There are still other improvements in education which have already been tested and found to produce the most valuable results. Perhaps the most important ones besides those demanded by Dr. Eliot are the providing of free or cheap lunches for undernourished children, and the system, already widespread in England and the other countries, of furnishing scholarships to carry the brighter children of the impecunious classes through the college, high school, and technical courses. Even this policy of scholarships would lead us to full democracy in education only if by its means the child of the poorest individual had exactly the same opportunities as those of the richest. It is not enough that a few children only should be so advanced; but that of impecunious children, who constitute 90 per cent of the population, a sufficient number should be advanced to fill 90 per cent of those positions, in industry, government, and society, which require a higher education.

There is no doubt that this actual equality in the "battle of life" was the expectation and intention of those who settled and built up the western part of the United States, as it has been that of all the democracies of new countries. But this reform alone would certainly require not one but several billion dollars a year; as much as all the other improvements mentioned by Dr. Eliot put together. We may estimate, then, that the application of the principle of democracy or equality of opportunity to education in accordance with the present national income, would require the immediate expenditure of three or four billion dollars on the nation's children of school age, or ten times the sum we now expend, and a corresponding increase as the wealth of the nation develops. This would be a considerable proportion of the nation's income, but not too much to spend on the children, who constitute nearly half the population and are at the age where the money spent is most productive.

Here is a program for the coming generation which would be indorsed by a very large part of the democrats of the past. But nothing could make it more clear that political democracy is bankrupt even in its new collective form, that it has no notion of the method by which its own ideals are to be obtained. For no reformer dreams that this perfectly sensible and practicable program will be carried out until there has been some revolutionary change in society. "I know that some people will say that it is impossible to increase public expenditure in the total, and therefore impossible to increase it for the schools," says Dr. Eliot. "I deny both allegations. Public expenditure has been greatly increased within the last thirty years, and so has school expenditure" (written in 1902). But Dr. Eliot doubtless realizes that what he advocates for the present moment, the expenditure of five times as much as we now invest in public schools, at the present rate of progress, might not be accomplished in a century, and that by that time society might well have attained a degree of development which would demand five or ten times as much again. Dr. Eliot is well aware of the opposition that will be made to his reform, but he has not given the slightest indication how it is to be overcome. The well-to-do usually feel obligated to pay for the private education of their own children, and even where public institutions are at their disposal they are forced to support these children through all the years of study. This is expensive, but this very expensiveness gives the children of the well-to-do a practical monopoly of the opportunities which this education brings. How are they to be brought to favor, and, since they are the chief taxpayers, to pay for the extension of these same opportunities to ten times the number of children who now have them?

In the meanwhile Dr. Eliot himself seems to have become discouraged and to have abandoned his own ideal, for only seven years after writing the above he came to advocate the division of the whole national school system into three classes: that for the upper class, that for the middle class, and that for the masses of the people—and he even insisted that this division is democratic if the elevation of the pupil from one class to the other is made "easy."[87] Now democracy does not require that the advance of the child of the poor be made what is termed easy, but that he be given an equal opportunity with the child of the rich as far as all useful and necessary education is concerned. Democracy does not tolerate that in education the children of the poor should be started in at the bottom, while the children of the rich are started at the top.

Those few who do rise under such conditions only strengthen the position of the upper classes as against that of the lower. Tolstoi was right when he said that when an individual rises in this way he simply brings another recruit to the rulers from the ruled, and that the fact that this passage from one class to another does occasionally take place, and is not absolutely forbidden by law and custom as in India, does not mean that we have no castes.[88] Even in ancient Egypt, it was quite usual, as in the case of Joseph, to elevate slaves to the highest positions. This singling out and promotion of the very ablest among the lower classes may indeed be called the basis of every lasting caste system. All those societies that depended on a purely hereditary system have either degenerated or were quickly destroyed. If then a ruling class promotes from below a number sufficient only to provide for its own need of new abilities and new blood, its power to oppress, to protect its privileges, and to keep progress at the pace and in the direction that suits it will only be augmented—and universal equality of opportunity will be farther off than before. Doubtless the numbers "State Socialism" will take up from the masses and equip for higher positions will constantly increase. But neither will the opportunities of these few have been in any way equal to those of the higher classes, nor will even such opportunities be extended to any but an insignificant minority.

Nor does President Eliot's advocacy of class schools stand as an isolated phenomenon. Already in America the development of free secondary schools has been checked by the far more rapid growth of private institutions. The very classes of taxpayers who control city and other local governments and school boards are educating their own children privately, and thus have a double motive for resisting the further advance of school expenditure. As if the expense of upkeep during the period of education were not enough of a handicap, those few children of the wage earners who are brave enough to attempt to compete with the children of the middle classes are now subjected to the necessity of attending inferior schools or of traveling impracticable distances. The building of new high schools, for example, was most rapid in the Middle West in the decades 1880-1899, and in the Eastern States in the decade 1890-1900. But within a few years after 1900 the rate of increase had fallen in the Middle West to about one half, and in the East to less than one third, of what it formerly had been.[89] It might be thought that, the country being now well served with secondary schools, the rate of growth must diminish. This may be true of a part of the rural districts, but an examination of the situation or school reports of our large cities will show how far it is from being true there.

In Great Britain the public secondary schools for the most part and some of the primary schools, though supported wholly or largely by public funds, charge a tuition fee. The fact that a very small per cent of the children of the poor are given scholarships which relieve them of this fee only serves to strengthen the upper and middle classes, without in any appreciable degree depriving them of their privileged position. In London, for example, fees of from $20 to $40 are charged in the secondary schools, and their superintendents report that they are attended chiefly by the children of the "lower middle classes," salaried employees, clerks, and shopkeepers, with comparatively few of the children of the professional classes on the one hand or of the best-paid workingmen on the other. An organized campaign is now on foot in New York City also, among the taxpayers, to introduce a certain proportion of primary pay schools, for the frank purpose of separating the lower middle from the working classes, and to charge fees in all secondary schools so as to bring a new source of income and decrease the number of students and the amounts spent on the schools. This in spite of the annual plea of Superintendent Maxwell for more secondary schools, more primary teachers, and primary school buildings. Instead of going in the direction indicated by Dr. Eliot and preparing to spend four or five times the present amount, there is a strong movement to spend less. And nothing so hastens this reactionary movement as the tendency, whether automatic or consciously stimulated, towards class (or caste) education—such as Dr. Eliot and so many other reformers now directly or indirectly encourage—usually under the cloak of industrial education.

The most anti-social aspects of capitalism, whether in its individualist or its collectivist form, are the grossly unequal educational and occupational privileges it gives the young. An examination of the better positions now being obtained by men and women not yet past middle age will show, let us say, that ten times as many prizes are going to persons who were given good educational opportunities as to those who were not. But as the children of those who can afford such opportunities are not a tenth as numerous as the children of the rest of the people, this would mean that the latter have only a hundredth part of the former's opportunities. Under this supposition, one tenth of the population secures ten elevenths of the positions for which a higher education is required. As a matter of fact, the existing inequality of opportunity is undoubtedly very much greater than this, and the unequal distribution of opportunities is visibly and rapidly becoming still less equal. In 1910, of nineteen million pupils of public and private schools in this country, only one million were securing a secondary, and less than a third of a million a higher, education. Here are some figures gathered by the Russell Sage Foundation in its recent survey of public school management. The report covers 386 of the larger cities of the Union. Out of every 100 children who enter the schools, 45 drop out before the sixth year; that is, before they have learned to read English. Only 25 of the remainder graduate and enter the high schools, and of these but 6 complete the course.

