Socialism As It Is Part 1

Socialism As It Is.

by William English Walling.

PREFACE

The only Socialism of interest to practical persons is the Socialism of the organized Socialist movement. Yet the public cannot be expected to believe what an organization says about its own character or aims. It is to be rightly understood only _through its acts_. Fortunately the Socialists' acts are articulate; every party decision of practical importance has been reached after long and earnest discussion in party congresses and press. And wherever the party's position has become of practical import to those outside the movement, it has been subjected to a destructive criticism that has forced Socialists from explanations that were sometimes imaginary or theoretical to a clear recognition and frank statement of their true position. To know and understand Socialism as it is, we must lay aside both the claims of Socialists and the attacks of their opponents and confine ourselves to the concrete activities of Socialist organizations, the grounds on which their decisions have been reached, and the reasons by which they are ultimately defended.

Writers on Socialism, as a rule, have either left their statements of the Socialist position unsupported, or have based them exclusively on Socialist authorities, Marx, Engels, and Lasalle, whose chief writings are now half a century old. The existence to-day of a well-developed movement, many-sided and world-wide, makes it possible for a writer to rely neither on his personal experience and opinion nor on the old and familiar, if still little understood, theories. I have based my account either on the acts of Socialist organizations and of parties and governments with which they are in conflict, or on those responsible declarations of representative statesmen, economists, writers, and editors which are not mere theories, but the actual material of present-day polities,--though among these living forces, it must be said, are to be found also some of the teachings of the great Socialists of the past.

It will be noticed that the numerous quotations from Socialists and others are not given academically, in support of the writer's conclusions, but with the purpose of reproducing with the greatest possible accuracy the exact views of the writer or speaker quoted. I am aware that accuracy is not to be secured by quotation alone, but depends also on the choice of the pa.s.sages to be reproduced and the use made of them. I have therefore striven conscientiously to give, as far as s.p.a.ce allows, the leading and central ideas of the persons most frequently quoted, and not their more hasty, extreme, and less representative expressions.

I have given approximately equal attention to the German, British, and American situations, considerable but somewhat less s.p.a.ce to those of France and Australia, and only a few pages to Italy and Belgium. This allotment of s.p.a.ce corresponds somewhat roughly to the relative importance of these countries in the international movement. As my idea has been not to describe, but to interpret, I have laid additional weight on the first five countries named, on the ground that each has developed a distinct type of labor movement. As I am concerned with national parties and labor organizations only as parts of the international movement, however, I have avoided, wherever possible, all separate treatment and all discussion of features that are to be found only in one country.

The book is divided into three parts; the first deals with the external environment out of which Socialism is growing and by which it is being shaped, the second with the internal struggles by which it is shaping and defining itself, the third with the reaction of the movement on its environment. I first differentiate Socialism from other movements that seem to resemble it either in their phrases or their programs of reform, then give an account of the movement from within, without attempting to show unity where it does not exist, or disguising the fact that some of its factions are essentially anti-Socialist rather than Socialist, and finally, show how all distinctively Socialist activities lead directly to a revolutionary outcome.

I am indebted to numerous persons, Socialists and anti-Socialists, who during the twelve years in which I have been gathering material--in nearly all the countries mentioned--have a.s.sisted me in my work. But I must make special mention of the very careful reading of the whole ma.n.u.script by Mr. J. G. Phelps Stokes, and of the numerous and vital changes made at his suggestion.

INTRODUCTION

The only possible definition of Socialism is the Socialist movement.

Karl Marx wrote in 1875 at the time of the Gotha Convention, where the present German party was founded, that "every step of the real movement is of more importance than a dozen programs," while Wilhelm Liebknecht said, "Marx is dear to me, but the party is dearer."[1] What was this movement that the great theorist put above theory and his leading disciple valued above his master?

What Marx and Liebknecht had in mind was a _social cla.s.s_ which they saw springing up all over the world with common characteristics and common problems--a cla.s.s which they felt must and would be organized into a movement to gain control of society. Fifty years before it had been nothing, and they had seen it in their lifetime coming to preponderate numerically in Great Britain as it was sure to preponderate in other countries; and it seemed only a question of time before the practically propertyless employees of modern industry would dominate the world and build up a new society. This cla.s.s would be politically and economically organized, and when its organization and numbers were sufficient it would take governments out of the hands of the old aristocratic and plutocratic rulers and transform them into the instruments of a new civilization. This is what Marx and Liebknecht meant by the "party" and the "movement."

From the first the new cla.s.s had been in conflict with employers and governments, and these struggles had been steadily growing in scope and intensity. Marx was not so much interested in the immediate objects of such conflicts as in the struggle itself. "The real fruit of their victory," he said, "lies, not in immediate results, but in the ever expanding union of the workers."[2] As the struggle evolved and became better organized, it tended more and more definitely and irresistibly towards a certain goal, whether the workers were yet aware of it or not.

If, therefore, we Socialists partic.i.p.ate in the real struggles of politics, Marx said of himself and his a.s.sociates (in 1844, at the very outset of his career), "we expose new principles to the world out of the principles of the world itself.... We only explain to it the real object for which it struggles."[3]

But the public still fails, in spite of the phenomenal and continued growth of the Socialist movement in all modern countries, to grasp the first principle on which it is based.

