Mr. Berger's maiden speech also summed up excellently the general policy of Socialist "reformism."

"When the white man is sick or when he dies," he said, "the employer usually loses nothing." Mr. Berger does not understand that, in modern countries, employers as a class are seeing that the laborers as a class are, after all, their chief asset: and are therefore organizing to care for them through governmental action, as working animals, even more systematically and infinitely more scientifically than slaves were ever cared for. He is exhausting his efforts to persuade, or perhaps he would say to compel, the government to the very action that the interests of its capitalist masters most strongly demand.

Curiously enough, Mr. Berger expressed the "reformist," the revolutionary, and the State capitalist principle in this same speech, without being in the least troubled with the contradictions. He spoke of industrial crises, irregular employment and unemployment as if they were permanent features of capitalism:—

"These new inventions, machines, improvements, and labor devices, displace human labor and steadily increase the army of unemployed, who, starved and frantic, are ever ready to take the places of those who have work, thereby still further depressing the labor market."

The collectivist capitalists have already set themselves aggressively to work to abolish unemployment, to make employment regular, to connect the worker that needs a job with the job that needs a worker, and to put an end to industrial crises, and with every promise of success.

Immediately afterward, Mr. Berger made a correct statement of the Socialist position:—

"The average of wages, the certainty of employment, the social privileges, and the independence of the wage-earning and agricultural population, when compared with the increase of wealth and social production, are steadily and rapidly decreasing."

The Socialist indictment is not that unemployment, irregularity of employment, or any other social evil is increasing absolutely, or that it is beyond the reach of capitalist reform; but that the share of the constantly increasing total of wealth and prosperity that goes to the laborers is constantly growing less.

A few minutes later in the same speech, Mr. Berger indorsed pure "State Socialism." Legislation, he said, that does not tend to an increased measure of control on the part of society as a whole is not in line with the trend of economic evolution and cannot last. This formulates capitalistic collectivism with absolute distinctness. What it demands is not a new order, but more order. What it opposes is not so much the rule of capitalists, as the disorder of capitalism—which capitalists themselves are effectively remedying. It is not only our present government that is capitalistic but our present society, also. Increased control over industry, over legislation and government, on the part of the present society as a whole, would be but a step toward the achievement of State capitalism. The purpose of Socialism is to overcome and eliminate the power of capitalism whether in society or in government, and not to establish it more firmly. Increased control by society as a whole, far from being a Socialist principle, is not necessarily even radical or progressive. In fact the most far-seeing conservatives to-day demand it, for "control by society as a whole" means, for the present, control by society as it is.

Finally, in reply to questions asked on the floor of Congress after this same speech, Mr. Berger said: "Any interference by the government with the rights of private property is Socialistic in tendency," that is, that every step in collectivism is a step in Socialism. Yet this demand for the restriction of the rights of private property by a conservative government is the identical principle advocated by progressives who will have nothing to do with Socialism. (See Part I, Chapter III.)

Mr. Berger and the large minority of Socialist Party members that vote with him in Party Congresses and referendums may be said to represent a combination of trade unionism of the conservative kind, and "State Socialism," together with opportunistic methods more or less in contradiction with the usual tactics of the international movement. These methods and the indiscriminate support of conservative unionism have been repeatedly rejected by the Socialists in this country. But very many Socialists who repudiate all compromise and will have nothing of Australian or British Labor Party tactics in the United States are in entire accord with Mr. Berger on "State Socialist" reform. It is thus a modified form of "State Socialism" and not Laborism that now confronts the organization and creates its greatest problem.

Mr. Charles Edward Russell, for example, says that "we are not striving for ourselves alone, but for our children," that "our aim is not merely for one country, but for all the world," that "we stand here immutably resolved against the whole of capitalism."[165] And Mr. Russell will hear nothing either of compromise or of a Labor Party. But when we come to examine the only question of practical moment, how his ideal is to be applied, we are astounded to read that, "every time a government acquires a railroad, it practices Socialism."[166]

Mr. Russell points out that "almost all the railroads in the world, outside of the United States, are now owned by government," yet in his latest book, "Business," he refers to Prussia, Japan, Mexico [under Diaz], and other countries as having boldly purchased railways and coal mines when they desired them for the common good.[167] Mr. Russell here seems to overlook the fact that the history of Russia, Japan, Mexico, and Prussia has shown that there is an intermediate stage between our status and government "for the Common Good," a stage during which the capitalist class, having gained a more firm control over government than ever, intrusts it (with the opposition of but a few of the largest capitalists) with some of the most important business functions.

Yet Mr. Russell himself admits, by implication, that government by Business "properly informed and broadly enlightened" might continue for a considerable period, and therefore directs his shafts largely against Business Government "as at present conducted," and he realizes fully that the most needed reforms, even when they directly benefit the workingmen, are equally or still more to the benefit of Business:—

"In the first place, if the masses of people become too much impoverished, the national stamina is destroyed, which would be exceedingly bad for Business in case Business should plunge us into war. In the second place, since poverty produces a steady decline in physical and mental capacity, if it goes too far, there is a lack of hands to do the work of Business and a lack of healthy stomachs to consume some of its most important products.

"For these reasons, a Government for Profits, like ours, incurs certain deadly perils, unless it be properly informed and broadly enlightened.

"Something of the truth of this has already been perceived by the astute gentlemen that steer the fortunes of the Standard Oil Company, a concern that in many respects may be considered the foremost present type of Business in Government. One of the rules of the Standard Oil Company is to pay good wages to its employees, and to see that they are comfortable and contented. As a result of this policy the Standard Oil Company is seldom bothered with strikes, and most of its workers have no connection with labor unions, do not listen to muck-rakers and other vile breeders of social discontent, and are quite satisfied with their little round of duties and their secure prospects in life....

"Unless Business recognizes quite fully the wisdom of similar arrangements for its employees, Business Government (as at present conducted) will in the end fall of its own weight."[168] (My italics.)

Surely nobody has given more convincing arguments than Mr. Russell himself why Business Government should go in for government ownership and measures to increase the efficiency of labor. Surely no further reasons should be needed to prove that when a government purchases a railroad to-day, it does not practice Socialism. Yet the reverse is sustained by a growing number of members of the Socialist Party (though not by a growing proportion of the Party), which indicates that the Socialism of Bebel, Liebknecht, Kautsky, Guesde, Lafargue, and the International Socialist Congresses is at present by no means as firmly rooted in this country as it is on the Continent of Europe.

FOOTNOTES:

[144] Journal of Political Economy, October, 1911.

[145] In her "American Socialism of the Present Day" (p. 252) Miss Hughan denies that there are many varieties of American Socialism, and says that the assertion that there are is justified only the many shades of tactical policy to be found in the Party, "founded usually on corresponding gradations of emphasis upon the idea of catastrophe."

I do not contend that there are many varieties of Socialism within the Party either here or in other countries, but I have pointed out that there are several and that their differences are profound, if not irreconcilable. It is precisely because they are founded on differences in tactics, i.e. on real instead of theoretical grounds that they are of such importance, for as long as present conditions continue, they are likely to lead farther and farther apart, while new conditions may only serve to bring new differences.

[146] Eugene V. Debs in the International Socialist Review (Chicago), Jan. 1, 1911.

[147] The Social-Democratic Herald (Milwaukee), Oct. 12, 1901.

[148] The Social-Democratic Herald, Feb. 22, 1902.

[149] The Social-Democratic Herald, May 28, 1904.

[150] Press Despatch, Aug. 26, 1911.

[151] New York Journal, April 22, 1910.

[152] Social-Democratic Herald, Vol. XII, No. 12.

[153] Social-Democratic Herald, Vol. XII, No. 12.

[154] Social-Democratic Herald, Vol. XII, March 24, 1906.

[155] The following account is taken from the Garment Workers' Bulletin:—

"Recently the hod carriers in San Francisco presented a petition to their employers for increased pay and pressed for its consideration. This gave the members of the National Association of Manufacturers the opportunity they longed for to open war in San Francisco, and they promptly availed themselves of it. The petition was refused, of course, and two large lime manufacturers in the city took a hand. The contractors resolved on heroic measures, and work was stopped on some sixty buildings to 'bring labor to its senses.' Then Mayor McCarthy came into the controversy. He called his board of public workers together and remarked: 'I see all the contractors are tying up work because of the hod carriers' request. Better notify these fellows to at once clear all streets of building material before these structures and to move away those elevated walks and everything else from the streets.' The board so ordered. Then Mr. McCarthy said: 'Notice that those lime fellows are taking quite an interest in starting trouble. Guess we had better notify them that their temporary permits for railroad spurs to their plants are no longer in force.' And due notice went forth. The result was that the trouble with the hod carriers was settled in a week, and the contemplated industrial war in the city was indefinitely postponed...."

