the Socialists contemplate the use of the general strike whenever, in vital matters, governments refuse to bow to the clearly expressed will of the majority, and that they recognize the difficulties to be overcome before such a measure can be used successfully. Of course the overwhelming majority of the population will have to be against the government. But the military aspect of the question may possibly make it necessary that the majority to be secured will have to be even greater than was at first contemplated, and that an even more intense struggle will have to be carried on. The Bismarcks of the world are already using armies as strike breakers and training them especially for this purpose, while even the more democratic and peaceful States, like England and France, are rapidly following in the same direction. Of course, as Bismarck said, not all of a large army can be so used, but there is a strong tendency in Russia and Germany, which may be imitated elsewhere, for the military leaders to concentrate their efforts and attention on the picked and more or less professional part of their armies, and it is this part that is being used for strike-breaking purposes.

No one has dealt more ably with this struggle between the working people and coercive government than Karl Liebknecht, recently elected to the Reichstag from the Kaiser's own district of Potsdam, who spent a year as a political prisoner in Germany for his "Militarismus und Anti-Militarismus." Liebknecht opens his pamphlet by quoting a statement of Bismarck to Professor Dr. Otto Kamaell, in October, 1892:—

"In Rome water and fire were forbidden to him who put himself outside of the legal order. In the middle ages that was called to outlaw. It was necessary to treat the Social-Democracy in the same way, to take away its political rights and its right to vote. So far I have gone. The Social-Democratic question is a military question. The Social-Democracy is being handled now in an extraordinarily superficial way. The Social-Democracy is striving now—and with success—to win the noncommissioned officers. In Hamburg already a good part of the troops consist of Social-Democrats, since the people there have the right to enter exclusively into their own battalion. What now if these troops should refuse to shoot their fathers and brothers as the Kaiser has demanded? Shall we send the regiments of Hanover and Mecklenburg against Hamburg? Then we have something there like the Commune in Paris. The Kaiser was frightened. He said to me he wouldn't exactly care about being called a cardboard prince like his grandfather, nor at the very beginning of his reign to wade up to the knees in blood. Then I said to him, 'Your Majesty will have to go deeper if you give way now.'"

Here we have it from the lips of Bismarck that the Social-Democratic question was already a military question in his time, and his view is supported by the present Kaiser. This is high authority. Similar views and threats have been common among the statesmen of our time in nearly every country.

As early as 1903 the government of Holland broke a large general strike by the use of the army to operate the railroads, and the same thing was done in Hungary in the following year. Indeed, these measures had such a great success that the Hungarian government went farther two years later, and took away the right of organization from the agricultural laborers; while at the same time it used the army as strike breakers in harvest time and made permanent arrangements for doing this in a similar contingency in the future. In the matter of breaking railway strikes by soldiers, Bulgaria and other countries are following Holland and Hungary. The latest and most extraordinary example is undoubtedly the use of soldiers by the "Socialist" Briand to break the recent railroad strike in democratic France.[279]

Even peaceful countries like Belgium and Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States, are developing and changing their military systems so rapidly as to make it almost certain that they would take similar measures if occasion should arise.

The agitation for universal conscription in England may succeed before many years, and the plans for reorganizing the militia in the United States will also make of it a force that can be far more useful in breaking strikes than the present one, and more ready to be used in case of a nation-wide strike crisis. Indeed, the Dick military law made every possible provision for the use of the military in internal disturbances, up to the point of enlisting every citizen and making a dictator of the President.

Similar tendencies exist on the Continent of Europe. Formerly the militia of Switzerland was quite democratically organized, and each man kept his gun and ammunition at home, but the government is gradually doing away with this system and modeling the army every year more closely on that of the larger and less democratic European powers. In Belgium a similar movement can be seen in the creation of a Citizens' Guard, entirely for use at home and especially against strikers.