The expense of a superior education, including upkeep during the increasing number of years required, is rising many times more rapidly than the income of the average man. At the same time, both the wealth and the numbers of the well-to-do are increasing in greater proportion than those of the rest of the people. While the better places get farther and farther out of the reach of the children of the masses, owing to the overcrowding of the professions by children of the well-to-do, the competition becomes ever keener, and the poor boy or girl who must struggle not only against this excessive competition, but also against his economic handicap, confronts an almost superhuman task.

It is obvious that this tendency cannot be reversed, no matter how rapidly the people's income is increased, unless it rises more rapidly than that of the well-to-do. And this, Socialists believe, has never happened except when the masses obtained political power and made full use of it against the class in control of industry and government.

No amount of material progress and no reorganization of industry or government which does not promise to equalize opportunity,—however rapid or even sensational it may be,—is of the first moment to the Socialists of the movement. Wages might increase 5 or 10 per cent every year, as profits increase to-day; hours might be shortened and the intensity of labor lessened; and yet the gulf between the classes might be growing wider than ever. If society is to progress toward industrial democracy, it is necessary that the people should fix their attention, not merely on the improvement of their own condition, but on their progress when compared with that of the capitalist classes, i.e. when measured by present-day civilization and the possibilities it affords.

No matter how fast wages increase, if profits increase faster, we are journeying not towards social democracy, but towards a caste society. Thus to insist that we must keep our eyes on the prosperity of others in order to measure our own seems like preaching envy or class hatred. But in social questions the laws of individual morality are often reversed. It is the social duty of every less prosperous class of citizens, their duty towards the whole of the coming generation as well as to their own children, to measure their own progress solely by a standard raised in accordance with the point in evolution that society has attained. What would have been comparative luxury a hundred years ago it is our duty to view as nothing less than a degrading and life-destroying poverty to-day.

Opportunity is not becoming equal. The tendency is in the opposite direction, and not all the reforms of "State Socialism" promise to counteract it. The citizen owes it to society to ask of every proposed program of change, "Will it, within a reasonable period, bring equality of opportunity?" To rest satisfied with less—a so-called tendency of certain reforms in the right direction may be wholly illusory—is not only to abandon one's rights and those of one's children, but to rob society of the only possible assurance of the maximum of progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[83] Henry George, "Progress and Poverty," Vol. II, p. 515.

[84] John Mitchell, "Organized Labor" (Preface).

[85] John A. Hobson, "The Crisis of Liberalism," p. 100.

[86] For this and later quotations from Dr. Eliot in this chapter, see his little book entitled "More Money for the Public Schools."

[87] See article by Dr. Eliot in the School Review, April, 1909.

[88] "Knowledge and Education," the Independent, 1910.

[89] Dexter, "History of Education in the United States," p. 173.



CHAPTER VIII

THE "FIRST STEP" TOWARDS SOCIALISM

"State Socialism" as I have described it will doubtless continue to be the guiding policy of governments during a large part, if not all, of the present generation. Capitalism, in this new collectivist form, must bring about extremely deep-seated and far-reaching changes in society. And every step that it takes in the nationalization of industry and the appropriation of land rent would also be a step in Socialism, provided the rents and profits so turned into the coffers of the State were not used entirely for the benefit either of industry or of the community as a whole, as it is now constituted, but were reserved in part for the special benefit of the less wealthy, less educated, and less advantageously placed, so as gradually to equalize income, influence, and opportunity.

But what, as matter of fact, are the ways in which the new revenues are likely to be used before the Socialists are either actually or practically in control of the government? First of all, they will be used for the further development of industry itself and of schemes which aid industry, as by affording cheaper credit, cheaper transportation, cheaper lumber, cheaper coal, etc., which will chiefly benefit the manufacturers, since all these raw materials and services are so much more largely used in industry than in private consumption.

Secondly, the new sources of government revenue will be used to relieve certain older forms of taxation. The very moderately graduated income and inheritance taxes which are now common, small capitalists have tolerated principally on the ground that the State is in absolute need of them for essential expenses. We may soon expect a period when the present rapid expansion of this form of taxation as well as other direct taxes on industry, building, corporations, etc., will be checked somewhat by the new revenues obtained from the profits of government enterprises and the taxation of ground values. Indirect taxation of the consuming public in general, through tariffs and internal revenue taxes, will also be materially lightened. As soon as new and larger sources of income are created, the cry of the consumers for relief will be louder than ever, and since a large part of consumption is that of the capitalists in manufacture, the cry will be heard. This will mean lower prices. But in the long run salaries and wages accommodate themselves to prices, so that this reform, beneficial as it may be, cannot be accepted as meaning, for the masses, more than a merely temporary relief. A third form of tax reduction would be the special exemption of the poorer classes from even the smallest direct taxation. But as employers and wage boards, in fixing wages, will take this reduction into account, as well as the lower prices and rents, such exemptions will effect no great or lasting change in the division of the national income between capitalists and receivers of salaries and wages.

A third way in which the new and vastly increased incomes of the national and local governments can be expended is the communistic way, as in developing commercial and technical education, in protecting the public health, in building model tenements, in decreasing the cost of traveling for health or business, and in promoting all measures that are likely to increase industrial efficiency and profits without too great cost.

A fourth way in which the new revenue may be expended, before the Socialists are in actual or practical control, would be in somewhat increasing the wages and somewhat shortening the hours of the State and municipal employees, who will soon constitute a very large proportion of the community. Here again it is impossible to expect any but a Socialist government to go very far. As I have shown, it is to be questioned whether any capitalistic administration, however advanced, would increase real wages (wages measured by their purchasing power), except in so far as the higher wages will result in a corresponding or greater increase in efficiency, and so in the profits made from labor. And the same law applies to most other governmental (or private) expenditures on behalf of labor, whether in shortened hours, insurance, improved conditions, or any other form.

The very essence of capitalist collectivism is that the share of the total profits which goes to the ruling class should not be decreased, and if possible should be augmented. In spite of material improvements the economic gulf between the classes, during the period it dominates, will either remain as it is, or become wider and deeper than before. On the ground of the health and ultimate working efficiency of the present and future generation, hours may be considerably shortened, and the labor of women and children considerably curtailed. Insurance against death, old age, sickness, and accident will doubtless be taken over by the government. Mothers who are unable to take care of their children will probably be pensioned, as now proposed in France, and many children will be publicly fed in school, as in a number of the British and Continental places. The most complete code of labor legislation is practically assured; for, as government ownership extends, the State will become to some extent the model employer.

A quarter of a century ago, especially in Great Britain and the United States, but also in other countries, the method of allaying discontent was to distract public attention from politics altogether by stimulating the chase after private wealth. But as private wealth is more and more difficult to attain, this policy is rapidly replaced by the very opposite tactics, to keep the people absorbed in the political chase after the material benefits of economic reform. For this purpose every effort is being used to stimulate political interest, to popularize the measures of the new State capitalism, to foster public movements in their behalf, and finally to grant the reforms, not as a new form of capitalism, but as "concessions to public opinion." At present it is only the most powerful of the large capitalists and the most radical of the small that have fully adapted themselves to the new policies. But this will cause no serious delay, for among policies, as elsewhere, the fittest are surely destined to survive.

Ten years ago it would have been held as highly improbable that we would enter into such a collectivist period in half a century. Already a large part of the present generation expect to see it in their lifetime. And the constantly accelerated developments of recent years justify the belief of many that we may find ourselves far advanced in "State Socialism" before another decade has passed.