[156] The Bridgeport Socialist, Oct. 29, 1911.

[157] The New York Times, Oct. 20, 1911.

[158] New Yorker Volkszeitung, Dec. 9, 1911.

[159] New York Evening Post, Nov. 13, 1911.

[160] Collier's Weekly, Dec. 9, 1911.

[161] Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 18, 1911.

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

[163] The New York Call, Aug. 14, 1911.

[164] W. R. Shier in the New York Call, Aug. 16, 1911.

[165] Speech at Carnegie Hall, New York, Oct. 15, 1910.

[166] Hampton's Magazine, January, 1911.

[167] "Business," p. 290.

[168] "Business," p. 114.



CHAPTER V

REFORM BY MENACE OF REVOLUTION

An American Socialist author expresses the opinion of many Socialists when he says of the movement: "It strives by all efforts in its power to increase its vote at the ballot box. It believes that by this increase the attainment of its goal is brought ever nearer, and also that the menace of this increasing vote induces the capitalist class to grant concessions in the hope of preventing further increases. It criticizes non-Socialist efforts at reform as comparatively barren of positive benefit and as tending, on the whole, to insure the dominance of the capitalist class and to continue the grave social evils now prevalent."[169] (My italics.)

Because non-Socialist reforms tend to prolong the domination of the capitalist class, which no Socialist doubts, it is asserted that they are also comparatively barren of positive benefit. And if, from time to time and in contradiction to this view, changes are bought about by non-Socialist governments which undeniably do very much improve the condition of the working people, it is reasoned that this was done by the menace either of a Socialist revolution or of a Socialist electoral majority.

"A Socialist reform must be in the nature of a working-class conquest," says Mr. Hillquit in his "Socialism in Theory and Practice"—expressing this very widespread Socialist opinion. He says that reforms inaugurated by small farmers, manufacturers, or traders, cause an "arrest of development or even a return to conditions of past ages, while the reforms of the more educated classes if less reactionary are not of a more efficient type."

"The task of developing and extending factory legislation falls entirely on the organized workmen," according to this view, because the dominant classes have no interest in developing it, while the evils of the slums and of the employment of women and children in industry can be cured only by Socialism. Such reforms as can be obtained in this direction, though they are not considered by Mr. Hillquit "as the beginnings or installments of a Socialist system," he holds are to be obtained only with Socialist aid. In other words, while capitalism is not altogether unable or unwilling to benefit the working people, it can do little, and even this little is due to the presence of the Socialists.

Another example of the "reformist's" view may be seen in the editorials of Mr. Berger, in the Social-Democratic Herald, of Milwaukee, where he says that the Social-Democrats never fail to declare that with all the social reforms, good and worthy of support as they may be, conditions cannot be permanently improved. That is to say, present-day reforms are not only of secondary importance, but that they are of merely temporary effect.

"There is nothing more to hope from the property-holding classes."

"The bourgeois reformers are constantly getting less progressive and allying themselves more and more with the reactionaries."

"It is impossible that the capitalists should accomplish any important reform."

"With all social reform, short of Socialism itself, conditions cannot be permanently improved."

These and many similar expressions are either quotations from well-known Socialist authors or phrases in common use. Many French and German Socialists have even called the whole "State Socialist" program "social-demagogy." As none of the reforms proposed by the capitalists are sufficient to balance the counteracting forces and to carry society along their direction, Socialists sometimes mistakenly feel that nothing whatever of benefit can come to the workers from capitalist government. As the capitalists' reforms all tend "to insure the dominance of the capitalist class," it is denied that they can cure any of the grave social evils now prevalent, and it is even asserted that they are reactionary.

"For how many years have we been telling the workingman, especially the trade unionist," wrote the late Benjamin Hanford, on two successive occasions Socialist candidate for Vice President of the United States "that it was folly for him to beg in the halls of a capitalist legislature and a capitalist Congress? Did we mean what we said? I did, for one.... I not only believed it—I proved it." Obviously there are many political measures, just as there are many improvements in industry and industrial organization, that may be beneficial to the workers as well as the capitalists, but it is also clear that such changes will in most instances be brought about by the capitalists themselves. On the other hand, even where they have a group of independent legislators of their own, however large a minority it may form, the Socialists can expect no concessions of political or economic power until social revolution is at hand.

The municipal platform adopted by the Socialist Party in New York City in 1909 also appealed to workingmen not to be deluded into the belief "that the capitalists will permit any measures of real benefit to the working class to be carried into effect by the municipality so long as they remain in undisputed control of the State and federal government and especially of the judiciary." This statement is slightly inaccurate. The capitalists will allow the enactment of measures that benefit the working class, provided those measures do not involve loss to the capitalist class. Thus sanitation and education are of real benefit to the workers, but, temporarily at least, they benefit the capitalist class still more, by rendering the workers more efficient as wealth producers.

The Socialist platforms of the various countries all recognize, to use the language of that of the United States, that all the reforms indorsed by the Socialists "are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole power of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance." (Italics are mine.) This might be interpreted to mean that through such reforms the Socialists are gaining control over parts of industry and government. Marx took the opposite view; "the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling power...." He left open no possibility of saying that the Socialists thought that without overthrowing capitalism they could seize a part of the powers of government (though they were already electing legislative minorities and subordinate officials in his day).

Sometimes there are still more ambiguous expressions in Socialist platforms which even make it possible for social reformers who have joined the movement to confess publicly that they use it exclusively for reform purposes, and still to claim that they are Socialists (see Professor Clark's advice in the following chapter). For example, instead of heading such proposals as the nationalization of the railroads and "trusts" and the State appropriation of ground rent "reforms indorsed by Socialists," they have called such reforms, perhaps inadvertently, "Immediate Demands," and the American platform has referred to them as measures of relief which "we may be able to force from capitalism." There can be no doubt that Marx and his chief followers, on the contrary, saw that such reforms would come from the capitalists without the necessity of any Socialist force or demand—though this pressure might hasten their coming (see Part I, Chapter VIII). They are viewed by him and an increasing number of Socialists not as concessions to Socialism forced from the capitalists, but as developments of capitalism desired by the more progressive capitalists and Socialists alike, but especially by the Socialists owing to their desire that State capitalism shall develop as rapidly as possible—as a preliminary to Socialism,—and to the fact that the working people suffer more than the capitalists at any delay in the establishment even of this transitional state.

The platform of the American Party just quoted classes such reforms as government relief for the unemployed, government loans for public work, and collective ownership of the railways and trusts, as measures it may be able "to force from capitalism," as "a preparation of the workers to seize the whole power of government." But if the capitalists do enact such reforms as these, not on the independent grounds I have indicated, but out of fear of Socialism, as is here predicted, why should not the process of coercing capitalism continue indefinitely until gradually all power is taken away from them? Why should there be any special need to "seize" the whole power, if the capitalists can be coerced even now, while the government is still largely theirs?

Some "reformists" do not hesitate to answer frankly that there is indeed no ground for expecting any revolutionary crisis. Mr. John Spargo feels that reforms "will prove in their totality to be the Revolution itself," and that if the Socialists keep in sight this whole body of reforms, which he calls the Revolution, "as the objective of every Reform," this will sufficiently distinguish them from non-Socialist reformers. Mr. Morris Hillquit also speaks for many other influential Socialists when he insists that the Socialists differ from other Parties chiefly in that they alone "see the clear connection and necessary interdependence" between the various social evils. That there is no ground for any such assertion is shown by the fact that the social evils discussed in the capitalist press, and all the remedies which have any practical chance of enactment, as is now generally perceived, are due to extreme poverty, the lack of order in industry, and the need of government regulations, guided by a desire to promote "efficiency," and to perfect the capitalist system. Non-Socialist reformers have already made long strides toward improving the worst forms of poverty, without taking the slightest step towards social democracy. These reforms are being introduced more and more rapidly and are not likely to be checked until what we now know as poverty and its accompanying evils are practically abolished by the capitalist class while promoting their own comfort and security. This, for example, is, as I have shown, the outspoken purpose of Mr. Lloyd George and his capitalistic supporters in England. Similarly, it is the outspoken purpose of the promoters of the present "efficiency" movement among the business men of America. However the material conditions of the working classes may be bettered by such means, their personal liberty and political power may be so much curtailed in the process as to make further progress by their own associated efforts more difficult under "State Socialism" than it is to-day.

The State platform of the Socialist Party of New York in 1910, while seemingly self-contradictory in certain of its phrases, makes the sharpest distinctions between Socialism and "State Socialist" reform. Its criticism of reform parties is on the whole so vigorous and its insistence on class struggle tactics so strong as to make it clear that there is no expectation of reaching Socialism through reforms granted, from whatever motive, by a non-Socialist majority. I have italicized some significant phrases:—

"The two dominant political parties pretend to stand for all the people; the so-called reform parties claim to speak for the good people; the Socialist party frankly acknowledges that it is concerned chiefly with the working people....

