Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles Part 9

CHAPTER VI

THE CLa.s.s STRUGGLE THEORY

I

No part of the theory of modern Socialism has called forth so much criticism and opposition as the doctrine of the cla.s.s struggle. Many who are otherwise sympathetic to Socialism denounce this doctrine as narrow, brutal, and productive of antisocialistic feelings of cla.s.s hatred. Upon all hands the doctrine is condemned as an un-American appeal to pa.s.sion and a wicked exaggeration of social conditions. When President Roosevelt attacks the preachers of the doctrine, and wrathfully condemns cla.s.s-consciousness as "a foul thing," he doubtless expresses the views of a majority of American citizens. The insistence of Socialists upon this aspect of their propaganda is undoubtedly responsible for keeping a great many outside of their movement who otherwise would be identified with it. If the Socialists would repudiate the doctrine that Socialism is a cla.s.s movement, and make their appeal to the intelligence and conscience of all cla.s.ses, instead of to the interests of a special cla.s.s, they could probably double their numerical strength at once. To many, therefore, it seems a fatuous and quixotic policy to preach such a doctrine, and it is very often charitably ascribed to the peculiar intellectual and moral myopia of fanaticism.

Before accepting this conclusion, and before indorsing the Rooseveltian verdict, the reader is bound as a matter of common fairness, and of intellectual integrity, to consider the Socialist side of the argument.

There is no greater fanaticism than that which condemns what it does not take the trouble to understand. The Socialists claim that the doctrine is misrepresented; that it does not produce cla.s.s hatred; and that it is a vital and pivotal point of Socialist philosophy. The cla.s.s struggle, says the Socialist, is a law of social development. We only recognize the law, and are no more responsible for its existence than for the law of gravitation. The name of Marx is a.s.sociated with the law in just the same manner as the name of Newton is a.s.sociated with the law of gravitation, but Marx is no more responsible for the social law he discovered than was Newton for the physical law he discovered. There were cla.s.s struggles thousands of years before there was a Socialist movement, thousands of years before Marx was born, and it is therefore absurd to charge us with the creation of the cla.s.s struggle, or cla.s.s hatred. We realize perfectly well that if we ignored this law in our propaganda, making our appeal to a universal sense of abstract justice and truth, many who now hold aloof from us would join our movement. But we should not gain strength as a result of their accession to our ranks.

We should be obliged to emasculate Socialism, to dilute it, in order to win a support of questionable value. History teems with examples of the disaster which inevitably attends such a course. We should be quixotic and fatuous indeed if we attempted anything of the kind. Such, briefly stated, are the main outlines of the reply which the average Socialist gives to the criticism of the cla.s.s struggle doctrine described.

The cla.s.s struggle theory is part of the economic interpretation of history. Since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, the modes of economic production and exchange have inevitably grouped men into economic cla.s.ses. The theory is thus admirably stated by Engels in the Introduction to the _Communist Manifesto_:--

"In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; and, consequently, the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive society, holding land in common owners.h.i.+p) has been a history of cla.s.s struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed cla.s.ses; that the history of these cla.s.s struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed cla.s.s--the proletariat--cannot attain its emanc.i.p.ation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling cla.s.s--the bourgeoise--without, at the same time, and once and for all, emanc.i.p.ating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, cla.s.s distinctions, and cla.s.s struggles."[116]

In this cla.s.sic statement of the theory, there are several fundamental propositions. First, that cla.s.s divisions and cla.s.s struggles arise out of the economic life of society. Second, that since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, which was communistic in character, mankind has been divided into economic groups or cla.s.ses, and all its history has been a history of struggles between these cla.s.ses, ruling and ruled, exploiting and exploited, being forever at war with each other. Third, that the different epochs in human history, stages in the evolution of society, have been characterized by the interests of the ruling cla.s.s.

Fourth, that a stage has now been reached in the evolution of society where the struggle a.s.sumes a form which makes it impossible for cla.s.s distinctions and cla.s.s struggles to continue if the exploited and oppressed cla.s.s, the proletariat, succeeds in emanc.i.p.ating itself. In other words, the cycle of cla.s.s struggles which began with the dissolution of rude, tribal communism, and the rise of private property, ends with the pa.s.sing of private property in the means of social existence and the rise of Socialism. The proletariat in emanc.i.p.ating itself destroys all the conditions of cla.s.s rule.