The question that must now be answered by the statesman as opposed to the mere politician, by the publicist as opposed to the mere journalist, is, not how soon the program of "State Socialism" will be put into effect, but what is going to be the attitude of the masses towards it. A movement exists that is already expressing and organizing their discontent with capitalism in whatever form. It promises to fill this function still more fully and vigorously in proportion as collectivist capitalism develops. I refer to the international revolutionary movement that finds its chief expression in the federated Socialist parties. The majority of the best-known spokesmen of this movement agree that social reform is advancing; yet most of them say, with Kautsky, that control of the capitalists over industry and government is advancing even more rapidly, partly by means of these very reforms, so that the Machtverhaeltnisse, or distribution of political and economic power between the various social classes, is even becoming less favorable to the masses than it was before. The one thing they feel is that no such capitalist society will ever be willing to ameliorate the condition of the non-capitalists to such a degree that the latter will get an increasing proportion of the products of industry or of the benefits of legislation, or an increased influence over government. The capitalists will never do anything to disturb radically the existing balance of power.

While Socialists have not always conceded that the capitalists will themselves undertake, without compulsion, large measures of political democracy and social reform,—even of the capitalistic variety,—nearly all of the most influential are now coming to base their whole policy on this now very evident tendency, and some have done so for many years past. For instance, it has been clear to many from the time of Karl Marx that it would be necessary for capitalist society itself to nationalize or municipalize businesses that become monopolized, without any reference to Socialism or the Socialists.

"These private monopolies have become unbearable," says Kautsky, "not simply for the wage workers, but for all classes of society who do not share in their ownership," and he adds that it is only the weakness of the bourgeois (the smaller capitalist) as opposed to capital (the large capitalist) that hinders him from taking effective action. Indeed, one of the chief respects in which history has pursued a somewhat different course from that expected by Marx has been in the failure of capitalist society to attempt immediately this solution of the trust problem through government ownership. Marx expected that this attempt would necessarily be made as soon as the monopolies reached an advanced state, and that the resulting economic revolution would develop into a Socialist revolution. But this monopolistic period has come, the trusts are rapidly dominating the whole field of industry and government, and yet it seems improbable that they will be forced to any final compromise with the small capitalist investors and consumers for some years to come. In the meanwhile, no doubt, the process of nationalization will begin, but too late to fulfill Marx's expectation, for the large and small capitalists will have time to become better united, and their combined control over government will have had time to grow more secure than ever. The new partnership of capitalism and the State will, no doubt, represent the small capitalists as well as the large, but there is no sign that the working people will be able to take advantage of the coming transformation for any non-capitalist purpose. Nor did Marx expect national ownership to increase the relative strength of the workers unless it was accompanied by a political revolution.

Another vast capitalist reform predicted by Socialists since the Communist Manifesto (1847) is nationalization or municipalization of the ground rent or unearned increment of land. At first Kautsky and others were inclined to expect that nothing would be done in this direction until the working classes themselves achieved political power, but it has always been seen from the days of Marx that the industrial capitalists had no particular reason for wishing to be burdened with a parasitic class of landlords that weighed on their shoulders as much as on those of the rest of the people. Not only do industrial capitalists pay heavy rents to landlords, but the rent paid by the wage worker also has to be paid indirectly and in part by the industrial capitalist: "The quantity of wealth that a landlord can appropriate from the capitalist class becomes larger in proportion as the general demand for land increases, in proportion as population grows, in proportion as the capitalist class needs land, i.e. in proportion as the capitalist system of production expands. In proportion with all this, rent rises; that is to say, the aggregate amount of wealth increases which the landlord class can slice off—either directly or indirectly—from the surplus that would otherwise be grabbed by the capitalist class alone."[90]

The industrial capitalists, then, have very motive to put an end to this kind of parasitism, and to use the funds secured, through confiscatory taxation of the unearned increment of land, to lessen their own taxation, to nationalize those fundamental industries that can only be made in this way to subserve the interests of the capitalist class as a whole (instead of some part of it merely), and to undertake through government those costly enterprises which are needed by all industry, but which give too slow returns to attract the capitalist investor.

This enormous reform, in land taxation, which alone would put into the hands of governments ultimately almost a third of the capital of modern nations, was considered by Marx, in all its early stages, as purely capitalistic, "a Socialistically-fringed attempt to save the rule of capitalism, and to establish it in fact on a still larger foundation at present."[91] Indeed, I have shown in a previous chapter that radical reformers who advocated this single-tax idea, along with the nationalization and municipalization of monopolies, do so with the conscious purpose of reviving capitalism and making it more permanent, precisely as Marx says. The great Socialist wrote the above phrase in 1881 (in a recently published letter to Sorge of New York) after reading Henry George's "Progress and Poverty," which had just appeared. He calls attention to the fact that James Mill and other capitalistic economists had long before recommended that land rent should be paid to the State so as to serve as a substitute for taxes, and that he, himself, had advocated it in the Manifesto of 1847—among transitional measures.

Marx says that he and Engels "inserted this appropriation of ground rent by the State among many other demands," which, as also stated in the Manifesto, "are self-contradictory and must be such of necessity." He explains what he means by this in the same letter. In the very year of the Manifesto he had written (in his book against Proudhon) that this measure was "a frank statement of the hatred felt by the industrial capitalist for the landowner, who seems to him to be a useless, unnecessary member in the organism of Capitalist society." Marx demanded "the abolition of property in land, and the application of all land rents to public purposes," not because this is in any sense the smallest installment of Socialism, but because it is a progressive capitalistic measure. While it strengthens capitalism by removing "a useless, unnecessary member," and by placing it "on a still larger foundation than it has at the present," it also matures it and makes it ready for Socialism—ready, that is to say, as soon as the working people capture the government and turn the capitalists out, but not a day sooner.[92] Until that time even the most grandiose reform is merely "a Socialistically-fringed attempt to save the rule of capitalism."

Other "transitional measures" mentioned by Marx and Engels in 1847, some of which had already been taken up as "Socialistically-fringed attempts to save the rule of capitalism" even before their death were:—

The heavily graduated income tax. The abolition of inheritance. A government bank with an exclusive monopoly. A partial nationalization of factories. (No doubt, the part they would select would be that operated by the trusts.) Government cultivation of waste lands.

Here we have a program closely resembling that of "State capitalism." It omits the important labor legislation for increasing efficiency, since this was unprofitable under competitive and extra-governmental capitalism, and in Marx's time had not yet appeared; e.g. the minimum wage, a shorter working day, and workingmen's insurance. As Marx and Engels mention, however, the substitution of industrial education for child labor (one of the most important and typical of these reforms), they would surely have included other measures of the same order, had they been practicable and under discussion at the time.

There can be little doubt that Marx and Engels, in this early pronunciamento, were purposely ambiguous in their language. For example, they demand "the extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state." This is plainly a conservatively capitalistic or a revolutionary Socialist measure entirely according to the degree to which, and the hands by which, it is carried out—and the same is evidently true of the appropriation of land rent and the abolition of inheritance. This is what Marx means when he says that every such measure is "self-contradictory and must be such of necessity." Up to a certain point they put capitalism on "a larger basis"; if carried beyond that, they may, in the right hands, become steps in Socialism.

Marx and Engels were neither able nor willing to lay out a program which would distinguish sharply between measures that would be transitional and those that would be Socialist sixty or seventy years after they wrote, but merely gave concrete illustrations of their policy; they stated explicitly that such reforms would vary from country to country, and only claimed for those they mentioned that they would be "pretty generally applicable." Yet, understood in the sense in which it was originally promulgated and afterwards explained, this early Socialist program still affords the most valuable key we have as to what Socialism is, if we view it on the side of its practical efforts rather than on that of abstract theories. Marx and Engels recognize that the measures I have mentioned must be acknowledged as "insufficient and untenable," because, though they involve "inroads on the rights of property," they do not go far enough to destroy capitalism and establish a Socialistic society. But they reassure their Socialistic critics by pointing out that these "insufficient" and "transitory" measures, "in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads on the old social order, and are indispensable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production." (My italics.)