"The great fortunes of the wealthy come from the spoliation of the poor. Large profits for the manufacturers mean starvation wages for the workers; the princely revenues of the landlords are derived from excessive rents of the tenants, and the billions of watered stock and bonds crying for dividends and interest are a perpetual mortgage upon the work and lives of the people of all generations to come....

"No political party can honestly serve all the people of the state—those who prey and those who toil; those who rob and those who are robbed. The parties as well as the voters of this state must take their stand in the conflict of interests of the different classes of society—they must choose between the workers and their despoilers.

"The Republican and Democratic Parties alike always have been the tools of the dominating classes. They have been managed, supported, and financed by the money powers of the State, and in turn they have conducted the legislatures, courts, and executive offices of the State as accessories to the business interests of those classes.

"These vices of our government are not accidental, but are deeply and firmly rooted in our industrial system. To maintain its supremacy in this conflict the dominating class must strive to control our government and politics, and must influence and corrupt our public officials.

"The two old parties as well as the so-called reform parties of the middle classes, which spring up in New York politics from time to time, all stand for the continuance of that system, hence they are bound to perpetuate and to aggravate its inevitable evils...."

The New York Party had immediately before it the example of Mr. Hearst, who has gone as far as the radicals of the old parties in Wisconsin, or Kansas, Oklahoma, California, or Oregon in verbally indorsing radical reform measures, and also of Mr. Roosevelt, who occasionally has gone almost as far. Day after day the Hearst papers had sent out to their millions of readers editorials which contain every element of Socialism except its essence, the class struggle. The New York Party, like many in other Socialist organizations, found itself compelled by circumstances to take a revolutionary stand.

For when opportunistic reformers opposed to the Socialist movement go as far as the Hearst papers in indorsing "State Socialist" reforms, what hope would there be for Socialists to gain the public ear if they went scarcely farther, either as regards the practical measures they propose or the phrases they employ? If the "reformist" Socialists answer that their ultimate aim is to go farther, may they not be asked what difference this makes in present-day affairs? And if they answer that certain reforms must be forced through by Socialist threats, political or revolutionary, will they not be told, first that it can be shown that the whole "State Socialistic" reform program, if costly to many individual capitalists, promises to prove ultimately profitable to the capitalist class, and second, that it is being carried out where there is no present menace either of a Socialist revolution or even of a more or less Socialistic political majority.

But the position of the politically ambitious among so-called "orthodox" Socialists (I do not refer to personal or individual, but only to partisan ambition) is often very similar at the bottom to that of the "reformists"; while the latter contend that capitalism can grant few if any reforms of any great benefit to the working people without Socialist aid, some of the orthodox lay equal weight on Socialist agitation for these same reforms, on the ground that they cannot be accomplished by collaborating with capitalist reformers at all, but solely through the Socialist Party.

"The revolutionary Marxists," says the French Socialist, Rappaport, "test the gifts of capitalistic reform through its motives. And they discover that these motives are not crystal clear. The reformistic patchwork is meant to prop up and make firmer the rotten capitalistic building. They test capitalistic reforms, moreover, by the means which are necessary for their accomplishment. These means are either altogether lacking or insufficient, and in any case they flow in overwhelming proportion out of the pockets of the exploited classes."[170]

We need not agree with Rappaport that capitalistic reforms bring no possible benefit to labor, or that the capitalistic building is rotten and about to fall to pieces. May it not be that it is strong and getting stronger? May it not be that the control over the whole building, far from passing into Socialist hands, is removed farther and farther from their reach, so that the promise of obtaining, not reforms of more or less importance, but a fair and satisfactory share of progress without conquering capitalism is growing less?

Thus many orthodox and revolutionary Socialists even, to say nothing of "reformists," become mere political partisans, make almost instinctive efforts to credit all political progress to the Socialist Parties, contradict their own revolutionary principles. All reforms that happen to be of any benefit to labor, they claim, are due to the pressure of the working classes within Parliaments or outside of them; which amounts to conceding that the Socialists are already sharing in the power of government or industry, a proposition that the revolutionaries always most strenuously deny. For if Socialists are practically sharing in government and industry to-day, the orthodox and revolutionists will have difficulty in meeting the argument of the "reformists" that it is only necessary to continue the present pressure in order to obtain more and more, without any serious conflicts, until all Socialism is gradually accomplished.

Kautsky makes much of the capitalists' present fear of the working classes, though in his opinion this fear makes not only for "concessions" but also for reactions, as in the world-wide revival of imperialism. Foreign conquests, he believes, are the only alternative the governing classes are able to offer to the glowing promises of the Socialists. It is for this reason, he believes, that the capitalists are relying more and more on imperialism, even though they know that the conquest of colonies is no longer possible to the extent it was before, and realize that the cost of maintaining armaments is rapidly becoming greater than colonial profits. But this also is to underestimate the resources of capitalism and its capacity for a certain form of progress. If the capitalists are not to be forced to concessions, neither are they to be forced, unless in a very great crisis, to reactionary measures that in themselves bring no profit. The progressive "State Socialist" program is, as a rule, a far more promising road to popularity from their standpoint than is reactionary imperialism.

In Kautsky's view the bourgeoisie is driven by the fear of Socialism, in a country like Germany to reaction, and in one like England to attempt reform. In neither case will it actually proceed to reforms of any considerable benefit to labor, apparently because Kautsky believes that all such reforms would inevitably strengthen labor relatively to capital, and will therefore not be allowed. Similarly, he feels that the capitalists will refuse all concessions to political democracy (on the same erroneous supposition, that they will inevitably aid labor more than capital).

For example, the British Liberals have abolished the veto of the House of Lords, but only to increase the power of other capitalists against landowners, while the Conservatives have proposed the Referendum, but only to protect the Lords. From 1884 to 1911 neither Party had introduced any measure to democratize the House of Commons and so to increase the representation of labor. Kautsky reminds us of the plural voting, unequal electoral districts, and absence of primary and secondary elections. This he believes is evidence that the capitalists fear to extend political democracy farther. They even fear the purely economic reforms that are being enacted, he claims, and at every concession made to labor desert the Liberals to join the Conservatives. Land reform, taxation reform, the eight-hour day, are being carried out, however. But when it comes to such matters as an extended suffrage, the capitalists will balk. His conclusion is that if economic reforms are to continue, if, for example, the unemployed are to be set to work by the government, or if political reforms are to be resumed, the Labourites have to free themselves from the tutelage of the Liberal Party. And if they do this, they can play so effectively on capitalist fears as to force an extension of the suffrage and even change the British Parliament into a "tool for the dictatorship of the working class." As in Germany, all political advance of value to labor must be obtained through playing on capitalist fears—only in England the process may be more gradual and results easier to obtain.

"Every extension of the suffrage to the working class must be fought for to-day," says Kautsky, "and it is only thanks to the fear of the working class that it is not abolished where it exists." By a strange coincidence Kautsky renewed the prediction that the capitalistic Radical government of England would never extend the ballot except when forced by Labor only a few days before Prime Minister Asquith officially, without any special pressure from Labor, pledged it to equal and universal (manhood) suffrage. The passage follows:—

"In England the suffrage is still limited to-day, and capitalistic Radicalism, in spite of its fine phrases, has no idea of enlarging it. The poorest part of the population is excluded from the ballot. In all Great Britain (in 1906) only 16.64 per cent possessed, against 22 per cent in Germany. If England had the German Reichstag suffrage law, 9,600,000 would be enfranchised, instead of 7,300,000, i.e. 2,300,000 more."[171]

Kautsky's view that capitalists cannot bend a more or less democratic government to their purposes and therefore will not institute such a government, unless forced to do so, is undoubtedly based on German conditions. He contends that the hope of the German bourgeois lies not in democracy nor even in the Reichstag, but in the strength of Prussia, which spells Absolutism and Militarism. He admits in one passage that conditions may be different in the United States, England, and British colonies, and under certain circumstances in France, but for the peoples of eastern Europe advanced measures of democracy such as direct legislation belong to "the future State," while no reforms of importance to the workers are to be secured to-day except through the menace of revolution. It would be perfectly consistent with this, doubtlessly correct, view of present German conditions, if Kautsky said that after Germany has overthrown Absolutism and Militarism, progressive capitalism may be expected to conquer reactionary capitalism in Germany as elsewhere, and to use direct legislation and other democratic measures for the purpose of increasing profits, with certain secondary, incidental and lesser (but by no means unimportant) benefits to labor. But this he refuses to do. He readily admits that Germany is backward politically, but as she is advanced economically he apparently allows his view of other countries to-day and of the Germany of the future to be guided by the fact that the large capitalists now in control in that country (with military and landlord aid) oppose even that degree of democracy and those labor reforms which, as I have shown, would result in an increased product for the capitalist class as a whole (though not of all capitalists). For he pictures the reactionary capitalists in continuous control in the future both in Germany and other countries, and the smaller capitalists as important between these and the masses of wage earners. The example of other countries (equally developed economically and more advanced than Germany politically) suggests, on the contrary, a growing unity of large and small capital through the action of the state—and as a result the more or less progressive policy I have outlined. (See Part I.)