"Socialism has many phases," says a typical editorial in the _Independent_. "It is a political party, an economic creed, a religion, and a stage of history. It is world-wide, vigorous, and growing. No man can tell what its future will be. Its philosophy is being studied by the greatest minds of the world, and it deserves study because it promises a better, a safer, and a fairer life to the ma.s.ses. But as yet it is only a theory, a hypothesis. It has never been tried _in toto_.... It has succeeded only where it has allied itself with liberal and opportunist rather than radical policies."[4]

As the Socialist movement has nowhere achieved political power, obviously it can neither claim political success or be accused of political failure. Nor does this fact leave Socialism as a mere theory, in view of its admitted and highly significant success in organizing and educating the ma.s.ses in many countries and animating them with the purpose of controlling industry and government.

Mr. John Graham Brooks, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, gives us another equally typical variation of the same fundamental misunderstanding.

"Never a theory of social reconstruction was spun in the gray mists of the mind," says Mr. Brooks, "that was not profoundly modified when applied to life. Socialism as a theory is already touching life at a hundred points, and among many peoples--Socialism has been a faith. It is slowly becoming scientific, in a sense and to the extent that it submits its claims to the comparative tests of experience."[5]

Undoubtedly Socialist theories have been spun both within and without the movement, and to many Socialism has been a faith. But neither faith nor theory has had much to do with the great reality that is now overshadowing all others in the public mind; namely, the existence of a Socialist movement. The Socialism of this movement has never consisted in ready-made formulas which were later subjected to "the comparative test of experience"; it has always grown out of the experience of the movement in the first instance.

Another typical article, in _Collier's Weekly_, admits that Socialism is now a movement. But as the writer, like so many others, conceives of Socialism as having been, in its inception, a "theory," a "doctrine"

promoted by "Utopian dreaming," "incendiary rhetoric," an "anti-civic jargon," he naturally views it with little real sympathy and understanding even in its present form. The same Socialism that was accused of all this narrowness is suddenly and completely transformed into a movement of such breadth that it has neither a new message nor even a separate existence.

"It is merely a new offshoot of a very old faith indeed," we are now told, "the ideal of the altruistic dreamers of all ages, an awakened sense of brotherhood in men. Stripped of all its husks, Socialism stands for no other aim than that. All its other teachings, the public owners.h.i.+p of the land, for example, the nationalization of the means of production and distribution, the economic emanc.i.p.ation of woman, have only program values, as they lead to that one end. Whether, so stripped, it ceases to be Socialism and becomes merely the advance guard of the world-wide liberal movement is not, of course, a question of more than academic interest."[6]

The moment it can no longer be denied that Socialism is a movement, it is at once confused with other movements to which it is fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed. Surely this is no mere mental error, but a deep-seated and irrepressible aversion to what is to many a disagreeable truth,--the rapid growth and development, in many countries, of political parties and labor organizations more and more seriously determined to annihilate the power of private property over industry and government.

The radical misconceptions above quoted, almost universal where Socialism is still young, are by no means confined to non-Socialists.

Many writers who are supposed, in some degree at least, to voice the movement, are as guilty as those who wholly repudiate it. Mr. H. G.

Wells, for instance, says that Socialism is a "system of ideas," and that "Socialism and the Socialist movement are two different things."[7]

If Socialism is indeed no more than a "growing realization of constructive needs in every man's mind," and if every man is more or less a Socialist, then there is certainly no need for that antagonism to employers and property owners of which Mr. Wells complains.

Mr. Wells himself gives the true Socialist standpoint when he goes on to write that political parties must be held together "by interests and habits, not ideas." "Every party," he continues, "stands essentially for the interests and mental usages of some definite cla.s.s or group of cla.s.ses in the existing community.... No cla.s.s will abolish itself, materially alter its way or life, or drastically reconstruct itself, albeit no cla.s.s is indisposed to cooperate in the unlimited socialization of any other cla.s.s. In that capacity of aggression upon the other cla.s.ses lies the essential driving force of modern affairs."[8]

The habits and interests of a large and growing part of the population in every modern country are developing a capacity for effective aggression against the cla.s.s which controls industry and government. As this cla.s.s will not socialize or abolish itself, the rest of the people, Socialists predict, will undertake the task. And the abolition of capitalism, they believe, will be a social revolution the like of which mankind has. .h.i.therto neither known nor been able to imagine.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] John Spargo, "Karl Marx," pp. 312, 331.

[2] John Spargo, _op. cit._, p. 116.

[3] John Spargo, _op. cit._, p. 73.

[4] The _Independent_ (New York), commenting on the Socialist victory in the Milwaukee munic.i.p.al elections of April, 1910.

[5] "Recent Socialist Literature," by John Graham Brooks, _Atlantic Monthly_, 1910. Page 283.

[6] _Collier's Weekly_, July 30, 1910.

[7] H. G. Wells, "Socialism and the Family."

[8] H. G. Wells, "The New Macchiavelli."

SOCIALISM AS IT IS

PART I

"STATE SOCIALISM" AND AFTER

CHAPTER I

THE CAPITALIST REFORM PROGRAM

Only that statesman, writer, or sociologist has the hearing of the public to-day who can bind all his proposed reforms together into some large and far-sighted plan.

Mr. Roosevelt, in this new spirit, has spoken of the "social reorganization of the United States," while an article in one of the first numbers of _La Follette's Weekly_ protested against any program of reform "which fails to deal with society as a whole, which proposes to remedy certain abuses but admits its incapacity to reach and remove the roots of the other perhaps more glaring social disorders."

Some of those who have best expressed the need of a general and complete social reorganization have done so in the name of Socialism. Mr. J. R.