That is, "State Socialism" is indispensable as a basis for Socialism, indeed necessitates it, provided Socialists look upon "State Socialist" measures chiefly as transitory means "to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class"; for this rise of the proletariat to the position of ruling class is necessarily "the first step in the revolution of the working class."

From the day of this first step the whole direction of social evolution would be altered. For, while the Socialists expect to utilize every reform of capitalist collectivism, and can only build on that foundation, their later policy would be diametrically opposed to it. A Socialist government would begin immediately an almost complete reversal of the statesmanship of "State Socialism." The first measure it would undertake would be to begin at once to increase wages faster than the rate of increase of the total wealth of the community. Secondly, within a few years, it would give to the masses of the population, according to their abilities, all the education needed to fill from the ranks of the non-capitalistic classes a proportion of all the most desirable and important positions in the community, corresponding to their numbers, and would see to it that they got these positions.

It is undoubtedly the opinion of the most representative figures of the international Socialist movement that there is not the slightest possibility that any of the non-Socialist reformers of to-day or of the near future are following or will follow any such policy, or even take the slightest step in that direction; and that there is nothing Socialists can do to force such a policy on the capitalists until they are actually or practically in power. Society may continue to progress, but it is surely inconceivable to any close observer, as it is inconceivable to the Socialists, that the privileged classes will ever consent, without the most violent struggle, to a program which, viewed as a whole, would lead, however gradually or indirectly, to a more equitable distribution of wealth and political power.

FOOTNOTES:

[90] Kautsky, "The Capitalist Class" (pamphlet).

[91] Marx's letters to Sorge.

[92] Marx's letters to Sorge.



PART II

THE POLITICS OF SOCIALISM



CHAPTER I

"STATE SOCIALISM" WITHIN THE MOVEMENT

The Socialist movement must be judged by its acts, by the decisions Socialists have reached and the reasoning they have used as they have met concrete problems.

The Socialists themselves agree that first importance is to be attached, not to the theories of Socialist writers, but to the principles that have actually guided Socialist parties and their instructed representatives in capitalist legislatures. These and the proceedings of international and national congresses and the discussion that constantly goes on within each party, and not theoretical writings, give the only truthful and reliable impression of the movement.

In 1900 Wilhelm Liebknecht, who up to the time of his death was as influential as Bebel in the German Party, pointed out that those party members who disavowed Socialist principles in their practical application were far more dangerous to the movement than those who made wholesale theoretical assaults on the Socialist philosophy, and that political alliances with capitalist parties were far worse than the repudiation of the teachings of Karl Marx. In his well-known pamphlet No Compromise he showed that this fact had been recognized by the German Party from the beginning.

I have shown the Socialists' actual position through their attitude towards progressive capitalism. An equally concrete method of dealing with Socialist actualities is to portray the various tendencies within the movement. The Socialist position can never be clearly defined except by contrasting it with those policies that the movement has rejected or is in the process of rejecting to-day. Indeed, no Socialist policy can be viewed as at all settled or important unless it has proved itself "fit," by having survived struggles either with its rivals outside or with its opponents inside the movement.

If we turn our attention to what is going on within the movement, we will at once be struck by a world-wide situation. "State Socialism" is not only becoming the policy of the leading capitalistic parties in many countries, but—in a modified form—it has also become the chief preoccupation of a large group among the Socialists. "Reformist" Socialists view most of the reforms of "State Socialism" as installments of Socialism, enacted by the capitalists in the hope of diverting attention from the rising Socialist movement.

To Marx, on the contrary, the first "step" in Socialism was the conquest of complete political power by the Socialists. "The proletariat," he wrote in the Communist Manifesto "will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the capitalists, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organized as the ruling class." (My italics.) Here is the antithesis both of "reformist" Socialism within the movement and of "State Socialism" without. The working people are not expected to gain more and more political power step by step and to use it as they go along. It is only after gaining full political supremacy by a revolution (peaceful or otherwise) that they are to socialize industry step by step. Marx and his successors do not advise the working people to concentrate their efforts on the centralization of the instruments of production in the hands of governments as they now are (capitalistic), but only after they have become completely transformed into the tools of the working people "organized as the ruling class," to use Marx's expression.[93]

The central idea of the "reformist" Socialists is, on the contrary, that before Socialism has captured any government, and even before it has become an imminent menace, it is necessary that Socialists should take the lead in the work of social reform, and should devote their energies very largely to this object. It is recognized that capitalistic or non-Socialist reformers have taken up many of the most urgent reforms and will take up more of them, and that being politically more powerful they are in a better position to put them into effect. But the "reformist" Socialists, far from allowing this fact to discourage them, allege it as the chief reason why they must also enter the field. The non-Socialist reformers, they say, are engaged in a popular work, and the Socialists must go in, help to bring about the reforms, and claim part of the credit. They then propose to attribute whatever success they may have gained, not to the fact that they also have become reformers like the rest, but to the fact that they happen to be Socialists. The non-Socialist reformers, they say again, are gaining a valuable experience in government; the Socialists must go and do likewise. Reforms which were steps in capitalism thus become to them steps in Socialism. It is not the fashion of "reformists" to try to claim that they are very great steps—on the contrary, they usually belittle them, but it is believed that agitation for such reforms as capitalist governments allow, is the best way to gain the public ear, the best kind of political practice, the most fruitful mode of activity.

One of the leading American Socialist weeklies has made a very clear and typical statement of this policy:—

"If we leave the field of achievement to the reformer, then it is going to be hard to persuade people that reform is not sufficient. If Socialists take every step forward as part of a general revolutionary program, and never fail to point out that these things are but steps forward in a stairway that mean nothing save as they lead to a higher stage of society, then the Socialist movement will carry along with it all those who are fighting the class struggle. The hopelessness of reform as a goal will become apparent when its real position in social evolution is pointed out."[94]

The leading questions this proposed policy arouses will at once come to the reader's mind: Will the capitalist reformers in control of national governments allow the Socialist "reformists" to play the leading part in their own chosen field of effort? If people tend to be satisfied with reform, what difference does it make as to the ultimate political or social ideals of those who bring it about? If the steps taken by reformers and "reformists" are the same, by what alchemy can the latter transform them into parts of a revolutionary program?

Mr. Simons, nevertheless, presents this "reformism" as the proper policy for the American Party at its present stage:—

"It has become commonplace," he says, "to say that the Socialist movement of the United States has entered upon a new stage, and that with the coming of many local victories and not a few in State and nation, Socialist activity must partake of the character of preparation for the control of society.

"Yet our propaganda has been slow to reflect this change. This is natural. For more than a generation the important thing was to advertise Socialism and to inculcate a few doctrinal truths. This naturally developed a literature based on broad assertions, sensational exposures, vigorous denunciations, and revival-like appeals that resulted in sectarian organization.

"It has been hard to break away from this stage. It is easier to make a propaganda of 'sound and fury' than of practical achievement. Once the phrases have been learned, it is much simpler to issue a manifesto than to organize a precinct. It always requires less effort to talk about a class struggle than to fight it; to defy the lightning of international class rule than to properly administer a township. Yet, if Socialism is inevitable, if the Socialist Party is soon to rule in State and nation, then it is of the highest importance that Socialists should know something of the forces with which they are going to deal; something of the lines of evolution which they are going to further; something of the government which they are going to administer; something of the task which they profess to be eager to accomplish."