But Kautsky's view is that of a very large number of Socialists, especially in Germany and neighboring countries, is having an enormous influence, and deserves careful consideration. The proletariat, he says, is not afraid of the most extreme revolutionary efforts and sacrifices to win equal suffrage where, as in Germany, it is withheld. "And every attempt to take away or limit the German laborer's right of voting for the Reichstag would call forth the danger of a fearful catastrophe to the Empire."[172] It is here and elsewhere suggested, on the basis of German experience, that this struggle over the ballot is a struggle between Capital and Labor. The German Reichstag suffrage was made equal by Bismarck in 1870 for purely capitalistic reasons, and the number of voters in England was doubled as late as 1884, and the suffrage is now to be made universal through similar motives. Yet the present domination of the German Liberals and those of neighboring countries by a reactionary bureaucratic, military, and landlord class, persuades Kautsky that genuine capitalistic Liberalism everywhere is at an end.

Yet in 1910 the German Radicals succeeded, after many years of vain effort, in forming out of their three parties a united organization, the Progressive Peoples Party (Fortschrittliche Volkspartei). The program adopted included almost every progressive reform, and, acting in accordance with its principles, this Party quite as frequently cooeperates with the Socialists on its left as with the National Liberals immediately on its right. The whole recent history of the more advanced countries, including even Italy, would indicate that the small capitalist element, which largely composes this party, will obtain the balance of power and either through the new party or through the Socialist "reformists" (the latter either in or out of the parent organization)—or through both together—will before many years bring about the extension of the suffrage in Prussia (though not its equalization), the equalization of the Reichstag electoral districts, and the reduction of the tariff that supports the agrarian landlords and large capitalists, put a halt to some of the excesses of military extravagance (though not to militarism), institute a government responsible to the Reichstag, provide government employment for the unemployed, and later take up the other industrial and labor reforms of capitalist collectivism as inaugurated in other countries, together with a large part also of the radical democratic program. There is no reason for supposing that the evolution of capitalism is or will be basically different in Germany from that of other countries. (See Chapter VII.)

Though he regards Socialism as the sole impelling force for reforms of benefit to labor, Kautsky definitely acknowledges that no reforms that are immediately practicable can be regarded as the exclusive property of the Socialist Party:—

"But this is certain," he says, "there is scarcely a single practical demand for present-day legislation, that is peculiar to any particular party. Even the Social Democracy scarcely shows one such demand. That through which it differentiates itself from other parties is the totality of its practical demands and the goals towards which it points. The eight-hour law, for example, is no revolutionary demand....

"What holds together political parties, especially when like the Social Democrats they have great historic tasks to accomplish, are their final goals; not their momentary demands, not their views as to the attitude to be assumed on all the separate questions that come before the party.

"Differences of opinion are always present within the Party and sometimes reach a threatening height. But they will be the less likely to break up the Party, the livelier the consciousness in its members of the great goals towards which they strive in common, the more powerful the enthusiasm for these goals, so that demands and interests of the moment are behind them in importance."[173]

The only way to differentiate the Socialists from other parties, the only thing Socialists have in common with one another is, according to this view, not agreement as to practical action, but certain ideals or goals. Socialists may want the same things as non-Socialists, and reject the things desired by other Socialists, and their actions may follow their desires, but all is well, and harmony may reign as long as their hearts and minds are filled with a Socialist ideal. But if a goal thus has no necessary connection with immediate problems or actions, is it necessarily anything more than a sentiment or an abstraction?

Kautsky's toleration of reform activities thus has an opposite origin to that of the "reformist" Socialists. He tolerates concentration on capitalistic measures by factions within the Socialist Party, on the ground that such measures are altogether of secondary importance; they insist on these reforms as the most valuable activities Socialists can undertake at the present time.

Kautsky and his associates will often tolerate activities that serve only to weaken the movement, provided verbal recognition is given to the Socialist ideal. This has led to profound contradictions in the German movement. At the Leipzig Congress, for example (1909), the reformists voted unanimously for the reaffirmation of the revolutionary "Dresden resolution" of 1903, with the explanation that they regarded it in the very opposite sense from what its words plainly stated. They had fought this resolution at the time it was passed, and condemned it since, and had continued the actions against which it was directed. But their vote in favor of it and explanation that they refused to give it any practical bearing had to be accepted at Leipzig without a murmur. Such is the result of preaching loyalty to phrases, goals, or ideals rather than in action. The reformists can often, though not always, escape responsibility for their acts by claiming loyalty to the goal—often, no doubt, in all sincerity; for goals, ideals, doctrines, and sentiments, like the human conscience, are generally highly flexible and subtle things.

Kautsky's policy of ideal revolutionism, combined with practical toleration of activities given over exclusively to non-Socialist reform, which is so widespread in the German movement under the form of a too rigid separation between theory on the one hand and tactics on the other, agrees at another point with the policy of the reformists. The latter, as I have mentioned, seek to justify their absorption in reforms that the capitalists also favor, by claiming that they determine their attitude to a reform by its relation to a larger program, whereas the capitalists do not. Kautsky similarly differentiates the Socialists by the totality of their demands; the individual reform, being, as he concedes, usually if not always supported by other parties also. Yet it is difficult to see how a program composed wholly of non-Socialist elements could in any combination become distinctly Socialist. A Socialist program of immediate demands may be peculiar to some Socialist political group at a given moment, but usually it contains no features that would prevent a purely capitalist party taking it up spontaneously, in the interest of capitalism.

What is it that drives Kautsky into the position that I have described? To this question we can find a definite answer, and it leads us into the center of the seeming mysteries of Socialist policy. The preservation of the Socialist Party organization, with its heterogeneous constituent elements, is held to be all-important; and this party organization cannot be kept intact, and all its present supporters retained, without a program of practical reforms that may be secured with a little effort from capitalist governments. In order to claim this program as distinctively theirs, Socialists must differentiate it in some way from other reform programs. As there is no practical difference, they must insist that the ideal is not the same, that Socialists are using the reforms for different purposes, that only part of their program is like that of any one capitalist party, while in other parts it resembles those of other capitalist parties, etc.

That "party necessity" can drive even radical and influential Socialists into such a position may seem incredible. But when it is understood that loyalty to party also conflicts with loyalty to principle in many cases even to the point of driving many otherwise revolutionary Socialists to the very opposite extreme, i.e. to fighting against progressive capitalist reforms purely for party reasons, this willingness to allow the Socialist organization to claim such reforms as in some sense its own, will appear as the lesser deviation from principle.

For example, Kautsky opposes direct legislation—with the proviso that perhaps it may have a certain value in English-speaking countries and under some circumstances in France. His arguments in spite of this proviso are directed almost wholly against it, on the ground that direct legislation would take many reforms out of the hands of the Party, would cause them to be discussed independently of one another instead of bound together as if they were inseparable parts of a program and would weaken the Party in direct proportion as its use was extended.[174]

Yet Kautsky himself contends, in the same work in which this passage occurs, that Socialists favor all measures of democracy, even when the movement at first loses by their introduction. In a word he holds that the function of promoting immediately practicable political reforms is so important to the Party, and the Party with its present organization, membership and activities, is so important to the movement, that even the most fundamental principle may, on occasion, be disregarded. Democracy is admitted to be a principle so inviolable that it is to be upheld generally even when the Party temporarily loses by it. Yet because direct legislation might rob the Socialists of all opportunity for claiming the credit for non-Socialist reforms, because it would put to a direct vote a program composed wholly of elements held in common with other parties, and differing only in its combination of these elements, because the Party tactics would have to be completely transformed and the Party temporarily weakened by being forced to limit itself entirely to revolutionary efforts, Kautsky turns against this keystone of democratic reform.

"There is indeed no legislation without compromises," he writes; "the great masses who are not experienced political leaders, must be much easier confused and misled than the political leaders. If compromise in voting on bills were really corrupting, then it would work much more harm through direct popular legislation than through legislation by Parliament, ... for that would mean nothing less than to drive the cause of corruption from Parliament, out among the people."