II

As we have already seen, slavery is historically the first system of cla.s.s division which presents itself. Some ingenious writers have endeavored to trace the origin of slavery to the inst.i.tution of the family, the children being the first slaves. It is fairly certain, however, that slavery originated in conquest. When a tribe was conquered and enslaved by some more powerful tribe, all the members of the vanquished tribe sunk to one common level of servility and degradation.

Their exploitation as laborers was the princ.i.p.al object of their enslavement, and their labor admitted of little gradation. It is easy to see the fundamental cla.s.s antagonisms which characterized slavery. Has there been no uprisings of the slaves, no active and conscious struggle against their masters, the antagonism of interests between them and their masters would be none the less apparent. But the overthrow of slavery was not the result of the rebellions and struggles of the slaves. While these undoubtedly helped, the princ.i.p.al factors in the overthrow of chattel slavery as the economic foundation of society were the disintegration of the system to the point of bankruptcy, and the rise of a new, and sometimes, as in the case of Rome, alien ruling cla.s.s.

The cla.s.s divisions of feudal society are not less obvious than those of chattel slavery. The main division, the widest gulf, divided the feudal lord and the serf. Often as brutally ill-treated as their slave-forefathers had been, the feudal serfs from time to time made abortive struggles. The cla.s.s distinctions of feudalism were constant, but the struggles between the lords and the serfs were sporadic, and of comparatively little moment, just as the risings of their slave forefathers had been. But alongside of the feudal estate there existed another cla.s.s, the free handicraftsmen and peasants, the former organized into powerful guilds. It was this cla.s.s, and not the serf cla.s.s, which was destined to challenge the rule of the feudal n.o.bility, and wage war upon it. As the feudal cla.s.s was a landed cla.s.s, so the cla.s.s represented by the guilds became a moneyed and commercial cla.s.s, the pioneers of our modern capitalist cla.s.s. As Mr. Brooks Adams[117]

has shown very clearly, it was this moneyed, commercial cla.s.s, which gave to the king the instrument for weakening and finally overthrowing feudalism. It was this cla.s.s which built up the cities and towns from which was drawn the revenue for the maintenance of a standing army, thus liberating the king from his dependence upon the feudal lords. The capitalist cla.s.s triumphed over the feudal n.o.bility, and its interests became in their turn the dominant interests in society. Capitalism in its development effectually destroyed all those inst.i.tutions of feudalism which obstructed its progress, leaving only those which were innocuous and safely to be ignored.

In capitalist society, the main cla.s.s division is that which separates the employing, wage-paying cla.s.s from the employed, wage-receiving cla.s.s. Notwithstanding all the elaborate arguments made to prove the contrary, the frequently heard myth that the interests of Capital and Labor are identical, and the existence of pacificatory a.s.sociations based upon that myth, there is no fact in the whole range of social phenomena more self-evident than the existence of an inherent, fundamental antagonism in the relations.h.i.+p of employer and employee. As individuals, in all other relations, they may have a commonality of interests, but as employer and employee they are fundamentally and necessarily opposed. They may belong to the same church, and so have religious interests in common; they may have common racial interests, as, for instance, if negroes, in protecting themselves against the attacks made in a book like _The Clansman_, or, if Jews, in opposing anti-Semitic movements; as citizens they may have the same civic interests, be equally opposed to graft in the city government, or equally interested in the adoption of wise sanitary precautions against epidemics. They may even have a common industrial interest in the general sense that they may be equally interested in the development of the industry in which they are engaged, and fear, equally, the results of a depression in trade. But their special interests as employer and employee are ant.i.thetical.

It cannot be denied that, in certain circ.u.mstances, these other interests may become so accentuated that the cla.s.s antagonisms are momentarily lost sight of, or completely dwarfed in importance; nor is such a denial implied in the Socialist theory. It is not difficult to see that in the case of a general uprising against the members of their race, in which their lives are imperiled, Jewish employers and employees may forget their _cla.s.s_ interests and remember only that they are Jews.