It might seem that, after the first stage has been passed, the next promising way to carry Socialism forward, the way actually to "fight" the class struggle and to achieve something practical is, as Mr. Simons says, to talk less and to go in and "administer a township." Revolutionary Socialists agree that advertising, the teaching of a few basic doctrines, emotional appeals, and the criticism of present society have hitherto taken up the principal share of the Socialist agitation, and that all these together are not sufficient to enable Socialists to achieve their aim, or even to carry the movement much farther. They agree that activity is the best teacher and that the class struggle must be actually fought. But they propose other activities and feel that a whole intermediate stage of Socialist evolution, including the capture of national governments, lies between the Socialist agitation of the past and any administration of a township that can do anything to bring recruits to Socialism and not merely to "State Socialist" reform.

This is the view of the revolutionary majority of the international movement. But the "reformist" minority is both large and powerful, and since it draws far more recruits than does the revolutionary majority from the ranks of the book educated and capitalistic reformers, its spokesmen and writers attract a disproportionately large share of attention in capitalistic and reform circles, and thus give rise to widespread misunderstanding as to the position of the majority.

Not only are both the more or less Socialistic parties in Great Britain and the Labour parties of the British colonies "reformist" to the extent that they are either entirely outside or practically independent of the international movement, but the parties of Belgium, Italy, and South Germany have, for a number of years, concentrated their attention almost exclusively on such reforms as the capitalist governments of their countries are likely to allow to be enacted—the dominant idea being to obtain all that can be obtained for the working classes at the present moment, even when, for this purpose, it becomes necessary to subordinate or to compromise entirely the plans and hopes of the future. And it is only within the last year or two that the revolutionary wing in these last-named countries has begun to grow rapidly again and promises to regain control.

There can be no doubt that Socialist "reformism" has become very widespread. President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, who had every facility of meeting European Socialists and unionists on a recent tour, made some observations which are by no means without a certain foundation.[95] He says that he talked to these people about Socialism and, though they all knew "the litany, service, and invocation" and the Socialist text for the coming revolution, they preserved this knowledge for their speech making, while in conversation it all faded away into the misty realms of the imagination. "Positively," writes Mr. Gompers, "I never found one man in my trip ready to go further into constructive Socialism than to repeat perfunctorily its time-worn generalities. On the other hand, I met men whom I knew years ago, either personally or through correspondence or by their work, as active propagandists of the Socialists' theoretical creed, who are now devoting their energies to one or other of the practical forms of social betterment—trade unionism, cooeperation, legal protection to the workers—and who could not be moved to speak of utopianism [Mr. Gompers's epithet for Socialism]." It is doubtless true, as Mr. Gompers says, that the individuals he questioned have practically abandoned their Socialism, even though they remain members of the Socialist parties. For if such activities as he mentions could be claimed as "Socialism," then there is very little public work an intelligent and honest workingman can undertake, no matter how conservative it may be, which is not to go by that name.

The chief characteristic of the reformists is, indeed, frankly to claim, either that all the capitalist-collectivist reforms of the period are Socialist in origin, or that they cannot be put into execution without Socialist aid, or that such reforms are enacted only as concessions, for fear that Socialism would otherwise sweep everything before it.

Rev. Carl D. Thompson, formerly a Socialist member of the Wisconsin Legislature, and now Town Clerk of Milwaukee, for example, claims Millerand as a Socialist minister, though the French Socialist Party agreed by an almost unanimous vote that he is not to be so considered, and attributes to this minister a whole series of reforms in which he was only a single factor among many others. Many important legislative changes which have taken place in Italy since 1900, Mr. Thompson accredits to the opportunist Socialist leader, Turati, with his handful of members of the chamber, though it is certain that even at the present moment the Socialists have not yet arrived at a position where they can claim that they are shaping governmental action as strongly as their Radical allies. Mr. Thompson states that the "Socialist Independent Labour Party" of Great Britain had thirty-four representatives in Parliament at a time when the larger non-Socialist Labour Party, which included it, had only this number. He claimed that a majority of this latter party were Socialists, when, as a matter of fact, only a minority were members of any Socialist party even in the ultra-moderate sense in which the term is employed in England, and he accredits all the chief reforms brought about by the Liberal government to this handful of "Socialists," including even the old age pensions which were almost unanimously favored by the old parties.[96] He even lists among his signs of the progress of Socialism the fact that, at the time of writing, fifty-nine governments owned their railways, while a large number had instituted postal savings banks.

The same tendency to claim everything good as Socialism is very common in Great Britain. Even the relatively advanced Socialist, Victor Grayson, avoids the question whether there is any social reform which is not Socialism,[97] and it seems to be the general position of British Socialists that every real reform is Socialism—more or less.

August Bebel, on the contrary, is quoted as saying, "It is not a question of whether we achieve this or that; for us the principal thing is that we put forward certain claims which no other party can put forward." The great German Socialist sees clearly that if Socialism is to distinguish itself from the other parties it must rest its claims solely on demands which are made exclusively by Socialists. This is what those who claim that every reform is Socialism, or is best promoted by Socialists, fail to see. By trying to make the word, "Socialism" mean everything, they inevitably make it mean nothing.

It is true that for a time the very advertisement of the word "Socialism," by this method, and even the widest and loosest use of Socialist phrases had the effect of making people think about Socialist principles. But this cannot be long continued before the public begins to ask questions concerning the exact meaning of such expressions as applied to everyday life. The Socialist paper, Justice, of London, urged that "the very suggestion that any of the Liberal members of Parliament were connected with the Socialist movement created a more profound impression than all they ever said or did." This is doubtless true, but when the novelty has once worn off of this situation it is what so-called Socialists do that alone will count.

For example, the leading reformist Socialist of Great Britain, Mr. J. R. MacDonald, wishes to persuade the Socialists of America to carry on "a propaganda of immediately practicable changes, justified and enriched by the fact that they are the realization of great ideals."[98] Such a reduction of the ideal to what is actually going on, or may be immediately brought about, makes it quite meaningless. Evidently the immediately practicable changes that Mr. MacDonald suggests are themselves his ideal, and what he calls the ideal consists rather of phrases and enthusiasms that are useful, chiefly, for the purpose of advertising his Party and creating enthusiasm for it.

The underlying motive of the "reformists" when they claim non-Socialist reforms as their own, and relegate practically all distinctively Socialist principles and methods to the vague and distant future, is undoubtedly their belief that reforms rather than Socialism appeal to the working class.

"The mass of workingmen will support the Socialist Party," a Socialist reformer wrote recently, "not because they are being robbed under capitalism, but because they are made to understand that this party can be relied upon to advance certain measures which they know will benefit them and their families here and now.

"The constructive Socialist believes that the cooeperative commonwealth will be realized, not by holding it up in contrast to capitalism,—but only by the working class fighting first for this thing, then for that thing, until private enterprise is undermined by its rewards being eaten up by taxes and its incentive removed by the inroads made upon profits."

The working people, that is, are not intelligent enough to realize that they are "robbed under capitalism," and are not getting their proportionate share of the increase of wealth, nor courageous enough to take up the fight to overthrow capitalism; they appreciate only small advances from day to day, and every step by which "private capitalism" is replaced by State action is such an advance, while these advances are to be secured chiefly through a Socialist Party. In a word, the Socialist Party is to ask support because it can accomplish more than other parties for social reform under capitalism, which at the present period means "State Socialism."

For while "reformist" Socialists are taking a position nearly identical with that of the non-Socialist reformers, the latter are coming to adopt a political policy almost identical with that of the reformist Socialists. I have noted that one of America's leading economists advises all reformers, whether they are Socialists or not, to join the Socialist Party. Since both "reformist" Socialists and "Socialistic" reformers are interested in labor legislation, public ownership, democratic political reforms, graduated taxation, and the governmental appropriation of the unearned increment in land, why should they not walk side by side for a very considerable distance behind "a somewhat red banner," and "without troubling themselves about the unlike goals"—as Professor John Bates Clark recommends? The phrases of Socialism have become so popular that their popularity constitutes its chief danger. At a time when so many professed anti-Socialists are agreeing with the New York Independent that, though it is easy to have too much Socialism, at least "we want more" than we have, it becomes exceedingly difficult for non-Socialists to learn what Socialism is and to distinguish it from innumerable reform movements.