"Direct legislation," he continues, "has the tendency to divert attention from general principles and to concentrate it on concrete questions."[175] But if the Socialists cannot educate the masses to know what they want concretely, how much less will they understand general principles? If they cannot judge such concrete and separate questions, how will they control Socialist officials who, as it is now, so often build their programs and decide their tactics for them? There is no mechanical substitute for self-government within Socialist organizations or elsewhere. Direct legislation will do much to destroy all artificial situations and place society on the solid basis of the knowledge or ignorance, the division or organization, the weakness or strength of character of the masses. The present situation, however useful for well-intentioned Socialist "leaders," is even better adapted to the machinations of capitalist politicians. And because it militates against the politically powerful small capitalists as well as against the non-capitalists, it is doomed to an early end.

Kautsky, in a word, actually fears that the present capitalist society will carry out, one by one, its own reforms. For the same reason that he denies the ability or willingness of capitalism to make any considerable improvements in the material conditions of labor, except as compelled by the superior force (or the fear of the superior force) of Socialism, he would, if possible, prevent the capitalists from introducing certain democratic improvements that would facilitate reforms independently of the Socialist Party. However, the economic and political evolution of capitalism will doubtless continue to take its course, and through improved democratic methods all Socialist arguments based on the impossibility of any large measure of working-class progress under capitalism, and all efforts to credit what is being done to the advance of Socialism, will be seen to have been futile. The contention between Socialists and capitalists will then be reduced to its essential elements:—

Is progress under capitalism as great as it might be under Socialism?

Is capitalist progress making toward Socialism by improving the position of the non-capitalists when compared with that of the capitalists, or is it having the opposite effect?

Even the "syndicalists," little interested as they are in reform, seem to fear, as Kautsky does, that so long as considerable changes for the better are possible, progress towards Socialism, which in their case also implies revolution, is impossible. I have shown that Lagardelle denies that Labor and Capital have any interest whatever in common. Similarly, a less partisan writer, Paul Louis, author of the leading work on French unionism ("Histoire du Movement Syndicate en France"), while he notes every evil of the coming State Socialism, yet ignores its beneficent features, and bases his whole defense of revolutionary labor unionism on the proposition that important reforms, even if aided by friendly Socialist cooeperation or hostile Socialist threats, can no longer be brought about under capitalism:—

"The Parliamentary method was suited by its principle to the reform era. Direct action corresponds to the syndicalist era. Nothing is more simple.

"As long as organized labor believes in the possibility of amending present society by a series of measures built up one upon the other, it makes use of the means that the present system offers it. It proceeds through intervening elected persons. It imagines that from a theoretical discussion there will arise such ameliorations that its vassalage will be gradually abolished."

The belief here appears that a steady, continuous, and marked improvement in the position of the working class would necessarily lead to its overtaking automatically the rapidly increasing power of capitalism. If this were so, it would indeed be true, as Louis contends, that no revolutionary movement could begin, except when all beneficial labor reforms and other working-class progress had ended.

I shall quote (Part III, Chapter V) a passage where Louis indicates that syndicalism, like Socialism itself, is directed in the most fundamental way against all existing governments. He takes the further step of saying that existing governments can do nothing whatever for the benefit of labor, and that their sole function is that of repression:—

"The State, which has taken for its mission—and no other could be conceived—the defense of existing society, could not allow its power of command to be attacked. The social hierarchy which itself rests upon the economic subordination of one class to another, will be maintained only so long as the governmental power shatters every assault victoriously, represses every initiative, punishes without mercy all innovators and all factious persons....

"In the new order [syndicalism] there is no room for any capitalistic attribute, even reduced to its most simple expression. There is no longer room for a political system for safeguarding privileges and conquering rebels. If our definition of the State is accepted, that it is an organ of defense, always more and more exacting because it is in a society always more and more menaced, it will be understood that such a State is condemned to disappear with that society....

"The State crushes the individual, and syndicalism appeals to all the latent energies of that individual, the State suspects and throttles organizations, and syndicalism multiplies them against it.... All institutions created by the State for the defense of the capitalist system are assailed, undermined by syndicalism."[176]

Here is a view of the State as far opposed as possible to that of Kautsky, who says truly that it is "a monster economic establishment, and its influence on the whole economic life of a nation to-day is already beyond the power of measurement."[177] For Kautsky, the State is primarily economic and constructive; for Louis it is purely political and repressive. Yet Kautsky, like Louis, seems to feel that if the State were capable of carrying out reforms of any importance to the wage earners, or if it were admitted that it could do so, it would be impossible to persuade the workers that a revolution is necessary and feasible. And so both deny that "State Socialism," which they recognize as an intervening stage between the capitalism of to-day and Socialism, is destined to give better material conditions, if less liberty, than the present society. Both the economic and political revolutionists are, on such grounds, often tempted to agree with the reformists of the party and of the labor unions, in leveling their guns exclusively against the private capitalism of to-day—I might almost say the capitalism of the past—instead of concentrating their attack on the evils that will remain undiminished under the State capitalism of the future. The reformists do this consistently, for they see in the constructive side of "State Socialism," not a mere continuation of capitalism, but a large installment of Socialism itself, and have nothing more to ask for beyond a continuation of such reforms. Revolutionary Socialists are inconsistent, because they may admit that the conditions of the working people under "State Socialism" may be far better than they are to-day, without invalidating their central position that the greater evils of to-day will remain, and that there will be no progress towards Socialism, no matter what reforms are enacted, until the Socialists are either actually or practically in power.

When the Socialists have become so numerous as to be on the verge of securing control of the government (by whatever means), it is unlikely that the privileged classes will permit peaceful political or constitutional procedures to continue and put them completely at the mercy of the non-privileged. In all probability they will then resort to military violence under pretext of military necessity (see Part III, Chapter VIII). If when this time arrives, the Socialists have not only a large political majority, but also the physical power to back it up, or seem about to secure this majority and this power, then indeed, though not before that time, the capitalists may, possibly, begin to make concessions which involve a weakening of their position in society, i.e. which necessitate more and more concessions until their power is destroyed. The revolutionary reformers, if we may apply this term to Kautsky and his associates, are then only somewhat premature in their belief that the Socialist Party is now, or will very shortly become, a real menace to capitalism; whereas the political reformers are under the permanent illusion that capitalism will retreat before paper ballots.

Moreover, Kautsky and the revolutionary reformers, in order to make their (physical) menace effective, must continually teach the people to look forward and prepare to use all the means in their power for their advance. They are thus thoroughly in accord with the non-reformist revolutionists who, however much they may welcome certain capitalist reforms, do not agree that they will be very materially hastened by anything the Socialists can do. The non-reformist revolutionists assume that Socialists will vote for every form of progress, including the most thoroughly capitalistic, and acknowledge that if they fail in their duty in this respect, these reforms might be materially retarded. But they are willing to let the capitalists take the lead in such reform work, giving them the whole credit for what benefits it brings, and placing on their shoulders the whole responsibility for its limitations. Their criticism of capitalist reform is leveled not against what it does, but against what it leaves undone.

Revolutions in machinery and business organization under capitalism, with which Socialists certainly have nothing to do, they regard also as not only important, but of vast significance, since it is by their aid alone that Socialism is becoming a possibility. And now a new period is coming in, during which the capitalists, on grounds that have no connection whatever with Socialism or the Socialist movement, will effect another equally indispensable revolution, in the organization of labor and business by governmental means. Revolutionary Socialists are ready to give the fullest credit to capitalism for what it has done, what it is doing, and what it is about to do—for, however vast the changes now in process of execution, they feel that the task that lies before the Socialists is vaster still. The capitalists, to take one point by way of illustration, develop such individuals and such latent powers in every individual, as they can utilize for increasing the private income of the capitalists as a class, or of governments which are wholly or very largely in their control. The Socialists propose to develop the latent abilities of all individuals in proportion to their power to serve the community. The collectivist capitalists will continue to extend opportunity to more and more members of the community, but always leaving the numbers of the privileged undiminished and always providing for all their children first—admitting only the cream of the masses to the better positions, and this after all of the ruling classes, including the most worthless, have been provided for. The Socialists propose, the moment they secure a majority, to make opportunity, not more equal, but equal.