So with negroes and other oppressed races. The economic interests of the cla.s.s may be engulfed in the solidarity of the race. It is not difficult, either, to see that in the presence of some great common danger or calamity, cla.s.s interests may likewise be completely subordinated. An admirable example of this occurred at the time of the San Francisco earthquake and fire. The enormous demand for labor occasioned by that disaster practically enabled the artisans, most of whom were organized into unions, to demand and obtain almost fabulous wages. But there was no thought of taking advantage of the calamity. On the contrary, the unions immediately announced that they would make no attempt to do so. Not only that, but they voluntarily waived rules which in normal times they would have insisted upon with all their powers. The temporary overshadowing of the economic interests of cla.s.ses by other special interests which have been thrust into special prominence, is not, however, evidence that these cla.s.s interests do not prevail in normal times. Recognition of this fact effectually destroys much criticism of the theory.

The interest of the wage-worker, as wage-worker, is to receive the largest wage possible for the least number of hours spent in labor. The interest of the employer, as employer, on the other hand, is to secure from the worker as many hours of service, as much labor power, as possible for the lowest wage which the worker can be induced to accept.

The workers employed in a factory may be divided by a hundred different forces. They may be divided by racial differences, for instance; but while preserving these differences in a large measure, they will tend to unite upon the basis of their economic interests. Some of the great labor unions, notably the United Mine Workers,[118] afford remarkable ill.u.s.trations of this fact. If the difference of religious interests leads to division, the same unanimity of economic interests will sooner or later be developed. No impartial investigator who studies the influence of a great labor union which includes in its members.h.i.+p workers of various nationalities and adherents of various religious creeds, can fail to observe the fact that the community of economic interests which unites them is a powerful factor making for their amalgamation into a harmonious civic whole.

With the employers it is the same. They, too, may be divided by a hundred forces; the compet.i.tion among them may be keen and fierce, but common economic interests will tend to unite them against the organizations of the workers they employ. Racial, religious, social, and other divisions and distinctions, may be maintained, but they will, in general, unite for the protection and furtherance of their common economic interests.

So much, indeed, belongs to the very primer stage of economic theory.

Adam Smith is rather out of fas.h.i.+on nowadays, but there is still much in "The Wealth of Nations" which will repay our attention. No Socialist writer, not even Marx, has stated the fundamental principle of the antagonism between the employing and employed cla.s.ses more clearly, as witness the following:--

"The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labor.... Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals.... Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labor.... These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution.... Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of labor. Their usual pretenses are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profits which the masters make by their work. But whether these combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamor, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the extravagance and folly of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and _never cease to call aloud for the a.s.sistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, laborers, and journeymen_."[119]

Thus Adam Smith. Were it essential to our present purpose, it would be easy to quote from all the great economists in support of the Socialist claim that the interests of the capitalist and those of the laborer are irreconcilably opposed. That individual workers and employers will be found who do not recognize their cla.s.s interests is true, but that fact by no means invalidates the contention that, in general, men will recognize and unite upon a basis of common cla.s.s interests. In both cla.s.ses are to be found individuals who attach greater importance to the preservation of racial, religious, or social, than to economic, interests. But because the economic interest is fundamental, involving the very basis of life, the question of food, clothing, shelter, and comfort, these individuals are and must be exceptions to the general rule. Workers sink their racial and religious differences and unite to secure better wages, a reduction of their hours of labor, and better conditions in general. Employers, similarly, unite to oppose whatever may threaten their cla.s.s interests, without regard to other relations.h.i.+ps. The Gentile who is himself an anti-Semite has no qualms of conscience about employing Jewish workmen, at low wages, to compete with Gentile workers; he does not object to joining with Jewish employers in an Employers' a.s.sociation, if thereby his economic interests may be safeguarded. And the Jewish employer, likewise, has no objection to joining with the Gentile employer for mutual protection, or to the employment of Gentile workers to fill the places of his employees, members of his own race, who have gone out on strike for higher wages.