Here, then, is a situation to which every Socialist is forced to give constant thought, no matter how peace-loving and law-abiding he may be. What is there in modern systems of government to prevent these large military forces already employed so successfully for the ominous function of strike breaking, from being used for other reactionary and tyrannical purposes—for putting an end to democratic government, when it is attempted to apply it to property and industry? So everywhere Socialists and labor unions are giving special attention to agitation against militarism. Years ago even the most conservative unions began forbidding their members to join the militia, and the practice has become general, while the Boy Scout movement is everywhere denounced and repudiated. Not only is every effort being made by the Socialists, in connection with other democratic elements, to cut off the financial supplies for the army and navy, but they also sought to inspire all the youth, and particularly the children of the workers, with a spirit of revolt against armies, war, and aggressive patriotism, as well as the spirit of servile obedience, the ignorance, and the brutality that invariably accompany them.[280]

For a number of years the fight against militarism, and incidentally against possible wars, has occupied the chief attention of international Socialist congresses. While the Stuttgart Congress (1907) did not accept the proposal of the French delegates that in case of war an international strike and insurrection should be declared, the closing part of the resolution adopted was definitely intended to suggest such action by rehearsing with approval the various cases where the working people had already made steps in that direction, and by advising still more revolutionary action in the future, as indicated in the words italicized.

"The International," it said, "is unable to prescribe one set mode of action to the working classes; this must of necessity be different in different lands, varying with time and place. But it is clearly its duty to encourage the working classes everywhere in their opposition to militarism. As a matter of fact, since the last International Congress, the working classes have adopted various ways of fighting militarism, by refusing grants for military and naval armaments, and by striving to organize armies on democratic lines. They have been successful in preventing outbreaks of war, or in putting an end to existing war, or the rumor of war. We may mention the agreement entered into between the English and French trade-unions after the Fashoda incident, for the purpose of maintaining peace and for reestablishing friendly relations between England and France; the policy of the Social-Democratic parties in the French and German Parliaments during the Morocco crisis, and the peaceful declarations which the Socialists in both countries sent each other; the common action of the Austrian and Italian Socialists, gathered at Trieste, with a view to avoiding a conflict between the two powers; the great efforts made by the Socialists of Sweden to prevent an attack on Norway; and lastly, the heroic sacrifices made by the Socialist workers and peasants of Russia and Poland in the struggle against the war demon let loose by the Czar, in their efforts to put an end to their ravages, and at the same time to utilize the crisis for the liberation of the country and its workers.

"All efforts bear testimony to the growing power of the proletariat and to its absolute determination to do all it can in order to obtain peace. The action of the working classes in this direction will be even more successful when public opinion is influenced to a greater degree than at present, and when the workingmen's parties in different lands are directed and instructed by the International." And finally it was decided to try to take advantage of the profound disturbances caused by every war to hasten the abolition of capitalist rule.

The International Congress of 1910 referred back to the Socialist parties of the various countries for further consideration a resolution proposed by the French and English delegates which declared: "Among the means to be used in order to prevent and hinder war, the Congress considers as particularly efficacious the general strike, especially in the industries that supply war with its implements (arms and ammunition, transport, etc.), as well as propaganda and popular action in their active forms."

This resolution is now under discussion. In referring it to the national parties, the International Socialist Bureau reminded them that the practical measure the authors of the amendment had principally in view was "the strike of workingmen who were employed in delivering war material." The Germans opposed the resolution on the ground that a strike of this kind, guarded against by the government, would have to become general, and that during the martial law of war times it would necessarily mean tremendous violence. They contended that a more effective means of preventing war, until the Socialists are stronger, is to vote down all taxes and appropriations for armies and navies. And they accused the British Labourites who supported this resolution of having failed to vote against war supplies, while the Germans and their supporters had. This accusation was true, as against the British Labourites, but did not apply against the French and other Socialists who were for the resolution.

We can obtain a key to this situation only by examining the varying motives of reformists and revolutionaries. The French reformists, followers of Jaures, are so anxious for peace, that, notwithstanding the fact that many capitalists, probably a majority, now also favor it, they are ready to have the working people make the most terrible sacrifices for this semi-capitalistic purpose. (See Part II, Chapter V.) The Germans realize that the capitalists themselves have more and more reasons for avoiding wars, and, being satisfied with their present political prospects, do not propose to risk them—or their necks—for any such object. The French revolutionaries, on the other hand, favor extreme measures, not to preserve a capitalistic peace, but to develop the general strike, to paralyze armies, and encourage their demoralization and dissolution. They want to parallel all plans for mobilization by plans for insurrection, and to force armies to disclose their true purpose, which they believe is not war at all, but the arbitrary and violent suppression of popular movements.