Those Socialists, then, who expect that reforms of importance to wage earners are to be secured to-day exclusively by the menace either of a political overturn or of a Socialist revolution, and those who imagine that the Socialist hosts are going to be strengthened by recruits attracted by the role Socialists are playing in obtaining such immediate reforms, make a triple error. They credit Socialism with a power it has nowhere yet achieved and cannot expect until a revolutionary period is immediately at hand; that is, they grossly exaggerate the present powers of the Socialist movement and grossly underestimate the task that lies before it. They are seemingly blind to the possibilities of transformation and progress that still inhere in capitalism—the increased unity and power it will gain through "State capitalism," and the increased wealth that will come through a beneficent and scientific policy of producing, through wholesale reforms and improvements, more efficient and profitable laborers. They fail to see that the strength of the enemy will lie henceforth more frequently in deception than in repression. But even this is not their most fatal blunder. In attacking individualistic and reactionary rather than collectivistic and progressive capitalism, these Socialists are not only wasting their energies by assaulting a moribund power, but are training their forces to use weapons and to practice evolutions that will soon be obsolete and useless. They are doing the work and filling the function of the small capitalists. The large capitalists organized industry; the small capitalists will nationalize it; in so far at least as it has been or will have been organized. Socialists gain from both processes, approve of both, and aid them in every way within their power. But their chief function is to overthrow capitalism. And as the larger part of this task lies off some distance in the future, it is the capitalism of the future and not that of the past with which Socialists are primarily concerned. Evidently but a few years will elapse before State capitalism will everywhere dominate. In the meanwhile, to attribute its progress to the menace of the advance of Socialism, is to abandon the Socialist standpoint just as completely as do the reformist Socialists in regarding capitalist-collectivist reforms as installments of Socialism, to be achieved only with Socialist aid.

For Socialists will be judged by what they are doing rather than by what they promise to do. If political reformists and revolutionary reformists are both directing their chief attention to promoting the reforms of "State Socialism," it will make little difference whether the first argue that these beneficial measures are a part of Socialism and a guarantee of the whole; or the second claim that, though such reforms are no part of Socialism, the superiority of the movement is shown chiefly by the fact that they could not have been brought about except through its efforts. Mankind will rightly conclude that the things that absorb the chief Socialist activities are those that are also forming the character of the movement. In direct proportion as reforming Socialists spend their energies in doing the same things as reforming capitalists do, they tend inevitably to become more and more alike. Only in proportion as Socialists can differentiate themselves from non-Socialists in their present activities will the movement have any distinctive meaning of its own.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] W. J. Ghent, "Socialism and Success," p. 47.

[170] Rappaport, "Der Kongress von Nimes," Die Neue Zeit, 1910, p. 821.

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

[172] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, p. 121.

[173] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 132-133.

[174] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 131-134.

[175] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 131-134.

[176] "Le Syndicalisme contre L'Etat," pp. 223-235, 239-242.

[177] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," p. 114.



CHAPTER VI

REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS

In the most famous document of international Socialism, the "Communist Manifesto" (published by Marx and Engels in 1847), there is a fulmination against "reactionary Socialism," which it will be seen is approximately what we now call "State Socialism." After describing the Utopian Socialism of Fourier, of Saint-Simon and of Owen, the "Manifesto" says:—

"A second form of Socialism, less systematic but more practical, tried to disgust the working people with every revolutionary movement, by demonstrating to them that it is not such and such a political advantage, but only a transformation of the relations of material life and of economic conditions that could profit them. Let it be noted that by transformation of the material relations of society this Socialism does not mean the abolition of capitalist relations of production, but only administrative reforms brought out precisely on the basis of capitalist production, and which consequently do not affect the relation of capital and wage labor, but in the best case only diminish the expenses and simplify the administrative labor of a capitalist government.... In the promotion of their plans they act always with the consciousness of defending first of all the interest of the working class. The working class only exists for them under this aspect of the suffering class.

"But in accordance with the undeveloped state of the class struggle and their social position, they consider themselves quite above antagonism. They desire to ameliorate the material condition of life for all the members of society, even the most privileged. As a consequence, they do not cease to appeal to all society without distinction, or rather they address themselves by preference to the reigning class."[178]

Marx points out that the chief aim of these "reactionary Socialists" was the transformation of the State into a mere organ for the administration of industry in their interest, which is precisely what we mean to-day by "State Socialism."

In contrast with this "reactionary Socialism," now prevalent in Great Britain and Australia, the Socialist parties of every country of the European Continent (where such parties are most developed), without exception are striving for a social democracy and a government of the non-privileged and not for a scheme of material benefits bestowed by an all-powerful capitalist State. Professor Anton Menger, of the University of Vienna, one of the most acute and sympathetic observers of the movement, remarks correctly that—"in all countries, at all times, the proletariat [working class] has rightly thought that the continuous development of its power is worth more than any economic advantage that can be granted it."[179]

The late Paul Lafargue, perhaps the leading thinker of the French Socialist movement, a son-in-law of Karl Marx, made a declaration at a recent Party Congress which brings out still more clearly the prevailing Socialist attitude. Denying that the Socialists are opposed to reforms, he said: "On the contrary, we demand all reforms, even the most bourgeois [capitalist] reforms like the income tax and the purchase of the West [the Western railroad, lately purchased by the government]. It matters little to us who proposes reforms, and I may add that the most important of them all for the working class have not been presented by Socialist deputies, but by the bourgeois [capitalists]. Free and compulsory education was not proposed by Socialists." That is to say, Lafargue believed that reforms extremely beneficial to the working class might be enacted without any union of Socialists with non-Socialists, without the Socialists gaining political power and without their even constituting a menace to the rule of the anti-Socialist classes. Capitalism of itself, in its own interest and without any reference to Socialism or the Socialists, may go very far towards developing a society which in turn develops an ever growing and developing working class, though without increasing the actual political or economic powers of this class when compared with its own.

In Germany especially, Marx's co-workers and successors developed marked hostility to "State Socialism" from the moment when it was taken up by Bismarck nearly a generation ago (1883). August Bebel's hostility to the existing State goes so far that he predicts that it will expire "with the expiration of the ruling class,"[180] while Engels contended that the very phrase "the Socialist State" was valueless as a slogan in the present propaganda of Socialism, and scientifically ineffective.[181]

Engels had even predicted, as long ago as 1880, that the coming of monopolies would bring it about that the State, being "the official representative of capitalistic society," would ultimately have to undertake "the protection of production," and that this necessity would first be felt in the case of the railways and the telegraphs. Later events have shown that his prediction was so correct that even America and England are approaching the nationalization of their railways, while the proposal to nationalize monopolies is rapidly growing in popularity in every country in the world, and among nearly all social classes.

Engels did not consider that such developments were necessarily in the direction of Socialism any more than the nationalization of the railways by the Czar or the Prussian government. On the contrary, he suggested that it meant the strengthening of the capitalism.

"The modern State," he wrote in 1880, "no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalistic machine, the State of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more it actually becomes the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wageworkers—proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head."[182] Engels did not think that State ownership necessarily meant Socialism; but he thought that it might be utilized for the purposes of Socialism if the working class was sufficiently numerous, organized, and educated to take charge of the situation. "State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that give the elements of the solution."

As early as 1892 Karl Kautsky, at the present moment perhaps the greatest living Socialist editor and economist, wrote that the system of laissez-faire, for which "State Socialism" offers itself as a remedy, had long ago lost whatever influence it once had on the capitalist class—which was never very great. If, then, the theory that "that government is best which governs least" had been abandoned by the capitalists themselves, there was no ground why Socialists should devote their time to the advocacy of a view ("State Socialism") that was merely a reaction against an outworn standpoint. The theory of collectivism, that the functions of the State ought to be widely extended, had long been popular among the capitalists themselves.

"It has already been seen," wrote Kautsky, "that economic and political development has made necessary and inevitable the taking over of certain economic functions by the State.... It can by no means be said that every nationalization of an economic function or of an economic enterprise is a step towards Socialistic cooeperation and that the latter would grow out of the general nationalization of all economic enterprises without making a fundamental change in the nature of the State."[183] In other words, Kautsky denies that partial nationalization or collectivism is necessarily even a step towards Socialism, and asserts that it may be a step in the other direction. The German Socialists acted on this principle when they opposed the nationalization of the Reichsbank, and it has often guided other Socialist parties.

Kautsky feels that it is often a mistake to transfer the power over industry, e.g. the ownership of the land, into the hands of the State as now constituted, since this puts a tremendous part of the national wealth at the disposal of capitalist governments, one of whose prime functions is to prevent the increase of the political and economic power of the working people. And, although the State employees would probably receive a somewhat better treatment than they had while the industry was privately owned, they would simply form a sort of aristocracy of labor opposed in general to the interests of the working people.

"Like every State," says Kautsky, "the modern State is in the first place a tool for the protection of the general interests of the ruling classes. It changes its nature in no way if it takes over functions of general utility which aim at advancing the interests not only of the ruling classes, but also of those of society as a whole and of the ruling classes, and on no condition does it take care of these functions in a way which might threaten the general interests of the ruling classes or their domination.... If the present-day State nationalizes certain industries and functions, it does this, not to put limitations on capitalistic exploitation, but to protect and to strengthen the capitalistic mode of production, or in order itself to take a share in this exploitation, to increase its income in this way, and to lessen the payments that the capitalist class must obtain for its own support in the way of taxes. And as an exploiter, the State has this advantage over private capitalists: that it has at its disposal to be used against the exploited not only the economic powers of the capitalists, but the political force of the State." (My italics.)