Less than a decade ago the pros and cons of Socialism were much debated. Now it is usually only a question of Socialism sooner or later, more or less. Socialism a century or two hence, or in supposed installments of a fraction of a per cent, is an almost universally popular idea. For the Socialists this necessitates a revolutionary change in their tactics, literature, and habit of thought. They were formerly forced to fight those who could not find words strong enough to express their hostility; they are rapidly being compelled to give their chief attention to those who claim to be friends. The day of mere repression is drawing to a close, the day of cajolery is at hand.

Liebknecht saw what was happening years ago, and, in one of the most widely circulated pamphlets the Socialists have ever published (No Compromise), issued an impressive warning to the movement:—

"The enemy who comes to us with an open visor we face with a smile; to set our feet upon his neck is mere play for us. The stupidly brutal acts of violence of police politicians, the outrages of anti-Socialist laws, penitentiary bills—these only arouse feelings of pitying contempt; the enemy, however, that reaches out the hand to us for a political alliance, and intrudes himself upon us as a friend and a brother,—him and him alone have we to fear.

"Our fortress can withstand every assault—it cannot be stormed nor taken from us by siege—it can only fall when we ourselves open the doors to the enemy and take him into our ranks as a fellow comrade."

"We shall almost never go right," says Liebknecht, "if we do what our enemies applaud." And we find, as a matter of fact, that the enemies of Socialism never fail to applaud any tendency of the party to compromise those acting principles that have brought it to the point it has now reached. For Liebknecht shows that the power which now causes a Socialist alliance to be sought after in some countries even by Socialism's most bitter enemies would never have arisen had the party not clung closely to its guiding principle, the policy of "no compromise."

There is no difficulty in showing, from the public life and opinion of our day, how widespread is this spirit of political compromise or opportunism; nor in proving that it enters into the conduct of many Socialists. Such an opposition to the effective application of broad and far-sighted plans to practical politics is especially common, for historical reasons, in Great Britain and the United States. In this country it has been especially marked in Milwaukee from the earliest days of the Socialist movement there. In 1893 the Milwaukee Vorwaerts announced that "if you demand too much at one time you are likely not to get anything," and that "nothing more ought to be demanded but what is attainable at a given time and under given circumstances."[99] It will be noticed that this is a clear expression of a principle of action diametrically opposite to that adopted by the international movement as stated by Bebel and Liebknecht. Socialists are chiefly distinguished from the other parties by the fact that they concentrate their attention on demands beyond "what is attainable at a given time and under given circumstances." They might attempt to distinguish themselves by claiming that they stand for the ultimate goal of Socialism, though their immediate program is the same as that of other parties, but any politician can do that—as has been shown recently by the action of Briand, Millerand, Ferri, and other former Socialists in France and Italy—and the day seems near when hosts of politicians will follow their example.

Any static or dogmatic definition of Socialism, like any purely idealistic formulation, no matter how revolutionary or accurate it may be, necessarily invites purely opportunist methods. A widely accepted static definition declares that Socialism is "the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution under democratic management." As an ultimate ideal or a theory of social evolution, this is accepted also by many collectivist opponents of Socialism, and may soon be accepted generally. The chief possibility for a difference of opinion among most practical persons, whether Socialists or not, must come from the questions: How soon? By what means?

Evidently such a social revolution is to be achieved only by stages. What are these stages? Many are tempted to give the easy answer, "More and more collectivism and more and more democracy." But progress in political democracy, if it came first, might be accompanied by an artificial revival of small-scale capitalism, and a new majority made up largely of contented farmer capitalists might put Socialism farther off than it is to-day. Similarly, if installments of collectivism came first, they might lead us in the direction of the Prussia of to-day. And finally, even a combination of democracy and collectivism, up to a certain point, might produce a majority composed in part of small capitalists and favored government employees. Collectivist democracy completed or far advanced would insure the coming of Socialism. But a policy that merely gave us more collectivism plus more democracy, might carry us equally well either towards Socialism or in the opposite direction. The ultimate goal of present society does not give us a ready-made plan of action by a mathematical process of dividing its attainment into so many mechanical stages.

A very similar political shibboleth, often used by Party Socialists, is "Let the nation own the trusts." Let us assume that the constitution of this country were made as democratic as that of Australia or Switzerland, and the suffrage made absolutely universal (as to adults). Let us assume, moreover, that the "trusts," including railways, public service corporations, banks, mines, oil, and lumber interests, the steel-making and meat-packing industries, and the few other important businesses where monopolies are established, were owned and operated by governments of this character. Taken together with the social and labor reforms that would accompany such a regime, this would be "State Socialism," but it would not necessarily constitute even a step towards Socialism—and this for two reasons.

The industries mentioned employ probably less than a third of the population, and, even if we add other government employments, the total would be little more than a third. The majority of the community would still be divided among the owners or employees of the competitive manufacturing establishments, stores, farms, etc.,—and the professional classes. With most of these the struggle of Capital and Labor would continue and, since they are in a majority, would be carried over into the field of government, setting the higher paid against the more poorly paid employees, as in the Prussia of to-day.

And, secondly, even if we supposed that a considerable part or all of the government employees received what they felt to be, on the whole, a fair treatment from the government, and if these, together with shopkeepers, farm owners, or lessees, and satisfied professional and salaried men, made up a majority, we would still be as far as ever from a social, economic, or industrial democracy. What we would have would be a class society, based on a purely political democracy, and economically, on a partly private (or individualist) and partly public (or collectivist) capitalism.

"Equal opportunities for all" would also mean Socialism. But equal opportunities for a limited number, no matter if that number be much larger than at present, may merely strengthen capitalism by drawing the more able of the workers away from their class and into the service of capitalism. Or opportunities more equal for all, without a complete equalization, may merely increase the competition of the lower classes for middle-class positions and so secure to the capitalists cheaper professional service. So-called steps towards equal opportunities, even if rapid enough to produce a very large surplus of trained applicants for whom capitalism fails to provide and so increase the army of malcontents, may simply delay the day of Socialism.

I have spoken of Socialists whose underlying object is opportunistic—to obtain immediate results in legislation no matter how unrelated they may be to Socialism. Others are impelled either by an inactive idealism, or by attachment to abstract dogma for its own sake. Their custom is in the one instance to make the doctrine so rigid that it has no immediate application, and in the other to "elevate the ideal" so high, to remove it so far into the future, that it is scarcely visible for the present-day purposes, and then to declare that present-day activity, even if theoretically subject to an ideal or a doctrine, must be guided also by quite other and "practical" principles, which are never clearly defined and sometimes are scarcely mentioned. Mr. Edmond Kelly, for instance, puts his "Collectivism Proper," or Socialism, so far into the future that he is forced to confess that it will be attained only "ultimately," or perhaps not at all, while "Partial Collectivism may prove to be the last stage consistent with human imperfection."[100] He acknowledges that this Partial Collectivism ("State Socialism") is not the ideal, and it is evident that his ideal is too far ahead or too rigid or theoretical, to have any connection with the ideals of the Socialist movement, which arise exclusively out of actual life.