Whether capitalism or Socialism puts an end to war, Socialists generally are agreed their success may ultimately depend on their ability to find some way to put a check to militarism. The chief means by which this is likely to be accomplished, they believe, is by the spread of Socialism and the education of youth and even of children in the principles of international working-class solidarity, always to put the humanity as a whole above one's country, always to despise and revolt against all kinds of government by violence. Karl Liebknecht remarks that "it is already recognized that every Social-Democrat educates his children to be Social-Democrats." But he says that this is not sufficient. Social-Democratic parents do their best, but the Socialist public must aid them to do better. In other words, the greatest hope for Socialism, in its campaign against militarism as in all else it undertakes, lies in education.

The Socialist movement, even if it becomes some day capable of forcing concessions from the capitalists through their fear of a social overturn, depends first, last, and always upon its ability to teach and to train and to organize the masses of the people to solve their own problems without governmental or capitalistic aid, and to understand that, in order to solve them successfully, they must be able to take broad and far-sighted views of all the political and economic problems of the time.

Especially Socialists undertake to enlighten the masses on the part played by war in history and in recent times—not because wars are necessarily impending, but because the war talk is an excuse for armies that really serve another purpose. For Socialists believe that the rule of society by economic classes, and rule by war or brute force, in the Socialist view, are one and the same thing. No Socialist has expressed this view more clearly or forcefully than Mr. George R. Kirkpatrick, in his recent book, "War—What For?" Addressed to the heart as well as to the head, and based upon all the most important of the previous attacks on militarism war, whether Socialist or not, it may be doubted whether any non-Socialist could have presented as powerful an argument. Mr. Kirkpatrick gives the following interesting outline of the typical Socialist view of the development of primitive warfare into modern militarism and of slavery into the present industrial system (here abbreviated):—

"For a long time in these intertribal wars it was the practice to take no prisoners (except the younger women), but to kill, kill, kill, because the conquerors had no use for the captive men. When, however, society had developed industrially to a stage enabling the victors to make use of live men as work animals, that new industrial condition produced a new idea—one of the greatest and most revolutionary ideas that ever flashed into the human brain; and that idea was simply this: A live man is worth more than a dead one, if you can make use of him as a work animal. When industrially it became practicable for the conquerors to make use of live men captured in war, it rapidly became the custom to take prisoners, save them alive, beat them into submission—tame them—and thus have them for work animals, human work animals.

"Here the human ox, yoked to the burdens of the world, started through the centuries, centuries wet with tears and red with blood and fire.

"Thus originated a class of workers, the working class.

"Thus also originated the ruling class. Thus originated the 'leading citizens.'

"Thus originally, in war, the workers fell into the bottomless gulf of misery. It was thus that war opened wide the devouring jaws of hell for the workers.

"Thus was human society long ago divided into industrial classes—into two industrial classes.

"Of course the interests of these two classes were in fundamental conflict, and thus originated the class struggle.

"Of course the ruling class were in complete possession and control of all the powers of government—and of course they had sense enough to use the powers of government to defend their own class interests.

"Of course the ruling class made all the laws and controlled all institutions in the interests of the ruling class—naturally."[281]

With all other international and revolutionary Socialists, Mr. Kirkpatrick believes that when the masses are educated to see the truth of this view and have learned the true nature of modern industry, class government, and armies, they will put an end to them. He concludes:—

"The working class men inside and outside the army are confused.

"They do not understand.

"But they will understand.

"AND WHEN THEY DO UNDERSTAND, their class loyalty and class pride will astonish the world. They will stand erect in their vast class strength and defend—THEMSELVES. They will cease to coax and tease; they will make demands—unitedly. They will desert the armory; they will spike every cannon on earth; they will scorn the commander; they will never club nor bayonet another striker; and in the legislatures of the world they will shear the fatted parasites from the political and industrial body of society."[282]

Here we have both the Socialist point of view and a glimpse of the passionate feeling that accompanies it. "War—What For?" has been circulated by scores of thousands among the working people and in the army and navy.