As an illustration of Kautsky's reference to the lessening of taxes through the profits of government ownership, it may be pointed out that the German Socialists fear the further nationalization of industries in Germany on account of the danger that with this increased income the State would no longer depend on the annual grants of the Reichstag and would then be in a position to govern without that body. The king of Prussia and the Emperor of Germany could in that event rule the country much as the present Czar rules Russia.

As a rule, outside of Great Britain, the advocates of the collectivist program are also aware that their "Socialism" is not that of the Socialist movement. In an article in the Atlantic Monthly, Mr. John Martin, for example, indicates the "State Socialist" tendency of present-day reform measures in America, and at the same time shows that they are removed as far as possible from that anti-capitalist trend which is held by most Socialist Party leaders to be the essence of their movement. Mr. Martin points to the irrigation projects, the conservation of national resources, the railway policy of the national administration, the expansion of the Federal government, and the tendency towards compulsory arbitration since the interference of President Roosevelt in the coal strike of 1902, as being "Socialistic" and yet in no sense class movements. They tend towards social reconstruction and to greater social organization and order; and there are no "logical halting places," says Mr. Martin, "on the road to Collectivism." But so far is this movement from a class movement in Mr. Martin's opinion that its advance guard consists in part of millionaires like Mr. Carnegie and Mrs. Sage, "who aim at a social betterment of both getting and spending of fortunes," while "behind them, uncommitted to any far-reaching theory, but patriotic and zealous for an improved society, there are marching philanthropists, doctors, lawyers, business men, and legislators, people of distinction." And finally the army is completed by millions of common privates "for whose children the better order will be the greatest boon." (The italicizing is mine.) The privates apparently figure rather as mere recipients of public and private benefactions than as active citizens.[184]

Some of the reformers openly advise joining the Socialist movement with the hope of using it for the purpose of reform and without aiding it in any way to reach a goal of its own. Professor John Bates Clark, one of America's most prominent economists, says of the Socialist Party that it is legitimate because "it represents the aspirations of a large number of workingmen" and because "its immediate purposes are good."

"It has changed the uncompromising policy of opposing all halfway measures," continues Professor Clark. "It welcomes reforms and tries to enroll in its membership as many as possible of the reformers.... In short, the Socialist and the reformer may walk side by side for a considerable distance without troubling themselves about the unlike goals which they hope in the end to reach.... What the reformers will have to do is to take the Socialistic name, walk behind a somewhat red banner, and be ready to break ranks and leave the army when it reaches the dividing of the ways."[185]

Professor Clark, it will be seen, has no difficulty in suggesting a "logical halting place on the road to collectivism"; namely, when the Socialists turn from collectivist reforms and start out towards Socialism.

Anti-Socialists may share the Socialist ideal and even favor all the reforms that the capitalists can permit to be put into practice without resigning their power and allowing the overthrow of capitalism. But Socialists have long since seen a way to mark off all such idealists and reformers—by presenting Socialism for what it really is, not as an ideal, nor a program of reform under capitalist direction, but as a method, and the only practical method, of ending capitalist rule in industry and government.

When Liebknecht insists on "the extreme importance of tactics and the necessity of maintaining the party's class struggle character," he makes "tactics," or the practical methods of the movement, identical with its basic principle, "the class struggle." Kautsky does the same thing when he says that Socialism is, both in theory and practice, a revolution against capitalism.

"Those who repudiate political revolution as the principal means of social transformation, or wish to confine the latter to such measures as have been granted by the ruling class," says Kautsky, "are social reformers, no matter how much their social ideas may antagonize existing forms of society."

The Socialists' wholly practical grounds against "reformism" have been stated by Liebknecht, in his "No Compromise." "This political Socialism, which in fact is only philanthropic humanitarian radicalism, has retarded the development of Socialism in France exceedingly," he wrote in 1899, before Socialist politicians and "reformists" had come into prominence in other countries than France. "It has diluted and blurred principles and weakened the Socialist Party because it brought into it troops upon which no reliance could be placed at the decisive moment." If, in other words, Socialism is a movement of non-capitalists against capitalists, nothing could be more fatal to it than a reputation due chiefly to success in bringing about reforms about which there is nothing distinctively Socialistic. For this kind of success could not fail ultimately to swamp the movement with reformers who, like Professor Clark, are not Socialists and never will be.

It must not be inferred from this that Socialists are indifferent to reform. They are necessarily far more anxious about it than its capitalist promoters. For while many "State Socialist" reforms are profitable to capitalism and even strengthen temporarily its hold on society, they are in the long run indispensable to Socialism. But this does not mean that Socialism is compelled to turn aside any of its energies from its great task of organizing and educating the workers, in order to hasten these reforms. On the contrary, the larger and the more revolutionary the Socialist army, the easier it will be for the progressive capitalists to overcome the conservatives and reactionaries. Long before this army has become large enough or aggressive enough to menace capitalism and so to throw all capitalists together in a single organization wholly devoted to defensive measures, there will be a long period—already begun in Great Britain, France, and other countries—when the growth of Socialism will make the progressive capitalists supreme by giving them the balance of power. In order, then, to hasten and aid the capitalistic form of progress, Socialists need only see that their own growth is sufficiently rapid. As the Socialists are always ready to support every measure of capitalist reform, the capitalist progressives need only then secure enough strength in Parliaments so that their votes added to those of the Socialists would form a majority. As soon as progressive capitalism is at all developed, reforms are thus automatically aided by the Socialist vote, without the necessity of active Socialist participation—thus leaving the Socialists free to attend to matters that depend wholly on their own efforts; namely, the organization and education of the non-capitalist masses for aggressive measures leading towards the overthrow of capitalism.

Opposition to the policy of absorption in ordinary reform movements is general in the international movement outside of Great Britain. Eugene V. Debs, three times presidential candidate of the American Socialist Party, is as totally opposed to "reformism" as are any of the Europeans. "The revolutionary character of our party and of our movement," he said in a personal letter to the present writer, which was published in the Socialist press, "must be preserved in all its integrity at all cost, for if that be compromised we had better cease to exist.... If the trimmers had their way we should degenerate into bourgeois reformers.... But they will not have their way." (Italics mine.)

No American Socialist has more ably summarized the dangers opportunism brings to the movement than Professor George D. Herron in his pamphlet, "From Revolution to Revolution," taken from a speech made as early as 1903. Later events, it will be noted, have strikingly verified his predictions as to the growing popularity of the word "Socialism" with nearly all political elements in this country.

"Great initiatives and revolutions," Herron says, "have always been robbed of definition and issue when adopted by the class against which the revolt was directed....

"Let Socialists take knowledge and warning. The possessing class is getting ready to give the people a few more crumbs of what is theirs.... If it comes to that, they are ready to give some things in the name of Socialism.... The old political parties will be adopting what they are pleased to call Socialistic planks in their platforms; and the churches will be coming with the insipid 'Christian Socialism,' and their hypocrisy and brotherly love. We shall soon see Mr. Hanna and Bishop Potter, Mr. Hearst and Dr. Lyman Abbott, even Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Bryan, posing as reasonable kinds of Socialists. You will find the name of Socialism repeatedly taken in vain, and perhaps successfully. You will see the Socialist movement bridled and saddled by capitalism, in the hope of riding it to a new lease of capitalistic power....

"But Socialism, like liberty or truth, is something you cannot have a part of; you must have the whole or you will have nothing; you can only gain or lose the whole, you cannot gain or lose a part. You may have municipal ownerships, nationalized transportation, initiative and referendum, civil service reforms and many other capitalist concessions, and be all the farther away from Social Democracy.... You may have any kind and number of reforms you please, any kind and number of revolutions or revivals you please, any kind and number of new ways of doing good you please, it will not matter to capitalism, so long as it remains at the root of things, the result of all your plans and pains will be gathered into the Capitalist granary." (The italics are mine.)

Yet no Socialist dreams that the presence in the movement of semi-Socialist or non-Socialist elements, which is both the cause and the effect of reformism and compromise, is a mere accident, or that there is any device by which they may either be kept out or eliminated—until the time is ripe. The presence of opportunists and reformists in all Socialist parties is as much an inevitable result at a certain stage of social evolution as the appearance of Socialism itself. The time will come when these "Mitlauefer," as the Germans call them, will either become wholly Socialist or will desert the movement, as has so often happened, to become a part of the rising tide of "State Socialism," but that day has not yet arrived.