This opportunism defends itself by an appeal to the "evolutionary" argument, that progress must necessarily be extremely slow. Progress in this view, like Darwin's variations, takes place a step at a time, and its steps are infinitesimally small. The Worker of Brisbane, Australia, says: "The complicated complaint from which society suffers can only be cured by the administration of homeopathic doses.... Inculcate Socialism? Yes, but grab all you can to be going on with. Preach revolutionary thoughts? Yes, but rely on the ameliorative method.... The minds of men are of slow development, and we must be content, we fear, to accomplish our revolution piecemeal, bit by bit, till a point is come to when, by accumulative process, a series of small changes amounts to the Great Change. The most important revolutions are those that happen quietly without anything particularly noticeable seeming to occur."

What is a Great Change depends entirely, in the revolutionist's view, on how rapidly it is brought about, and "revolutionary thoughts" are empty abstractions unless accompanied by revolutionary methods. Once it is assumed that there is plenty of time, the difference between the conservative and the radical disappears. For even those who have the most to lose realize in these days the inevitability of "evolution." The radical is not he who looks forward to great changes after long periods of time, but he who will not tolerate unnecessary delay—who is unwilling to accept the so-called installments or ameliorations offered by the conservative and privileged (even when considerable) as being satisfactory or as necessarily contributing to his purpose at all. The radical spirit is rather that of John Stuart Mill, when he said, "When the object is to raise the permanent condition of a people, small means do not merely produce small effects; they produce no effect at all."

Some political standard and quantitative measure is as necessary to social progress as similar standards are necessary in other relations. If the political standard of the Socialists is so low as to regard social reform programs which on the whole are more helpful to the capitalists than to other classes—and therefore "produce no effect at all" as far as the Socialist purpose is concerned—as if they were concessions, then it follows naturally that the Socialists will be ready to pay a price for such concessions. They will not only view as a relative gain over the capitalists measures which are primarily aimed at advancing capitalist interests, but they will inevitably be ready at a price to relax to some extent the intensity of their opposition to other measures that are capitalistic and antipopular. For instance, if old age pensions are considered by the workers to be an epoch-making reform and a concession, they may be granted by the capitalists all the more readily. But if thus overvalued, advantage will be taken of this feeling, and they will in all probability be accompanied by restrictions of the rights of labor organizations. On the other hand, if such pensions, however desirable, are considered as a reform which will result indirectly in great savings to the capitalist classes, to public and private charitable institutions, to employers, etc., then the Socialists will accept them and, if possible, hasten their enactment,—but, like the French, will refuse to pay for them out of their own pockets (even through indirect taxation, as the British workingmen were forced to do) and will allow them neither to be used as a cloak for reaction, nor as a substitute for more fundamental reforms.

In other words, a rational political standard would teach that a certain measure of political progress is normal in capitalist society as a result of the general increase of wealth and the general improvement in political and economic organization, especially now that the great change to State capitalism is taking place; while reforms of an entirely different character are needed if there is to be any relative advance of the political and economic power of the masses, any tendency that might lead in the course of a reasonable period of time to economic and social democracy.

"A new and fair division of the goods and rights of this world should be the main object of all those who conduct human affairs," said De Tocqueville. The economic progress and political reforms of this capitalistic age are doubtless bringing us nearer to the day when a new and fair division of goods and rights can take place, and they will make the great transformation easier when it comes, but this does not mean that in themselves they constitute even a first step in the new dispensation. That they do is denied by all the most representative Socialists from Marx to Bebel.

The most bitter opponents of Socialism, like its most thoroughgoing advocates, have come to see that the whole character of the movement has grown up from its unwillingness to compromise the aggressive tactics indispensable for the revolutionary changes it has in view, until it has become obvious that, just as Socialism as a social movement is the opposite pole to State capitalism, so Socialism as a social method is the opposite pole to opportunism.

FOOTNOTES:

[93] The Communist Manifesto.

[94] The Coming Nation, Sept. 9, 1911.

[95] Mr. Gompers's articles in the Federationist have recently appeared in book form.

[96] Carl D. Thompson, "The Constructive Program of Socialism" (pamphlet).

[97] Victor Grayson and G. R. S. Taylor, "The Problem of Parliament," p. 56.

[98] Editorial in the Socialist Review (London), May, 1910.

[99] Vorwaerts (Milwaukee), Jan. 3, 1893.

[100] Edmond Kelly, "Individualism and Collectivism," p. 398.



CHAPTER II

"REFORMISM" IN FRANCE, ITALY, AND BELGIUM

The Socialist parties in Italy, Belgium, and France, where "reformism" is strong, are progressing less rapidly than the Socialists of these countries had reason to expect, and far less rapidly than in other countries. It would seem that in these cases the same cause that drives the movement to abandon aggressive tactics also checks its numerical growth.

For example, it is a matter of principle among Socialists generally to contest every possible elected position and to nominate candidates in every possible district. The revolutionary French Socialist, Jules Guesde, even stated to the writer that if candidates could be run by the party in every district of France, and if the vote could in this way be increased, he would be willing to see the number of Socialists in Parliament reduced materially, even to a handful—the object being to teach Socialism everywhere, and to prepare for future victories by concentrating on a few promising districts rather than to make any effort to become a political factor, at the present moment. Similarly, August Bebel declared that he would prefer that in the elections of 1912 the Socialists should get 4,000,000 votes and 50 Reichstag members rather than 3,000,000 votes and 100 members. In the latter case, of course, the Socialist members would have been elected largely on the second ballot by the votes of non-Socialists.

The policy actually carried out in both Italy and France has of late been exactly the opposite to that recommended by Guesde and Bebel. In the elections of 1909, the Socialist Party of Italy put up 114 less candidates for Parliament than they had in the election of 1904, while the number of candidates nominated in France was 50 less in 1910 than it had been in 1906. The consequence was that the French Party received an increase of votes less absolutely than that gained by the conservative republicans and scarcely greater than that of the radicals, while in Italy the Socialists actually cast a smaller percentage of the total vote in 1909 than they did in 1904, while the party membership materially decreased.

This policy had a double result; it sent more Socialists to the Parliaments, in each case increasing the number of members by about 50 per cent; on the other hand, it helped materially those radical and rival parties most nearly related to the Socialists, for in many districts where the latter had withdrawn their candidates these parties necessarily received the Socialist vote. A vast field of agitation was practically deserted, and even when the agitation was carried on, the distinction between the Socialist Party and the parties it had favored, and which in turn favored it, became less marked, and the chances of the spread of Socialism in the future were correspondingly diminished.

In France it is this policy which has brought forward the so-called "independent Socialists" of the recent Briand ministry. Being neither Socialists nor "Radicals," they are in the best position to draw advantages from the "rapprochement" of these forces, and it was thus that Millerand came into the ministry in 1900, that Briand became prime minister in 1910, and Augagneur minister in 1911. These are among the most formidable opponents of the Socialist movement in France to-day. It will seem from this and many other instances that the opportunist policy which leads at first to a show of success, later results in a weakening of the immediate as well as the future possibilities of the movement.

The opportunist policy leads not only to an abandonment of Socialist principle, an outcome that can never be finally determined in any case, but sometimes to an actual betrayal or desertion, visible to all eyes, as, for instance, when Ferri left the movement in Italy, or Briand and Millerand in France. That such desertions must inevitably result from the looseness taught by "reformist" tactics is evident. Yet all through Briand's early political career, Jaures was his intimate associate, and even after the former had forsaken the party, the latter confessed that, like the typical opportunist, he had still expected to find in Briand's introductory address as minister "reasons for hoping for the progress of social justice."