In countries like America and England, where there is no compulsory service, the practical objective of such agitation is to prevent enlistment. In France, Belgium, and Italy, where there is compulsory service, the Socialists for years have been preaching openly desertion and insubordination.

Complaint against this anti-military propaganda is general in United States army and navy circles. Recently a general in Southern California was said by the press to have reported to Washington that the distribution of one circular had dissuaded many men from joining the army. The circular, which was published, was attributed, whether rightly or not we do not know, to Jack London. It ran in part:—

"Young men, the lowest aim in your life is to be a soldier. The good soldier never tries to distinguish right from wrong. He never thinks; he never reasons; he only obeys. If he is ordered to fire on his fellow citizens, on his friends, on his neighbors, on his relatives, he obeys without hesitation. If he is ordered to fire down a crowded street when the poor are clamoring for bread, he obeys, and sees the gray hair of age stained with blood and the life tide gushing from the breast of women, feeling neither remorse nor sympathy. If he is ordered off as one of a firing squad to execute a hero or benefactor, he fires without hesitation, though he knows that the bullet will pierce the noblest heart that ever beat in a human breast.

"A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. He is not a man. He is not even a brute, for brutes only kill in self-defense. All that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that constitutes the man, has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. His mind, conscience, aye, his very soul, is in the keeping of his officer."

This language will appeal to many as extremely violent, yet it is no stronger than that of Tolstoi, while Bernard Shaw used almost identical expressions in his Preface to "John Bull's Other Island," without anybody suggesting that they were treasonable.

"The soldier," said Shaw, "is an anachronism of which we must get rid. Among people who are proof against the suggestions of romantic fiction there can no longer be any question of the fact that military service produces moral imbecility, ferocity, and cowardice.... For permanent work the soldier is worse than useless; such efficiency as he has is the result of dehumanization and disablement. His whole training tends to make him a weakling. He has the easiest of lives; he has no freedom and no responsibility. He is politically and socially a child, with rations instead of rights, treated like a child, punished like a child, dressed prettily and washed and combed like a child, excused for outbreaks like a child, forbidden to marry like a child, and called Tommy like a child. He has no real work to keep him from going mad except housemaid's work."

Mr. Shaw's words are identical with those that are preached by Socialists every day, especially on the Continent.

"No soldier is asked to think for himself," he says, "to judge for himself, to consult his own honor and manhood, to dread any consequence except the consequence of punishment to his own person. The rules are plain and simple; the ceremonies of respect and submission are as easy and mechanical as a prayer wheel, the orders are always to be obeyed thoughtlessly, however inept or dishonorable they may be.... No doubt this weakness is just what the military system aims at, its ideal soldier being, not a complete man, but a docile unit or cannon fodder which can be trusted to respond promptly and certainly to the external stimulus of a shouted order, and is intimidated to the pitch of being afraid to run away from a battle."

Nor is Mr. Shaw less sparing to the officer, and he represents in this case also the most unanimous Socialist view:—

"If he [the officer] calls his men dogs," says Shaw, "and perverts a musketry drill order to make them kneel to him as an act of personal humiliation, and thereby provokes a mutiny among men not yet thoroughly broken in to the abjectness of the military condition, he is not, as might be expected, shot, but, at the worst, reprimanded, whilst the leader of the mutiny, instead of getting the Victoria Cross and a public testimonial, is condemned to five years' penal servitude by Lynch Law (technically called martial law) administered by a trade union of officers."

Like all Socialists, Mr. Shaw recognizes that the evils of militarism rest even more heavily on subject peoples than on the soldiers, citizens, or taxpayers of the dominating races. He says of the officer he has been describing, who is humane and intelligent in civil life, that in his military capacity he will frantically declare that "he dare not walk about in a foreign country unless every crime of violence against an Englishman in uniform is punished by the bombardment and destruction of a whole village, or the wholesale flogging and execution of every native in the neighborhood; and also that unless he and his fellow officers have power, without the intervention of a jury, to punish the slightest self-assertion or hesitation to obey orders, however grossly insulting or disastrous those orders may be, with sentences which are reserved in civil life for the worst crimes, he cannot secure the obedience and respect of his men, and the country would accordingly lose all of its colonies and dependencies, and be helplessly conquered in the German invasion which he confidently expects to occur in the course of a fortnight or so."