The division of the organization at a certain stage into two wings is held by the able Austrian Socialist, Otto Bauer, to be a universal and necessary process in its development. The first stage is one where all party members are agreed, since it is then merely a question of the propaganda of general and revolutionary ideas. The second stage (the present one) arises when the party has already obtained a modest measure of power which can be either cashed in and utilized for immediate and material gains or saved up and held for obtaining more power, or for both objects in degrees varying according as one or the other is considered more important. Bauer shows that these two policies of accumulating power and of spending it arise necessarily out of the social composition of the party at its present stage and the general social environment in which it finds itself.

At the third stage, he says, when the proletariat has come to form the overwhelming majority of the population, their campaign for the conquest of political power appears to the possessing classes for the first time as a threatening danger. The capitalist parties then unite closely together against the Social Democracy; what once separated them now appears small in comparison to the danger which threatens their profits, their rents, and their monopolistic incomes. So there arises again at this higher stage of capitalist domination, as was the case at its beginning, "a Social Democracy in battle against all the possessing classes, against the whole power of the organized state." (Italics mine.)[186] When the third stage arrives, these reformists who do not intend to leave the revolutionary movement, begin to get ready to follow it. Already the most prominent reformist Socialists outside of England claim that their position is revolutionary. This is true of the best-known German reformist, Bernstein; it is true of Jaures; and it is also true of Berger in this country. Bernstein argues in his book, "Evolutionary Socialism," that constitutional legislation is best adapted to positive social-political work, "to the creation of permanent economic arrangements." But he also says that "the revolutionary way does quicker work as far as it deals with removal of obstacles which a privileged minority places in the path of social progress." As for choosing between the revolutionary and non-revolutionary methods, he admits that revolutionary tactics can be abandoned only when the non-propertied majority of a nation has become firmly established in power; that is, when political democracy is so deeply rooted and advanced that it can be applied successfully to questions of property; "when a nation has attained a position where the rights of the propertied minority have ceased to be a serious obstacle of social progress." Certainly no nation could claim to be in such a position to-day, unless it were, possibly, Australia, though there the empire of unoccupied land gives to every citizen possibilities at least of acquiring property, and relieves the pressure of the class struggle until the country is settled. This view of Bernstein's, let it be noted, is a far different one from that prevailing in England—as expressed, for example, in an organ of the Independent Labour Party, where it is said that "fortunately 'revolution' in this country has ceased to be anything more than an affected phrase." Certainly there are few modern countries where the "propertied minority," of which Bernstein speaks, constitutes a more serious obstacle to progress than it does in England.

Jaures's position is quite similar to that of Bernstein. He declared in a recent French Congress that he was both a revolutionist and a reformer. He indorses the idea of the general strike, but urges that it should not be used until the work of education and propaganda has made the time ready, "until a very large and strong organization is ready to back up the strikers," and until a large section of public opinion is prepared to recognize the legitimacy of their object. He says he expects the time to arrive when "the reforms in the interest of the whole working class which have been promised will have been systematically refused," and then "the general strike will be the only resource left"; and finally cries, "Never in the name of the working people will we give up the right of insurrection." This position is verbally correct from the Socialist standpoint, and it shows the power of the revolutionary idea in France, when even Jaures is forced to respect it. But any capitalist politician might safely use the same expressions—so long, at least, as revolution is still far away.

So also Mr. Berger has written in the Social Democratic Herald of Milwaukee that "all the ballot can do is to strengthen the power of resistance of the laboring people."

"We whom the western ultra class-conscious proletarians ... are wont to call 'opportunists,'" writes Berger, "we know right well that the social question can no more be solved by street riots and insurrections than by bombs and dynamite.

"Yet, by the ballot alone, it will never be solved.

"Up to this time men have always solved great questions by blood and iron." Berger says he is not given to reciting revolutionary phrases, but asserts that the plutocrats are taking the country in the direction of "a violent and bloody revolution."

"Therefore," he says, "each of the 500,000 Socialist voters, and of the two million workingmen who instinctively incline our way, should, besides doing much reading and still more thinking, also have a good rifle and the necessary rounds of ammunition in his home and be prepared to back up his ballot with his bullets if necessary.... Now, I deny that dealing with a blind and greedy plutocratic class as we are dealing in this country, the outcome can ever be peaceable, or that any reasonable change can ever be brought about by the ballot in the end.

"I predict that a large part of the capitalist class will be wiped out for much smaller things ... most of the plutocratic class, together with the politicians, will have to disappear as completely as the feudal lords and their retinue disappeared during the French revolution.

"That cannot be done by the ballot, or only by the ballot.

"The ballot cannot count for much in a pinch."[187] (My italics.)

And in another number Mr. Berger writes:—

"As long as we are in the minority we, of course, have no right to force our opinion upon an unwilling majority.... Yet we do not deny that after we have convinced the majority of the people, we are going to use force if the minority should hesitate."[188] (My italics.)

Few will question the revolutionary nature of this language. But such expressions have always been common at critical moments, even among non-Socialists. We have only to recall the "bloody-bridles" speech of a former populist governor of Colorado, or the advice of the New York Evening Journal that every citizen ought to provide against future contingencies by keeping a rifle in his home. Revolutionary language has no necessary relation to Socialism.

Mr. Berger, moreover, has also used the threat of revolution, not as a progressive but as a reactionary force, not in the sense of Marx, who believed that a revolution, when the times were ripe and the Socialists ready, would bring incalculably more good than evil, but in the sense of the capitalists, for whom it is the most terrible of all possibilities. It is common for conservative statesmen to use precisely the same threat to secure necessary capitalist reforms.

"Some day there will be a volcanic eruption," said Berger in his first speech in Congress; "a fearful retribution will be enacted on the capitalist class as a class, and the innocent will suffer with the guilty. Such a revolution would throw humanity back into semi-barbarism and cause even a temporary retrogression of civilization."

Such is the language used against revolutions by conservatives or reactionaries. Never has it been so applied by a Marx or an Engels, a Liebknecht, a Kautsky or a Bebel. Without underestimating the enormous cost of revolutions, the most eminent Socialists reckon them as nothing compared with the probable gains, or the far greater costs of continuing present conditions. The assertion of manhood that is involved in every great revolution from below in itself implies, in the Socialist view, not retrogression, but a stupendous advance; and any reversion to semi-barbarism that may take place in the course of the revolution is likely, in their opinion, to be far more than compensated in other directions, even during the revolutionary period (to say nothing of ultimate results).

Revolutionary phrases and scares are of course abhorred by capitalistic parties, and considered dangerous, unless there is some very strong occasion for reverting to their use. But such occasions are becoming more and more frequent. Conservative capitalists are more and more grateful for any outbreak that alarms or burdens the neutral classes and serves as a useful pretext for that repression or reaction which their interests require. Progressive capitalists, on the other hand, use the very same disturbances to urge reforms they desire, on the ground that such measures are necessary to avoid "revolution." The disturbance may be as far as possible from revolutionary at bottom. It is only necessary that it should be sufficiently novel and disagreeable to attract attention and cause impatience and irritation among those who have to pay for it. Like the British strikes of 1911, it may not cost the capitalist class as a whole one-hundredth part of one per cent of its income. And it might be possible to repress, within a short time and at no greater expense, a movement many times more menacing. Provided it serves to put the supporters of capitalism on their feet, whatever they do as a result, whether in the way of repression or of reform, will be but to carry out long-cherished plans for advancing their own interests, plans that would have been the same even though there had been no shadow of a "revolutionary" movement on the horizon. The only difference is that such pseudo-revolutionary or semi-revolutionary disturbances serve as stimuli to put the more inert of the capitalist forces in motion, and, until the disturbances become truly menacing, strengthen the capitalist position.

The use of revolutionary phrases does not then, of itself, demonstrate an approach to the revolutionary position, though we may assume, on other grounds, that the majority of the reformist Socialists, who take a revolutionary position as regards certain future contingencies, are in earnest. But this indicates nothing as to the character of their Socialism to-day. The important question is, how far their revolutionary philosophy goes when directed, not at a hypothetical future situation but to questions of the present moment.

In all the leading countries of the world, except Great Britain, the majority of Socialists expect a revolutionary crisis in the future, because they recognize, with that able student of the movement, Professor Sombart, that "history knows of no case where a class has freely given up the rights which it regarded as belonging to itself."[189] This does not mean that Socialists suppose that all progress must await a revolutionary period. Engels insisted that he and his associates were profiting more by lawful than by unlawful and revolutionary action. It means that Socialists do not believe that the capitalists will allow such action to remain lawful long enough materially to increase the income of the working class and its economic and political power as compared with their own.