The career of Briand is typical. "One must understand how to manage principles," he had said in 1900 at the very time he was making the revolutionary declarations I shall quote (in favor of the general strike and against the army). Two years later when he made his first speech in the Chamber, the conservative "Temps" said that Briand was "ministrable"; that is, that he was good material for some future capitalistic ministry. Now Briand was making in this speech what appeared to be a very vigorous attack against the government and capitalism, but, like some prominent Socialists to-day, he had succeeded in doing it in such a way that he allowed the more far-seeing of the capitalistic enemy to understand clearly what his underlying principles were.[101]

At his first opportunity he became connected with the government, and justified this step on the ground of "his moral attitude," since he was the proposer of the famous bill for separating the Church and the State. He was immediately excluded from the party, since at the time of Millerand's similar step a few years before the party had reached the definite conclusion that Socialists should not be allowed to participate in their opponent's administrations.

When Briand became minister, and later (in 1909) prime minister, he did not fail at once to realize the worst fears of the Socialists, elevating military men and naval officers to the highest positions, and promoting that minister who had been most active in suppressing the post office strike to the head of the department of justice. So-called collectivist reforms that were introduced while he was minister, like the purchase of the Western Railway, were carried through, according to conservative Socialists like Jaures, with a loss of 700,000,000 francs to the State. So that now Jaures, who had done so much to forward Millerandism and Briandism felt obliged to propose a resolution condemning Briand and Millerand and Viviani as traitors who had allowed themselves to be used "for the purpose of 'capitalism.'"

"'Socialistic' ministers," says Rappoport, "have fallen below the level of progressive capitalistic governments. No 'Socialistic' minister has done near so much for democracy as honorable but narrow-minded democrats like Combes. 'Socialistic' ministers have before anything else sought the means of keeping themselves in office. In order to make people forget their past, they are compelled to give continuously new proofs of their zeal for the government."

In France, where strong radical, democratic, and "State Socialist" parties already exist, ready to absorb those who put reform before Socialism, the likelihood that such desertions will lead to any serious division of the party seems small, especially since the Toulouse Congress, when a platform was adopted unanimously. Of course, the leading factor in this platform was Jaures, who stands as strongly for a policy of unity and conciliation within the party as he has for an almost uninterrupted conciliation and cooeperation with the more or less radical forces outside of it.

If Jaures was able to get the French Party to adopt this unanimous program, it was because he is not the most extreme of reformists, and because he has hitherto placed party loyalty before everything. In the same way Bebel, voting on nearly every occasion with the revolutionists, is able to hold the German Party together because he is occasionally on the reformist side, as in a case to be mentioned below. Jaures looks forward, for instance, to a whole series of "successful general strikes intervening at regular intervals," and even to the final use of a great revolutionary general strike, whenever it looks as if the capitalists can be finally overthrown and the government taken into Socialist hands—though he certainly considers that the day for such a strike is still many years off. Nor does he hesitate to extend the hand of Socialist fellowship to the most revolutionary Socialists and labor unionists of his country, though he says to them, "The more revolutionary you are, the more you must try to bring into the united movement not only a minority, but the whole working class." He says he is not against revolution, or the general strike, but that he is against "a caricature of the general strike and an abortive revolution."

It is only by actions, however, that men or parties may be judged, and though Jaures has occasionally been found with the revolutionists, in most cases he acts with their rivals and opponents, the reformists, and in fact is the most eminent Socialist reformer the world has produced. No one will question that there are Socialists who are exclusively interested in reform at the present period, not because they are opposed to revolution, but because no greater movements are taking place at the present moment or likely to take place in the immediate future—and Jaures may be one of these. But it is very difficult, even impossible, to distinguish by any external signs, between such persons and those for whom the idea of anything beyond the reforms of "State Socialism" is a mere ideal, which concerns almost exclusively the next or some future generation. Many of those who were formerly Jaures's most intimate associates, like the ministers Briand and Millerand, the recent ministers Augagneur and Viviani, and many others, have deserted the Party and are now proving to be its most dangerous opponents, while several other deputies, who are still members like Brousse, recently Mayor of Paris, are accused by a large part of the organization of taking a very similar position. Surely this shows that, even if Jaures himself could be trusted and allowed to advocate principles and tactics so agreeable to the rivals and enemies of Socialism, there are certainly few other persons who can be safely left in such a compromising position.

In view of these great betrayals on the part of Jaures's associates, the mere fact that his own position towards the Party has usually been correct in the end—after the majority have shown him just how far he can go—and will doubtless remain technically correct, becomes of entirely secondary importance. He has openly and repeatedly encouraged and aided those individuals and parties which later became the chief obstacles in the way of Socialist advance, as other Socialists had predicted. The result is, not that the Socialist Party has ceased to grow, but that a large part of the enthusiasm for Socialism, largely created by the party, has gone to elect so-called "Independent Socialists" to the Chamber and to elevate to the control of the government men like Briand, who, it was agreed by Socialists and anti-Socialists alike, was the most formidable enemy the Socialists have had for many years.

The program unanimously adopted by the French at the Congress of Toulouse must be viewed in the light of this internal situation. "The Socialist Party, the party of the working class and of the Social Revolution," it begins, "seeks the conquest of political power for the emancipation of the proletariat [working class] by the destruction of the capitalist regime and the suppression of classes." The goal of Socialism could not be more succinctly expressed than in these words: "The destruction of the capitalist regime and the suppression of classes." Any party that lives up to this preamble in letter and spirit can scarcely stray from the Socialist road.

"It is the party which is most essentially, most actively reformist," continues another section, "the only one which can push its action on to total reform; the only one which can give full effect to each working class demand; the only one which can make of each reform, of each victory, the starting point and basis of more extended demands and bolder conquests...." Here we have the plank on which Jaures undoubtedly laid the greatest weight, and it was supported unanimously partly because of the necessity of party unity. For this is as much as to say that no reform will ever be brought to a point that wholly satisfies the working people except through a working class government. But it cannot be denied that there are certain changes of very great importance to the working people, like those mentioned in previous chapters, which are at the same time even more valuable to the capitalists, and would be carried out to the end even if there were no Socialists in existence. If the revolutionary wing of the French Party once conceded to capitalism itself this possibility of bringing about certain reforms, they would be in a position effectively to oppose the reformist tactics of Jaures within the Party. By giving full credit to the semi-democratic and semi-capitalistic reform parties for certain measures, they would go as far as he does in the direction of conciliation and common sense in politics; by denying the possibility of the slightest cooeperation with non-Socialists on other and still more important questions, they could constantly intensify the political conflict, and since Jaures is a perpetual compromiser, put him in the minority in every contested vote within the party. By attacking the capitalists blindly and on all occasions they have created the necessity of a conciliator—the role that Jaures so ably and effectively fills.

But, however friendly the Toulouse program may have seemed to Jaures's reform tactics, it is not on that account any less explicit in its indorsement of revolutionary methods whenever the moment happens to be propitious. It states that the Socialist Party "continually reminds the proletariat [working class] by its propaganda that they will find salvation and entire freedom only in a collectivist and communist regime"; that "it carries on this propaganda in all places in order to raise everywhere the spirit of demand and of combat," and that "the Socialists not only indorse the general strike for use in economic struggles, but also for the purpose of finally absorbing capitalism."

"Like all exploited classes throughout history," it concludes, "the proletariat affirms its right to take recourse at certain moments to insurrectionary violence."

The Toulouse Congress showed, not the present position of the French Party or of the International, but the points on which Socialist revolutionists and reformers, everywhere else at sword's point, can agree. The reformers do not object to promising the revolutionaries that they shall have their own way in the relatively rare crises when revolutionary means are used or contemplated. The revolutionaries are willing to allow the reformers to claim all the credit for all reforms beneficial to the workers that happen to be enacted. Neither gives up their first principle, whether it be revolution or reform, but in the matter of secondary importance, reform or revolution, each side tolerates in the party an attitude in diametrical opposition to its principles and the tactics it requires. Both do this doubtless in the belief that by this opportunism they will some day capture the whole party, and that a split may thus be avoided in the meanwhile.