"That is to say," Mr. Shaw continues, "in so far as he is an ordinary gentleman he behaves sensibly and courageously; and in so far as he is a military man he gives way without shame to the grossest folly, cruelty, and poltroonery. If any other profession in the world had been stained by those vices and by false witness, forgery, swindling, torture, compulsion of men's families to attend their executions, digging up and mutilation of dead enemies, all of which is only added to the devastation proper to its own business, as the military profession has been within recent memory in England, France, and the United States of America (to mention no other countries), it would be very difficult to induce men of capacity and character to enter it. And in England, it is, in fact, largely dependent for its recruits on the refuse of industrial life, and for its officers on the aristocratic and plutocratic refuse of political and diplomatic life, who join the army and pay for their positions in the more or less fashionable clubs which the regimental messes provide them with—clubs, which, by the way, occasionally figure in ragging scandals as circles of extremely coarse moral character."[283]

It is not surprising that those who view armies in this light preach desertion and insubordination. A recent cable dispatch sums up some of the results of the activity in this direction of the French Federation of Labor with its million members, and of the Socialist Party with its still larger following:—

"Last year there were 13,500 desertions and 53,000 who refused to answer their call to military service. Loss to France in 1910, two army corps. These figures are given by La France Militaire, a soldiers' newspaper. In a fund called 'le sou du soldat et des insoumis,' the idea was to develop antimilitarism and antipatriotism. Five per cent, on the subscriptions of the workmen, belonging to the labor unions, was ordered to be set apart for this fund. The conscripts before departing were requested to leave the name of their regiment and their number so that sums of money might be sent to them for antimilitary propaganda in the barracks. For eight years that sort of thing has been going on, but things never reached to the extent they do now.

"'The comrades of the workshop count on them to spread among those around ideas of revolt and rebellion,' is an extract from a letter read by M. Georges Berry in Parliament, and he added that he had a score of such letters emanating from the unions. In M. Jaures's organ, L Humanite, there appeared an article on December 22, 1910, inviting all the conscripts of the Labor Federation to send in their names so that financial aid might be sent to help them in organizing 'insubordination and desertion.'"

When the Caillaux Ministry came into power in 1911, a large number of the most prominent leaders of the Federation of Labor were arrested for participation in this agitation. But for every arrest many other unionists signed declarations favoring identical principles, and as the whole Federation is wedded to this propaganda, it is more than doubtful if the whole million can be arrested and the propaganda done away with.

This agitation is not directed primarily against possible war, or even exclusively against compulsory military service. Just as the preparations for an insurrectionary general strike in case of war tend to break down the power and prestige of the army, even if war is never declared, so the teaching of insubordination and desertion have the same effect, even if the compulsory armies are replaced by a compulsory militia, having only a few weeks of drill every year, as in Australia, or by a voluntary militia, as in this country. The Socialist world accepts the word of the American Socialists that a militia, if less burdensome, and less obnoxious in many ways than a standing army, may be just as thoroughly reactionary, and quite as hostile to the working class. The French Socialists and unionists encourage all general and organized movements among common soldiers. And their ideal in this regard is reached when a whole body of soldiers, for any good cause, revolts—especially at a time of popular demonstrations. During the wine troubles in the south of France, a whole regiment refused to march—and for years afterwards was toasted at Socialist gatherings.

"Military strikes" have also been frequent in Russia as well as in France—and have received the unanimous approval of the Socialists of all countries. No matter how small the causes, Socialists usually justify them, because they consider military discipline in itself wholly an evil—and the worst tyranny of capitalist government. They promote military revolts in favor of great popular causes for a double reason, and they also have a double motive for supporting purely military revolts against militarism. For if Socialists are engaged in a class war, which practically all of them believe may, and many believe must, lead to revolution, it is as necessary to disarm the opposing classes as it is to abolish military discipline because of its inherent evil. It is this fact that explains the importance of all Socialist efforts against imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, patriotism, war and armies—and not the idea, common among Socialists, that Socialism alone can be relied on to establish permanent international peace.

