Socialism As It Is Part 25

"There is nothing more to hope from the property-holding cla.s.ses."

"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 cla.s.s," it is denied that they can cure any of the grave social evils now prevalent, and it is even a.s.serted 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 munic.i.p.al 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 cla.s.s to be carried into effect by the munic.i.p.ality 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 cla.s.s, provided those measures do not involve loss to the capitalist cla.s.s. Thus sanitation and education are of real benefit to the workers, but, temporarily at least, they benefit the capitalist cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses such reforms as government relief for the unemployed, government loans for public work, and collective owners.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sertion 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sociated 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses. 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 cla.s.ses.

"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 cla.s.s _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 cla.s.ses_, 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 cla.s.s struggle. The New York Party, like many in other Socialist organizations, found itself _compelled by circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.ses."[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 pa.s.sing 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.ses 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 dictators.h.i.+p of the working cla.s.s." 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 cla.s.s must be fought for to-day," says Kautsky, "and it is only thanks to the _fear_ of the working cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 inst.i.tute 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 pa.s.sage that conditions may be different in the United States, England, and British colonies, and under certain circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.s 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 ma.s.ses 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 cla.s.s, 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 cooperates 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), inst.i.tute 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 att.i.tude to be a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sociates 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 pa.s.sed, 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 att.i.tude 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 const.i.tuent 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.