Moreover, the most successful attacks on existing governments in their coercive and arbitrary aspects, as the Stuttgart resolution suggests (see above), have been when there were threats of an unpopular war. The Socialist attack is then not only leveled against war, but also against armies. A good example is the sending of a delegation of workingmen to Berlin by the French federation at the invitation of that of Germany at the time of the Morocco affair (July, 1911). There the Secretary of the associated labor councils of France, Yvetot, made a speech, the importance of which was fully appreciated by the German government, which ordered him to be immediately expelled. His remarks were also appreciated by his German Socialist audience which responded to them by stormy applause lasting several minutes. The sentiments so widely appreciated were contained in the following remarks addressed to the French and German governments:—

"Just try once, you blockheads, to stir up one people against the other, to arm one people against the other, you will see if the peoples won't make an entirely different use of the weapons you put into their hands. Wait and see if the people don't go to war against an entirely different enemy than you expect."

The significance of this declaration was not that it declared war against war, but that, under a certain highly probable contingency of the immediate future, it prepared the minds of the people for the forceful overthrow of capitalist governments.

To the preparations of capitalist governments to revert to military rule in the case of a successful nation-wide general strike, the Socialists reply at present by plans for weakening and disintegrating armies. And they do not hesitate to say that they will use more active measures if capitalist governments persist in what seems to be their present determination to resort to some form of military despotism when the Socialists have won over a majority of the population to their views.

FOOTNOTES:

[277] Eugene V. Debs, "Life and Writings," p. 456.

[278] Tolstoi's Essay entitled, "Where is the Way Out?"—October, 1900.

[279] Dr. Karl Liebknecht, "Militarismus und Anti-Militarismus" (brochure).

[280] Dr. Karl Liebknecht, "Militarismus und Anti-Militarismus", (brochure).

[281] George R. Kirkpatrick, "War—What For?" pp. 318-325.

[282] George R. Kirkpatrick, "War—What For?" (Preface).

[283] Bernard Shaw, "John Bull's Other Island," pp. xxxix-xliv.



CHAPTER VIII

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

"The legal constitution of every period," says Rosa Luxemburg, "is solely a product of revolution. While revolution is the political act of creation of class history, legislation is the continued political growth of society. The work of legal reform has in itself no independent driving force outside of the revolution; it moves during each period of history only along that line and for that period of time for which the impetus given to it during the last revolution continues, or, to speak concretely, it moves only in the frame of that form of society which was brought into the world through the last overturn.... Therefore, the person who speaks for the method of legal reform instead of the conquest of political power and the overthrow of [present day] society is not as a matter of fact seeking, in a quieter, safer, and slower way, the same goal, but a different goal altogether; namely, instead of bringing about a new social order, merely the accomplishing of unessential changes in the old one."[284]

It is not that Rosa Luxemburg or any other prominent Socialist underestimates the importance to the Socialist movement of universal suffrage, and of the utilization of our more or less democratic governments for the purpose of reform. She realizes that such democracy as we have to-day is useful to-day, and that in a future crisis it may serve as a lever for overturning the present social order. "Democracy is indispensable," she says, "not because it makes the conquest of political power by the working class superfluous, but, on the contrary, because it makes this seizure of power not only necessary, but the only remaining alternative."

From Kautsky and Bebel, who have always been known as strong believers in the possibilities of political action, to the somewhat skeptical revolutionary Socialists of France, the ballot has thus far remained the weapon of first practical importance, even for revolutionary purposes. Bebel expects some day a great crisis which will go far beyond the power of any merely political means to solve. Kautsky looks forward to more than one great conflict, in which other means will have to be employed, as does also his Socialist critic and opponent, Jaures. But for the present all these men are occupying themselves with politics.

Even those Socialists who are most skeptical of the revolutionary possibilities of political action by no means turn their back upon it. The French advocate of economic action and revolutionary labor unionism, Lagardelle, who recently surprised some of his French comrades, as I have already pointed out, by running as a candidate for the French Chamber, claimed that he did this in entire consistency with his principles. And even the arch-revolutionary, Gustave Herve, has declared that in spite of all the faults and limitations of political action, revolutionary Socialists must cling to the Socialist Party. Herve had looked with a favorable eye on the formation of a revolutionary organization which was to consist only in part of Socialists and in part of revolutionary labor unionists, but he declared at the last moment that such an organization ought to be only a group within the Socialist Party. A bitter critic of Jaures and also of the orthodox "center" of the party on the ground that their methods are too timid to achieve anything for Socialism in view of the ruthless aggressions of the capitalists, Herve nevertheless said that it was only very exceptional circumstances that could justify revolutionary Socialists acting against the party organization, even though it seemed to be doing so little effective fighting against the capitalist enemy.

There could be no stronger evidence of the powerful hold of political action even on the most revolutionary Socialists than the summary in which Herve reviews his reasons for this conclusion:—

"First: That the only manner of agitating for anti-parliamentarism that succeeds, and is without danger, is before and after electoral periods—showing constantly to the elite of the proletariat the insufficiency and dangers of parliamentarism in general and parliamentarist Socialism in particular;

"Second: During electoral periods all propaganda disparaging the possibilities of politics unaided by other forms of action should cease, 'in order not to embroil ourselves with the Socialist masses who must be handled carefully at any cost, in the interest of the revolutionary cause';

"Third: While the revolutionary Socialists' discontent with the party's moderation and exclusive absorption in the details of politics or reform ought not to lead them to oppose the organization during election periods, it does not follow that revolutionary Socialists can not even at such times continue to preach their principles and proclaim their hatred to the conservative parties and their attitude towards the Parliamentary Socialist Party 'of sympathy mixed with distrust';

"Fourth: An exception should be made against certain Socialist candidates who may have taken a scandalously conservative anti-labor and anti-revolutionary position in the legislative session just gone by, and that against the latter there should be a fight to the finish, certain as we are of having with us almost the entire support of the parliamentary Socialist Party."[285]

In a word, Herve proves his democracy by respecting the opinion of the majority of the Socialist Party, because he hopes and believes that it will become revolutionary in his sense of the word. With a strong preference for "direct action," strikes, "sabotage," boycotts, etc., he yet allows his policies to be guided very largely by a political organization.

But Socialist politics are not politics at all in the ordinary sense of the word. They are directed primarily to prepare the people for a great struggle to come. "Situations are approaching," said Bebel at the Congress at Jena, in 1905, "which must of physical necessity lead to catastrophes unless the working class develop so rapidly in power, numbers, culture, and insight, that the bourgeoisie lose the desire for catastrophes. We are not seeking a catastrophe,—what use would it be to us? Catastrophes are brought about by the ruling classes." Bebel was referring particularly to the possibility and even the probability that the German government might try to destroy the Socialist Party by limiting the right of suffrage or to crush the unions by limiting the right of labor to organize. If he predicted a revolutionary crisis, it was to come from a life-and-death struggle of the working people in self-defense, in a desperate effort to protect economic and political rights, but especially political rights, which, as the labor unionist, von Elm, said at this congress, were "the key to all." A revolutionary conflict was anticipated, to be fought out by economic means, but only as part of a political crisis—in which the majority of the people would be on the side of the Socialists and the labor unions. Similarly, in America, Mr. Victor Berger stated at the Socialist Convention of 1908 that he had no doubt that "in order to be able to shoot even, some day, we must have the powers of the political government in our hands, at least to a great extent."

While neither the political revolution involved in the capture of government by Socialist voters, nor the economic revolution that would follow a wholly successful general strike would lead necessarily to revolution in its narrow sense of a great but relatively brief crisis, or to revolutionary violence; while either political or economic overturn, or both, combined in a single movement, might be accomplished peacefully and by degrees, capitalist governments are just as likely to seize the one as the other, as the occasion for attempts at violent repression. A complete political victory would thus lead to the same crisis and violence as a victorious general strike.