III

The cla.s.s struggle, therefore, presents itself in the present stage of social development, in capitalist countries, as a conflict between the wage-paying and the wage-paid cla.s.ses. That is the dominating and all-absorbing conflict of the industrial age in which we live. True, there are other cla.s.s interests more or less involved. This is especially true in the United States with its enormous agricultural industry, to which the description of the industrial conflict cannot be applied. There are the indefinite, inchoate, vague, and uncertain interests of that large, so-called middle cla.s.s, composed of farmers, retailers, professional workers, and so on. The interests of this large cla.s.s are not, and cannot be, as definitely defined. They vacillate, conforming now to the interest of the wage-workers, now to the interest of the employers. Thus the farmer may oppose an increase in the wages of farm laborers, because that touches him directly as an employer. His relation to the farm laborer is substantially that of the capitalist to the city worker, and his att.i.tude upon that question is the att.i.tude of the capitalist cla.s.s as a whole. At the same time, he may heartily favor an increase of wages for miners, carpenters, bricklayers, shoemakers, printers, painters, factory workers, and non-agricultural laborers in general, for the reason that while a general rise of wages, resulting in a general rise of prices, will affect him slightly as a consumer, and compel him to pay more for what he buys, it will benefit him much more as a seller of the products of his farm. In short, consciously very often, but unconsciously oftener still, personal or cla.s.s interests control our thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and actions.

It is impossible with the data at our disposal at present to make such an a.n.a.lysis of our population as will enable us to determine the particular cla.s.s interests of the various groups. Of the twenty-four million men and boys engaged in industry there are some six million farmers and tenants; three million seven hundred and fifty thousand farm laborers; eleven million mechanics, laborers, clerks, and servants; one million five hundred thousand professional workers, agents, and the like; and about two million employers, large and small. Accurately to place each of these groups is out of the question until such time as we have a much more detailed study of our economic life than has yet been attempted. We may, however, roughly relate some of the groups.

First: It is evident that the interests of the eleven million wage-earners are, as a whole, opposed to those of the employing cla.s.s.

There may be exceptions, as in the case of those whose very occupation as confidential agents of the capitalists, overseers, and the like, places them outside of the sphere of working-cla.s.s interests. They may not receive a salary much above the wage of the mechanic, yet their function is such as to place them psychologically with the capitalists rather than with the workers. It is also evident that, while their _interests_ may be demonstrably antagonistic to those of the employers, not all of the wage-earners will be _conscious_ of that fact. The _consciousness_ of cla.s.s interests develops slowly among rural and isolated workers, especially as between the small employer and his employee. And even when there is the consciousness of antagonistic interests among these workers it is very difficult for them actively to express it. Hence they cannot play an important part in the actual conflict of cla.s.ses.

Second: We may safely place the three million seven hundred and fifty thousand farm laborers, as regards their economic _interests_, with the general ma.s.s of wage-workers, with one important qualification. So far as they are in the actual relation of wage-paid laborers, hired by the month, week, or day, and bearing no other relation to their employers, they belong, in their economic interests, to the proletariat. But there are many farm laborers included in our enumeration who do not hold that relation to their employers. They are the sons of the farmers themselves, expecting to a.s.sume their fathers' positions, and their position as wage-paid laborers is largely nominal and fict.i.tious. How many such there are it is impossible to ascertain with anything like certainty, and we can only say, therefore, that the position of the cla.s.s, as such, must be determined without including these. But while this cla.s.s has economic interests similar to those of the industrial proletariat, because of their isolation and scattered position, and because of the personal relations which they bear to their employers--farmer and laborer often working side by side, equally hard, and not infrequently having approximately the same standards of living--these cannot, to any very great extent, become an active factor in the cla.s.s conflict in the same sense as the industrial wage-workers can, by engaging in strikes, boycotts, and other manifestations of the cla.s.s war. Still, they may, and in fact do, play an important role in the _political_ aspects of the struggle. Let a political movement of the proletariat arise and it will be found that these agricultural laborers will join it not less enthusiastically than their fellows from the factories in the cities. It would probably surprise most thoughtful Americans if they could see the organization maps in the offices of the Socialist Party of the United States, dotted with little red-capped pins denoting local organizations of the party. These are quite as common in the agricultural states as in the industrial states. So, too, in Germany. The movement is politically nearly as strong in the agrarian districts as elsewhere. This is a fact of vital significance, one which must not be lost sight of in studying the progress of Socialism in America.

Third: Of the exact position of the remaining groups it is very difficult to speak with anything like a.s.surance. In an earlier chapter we have noticed the persistence of the small farm in America, and the fact that a cla.s.s of small farmers forms a very important part of our population. As already observed, the economic condition of the small farmer is very often little, if any, superior to that of the laborers he employs. Elsewhere, I have shown that the actual income of the small farmer is not infrequently less than that of the hired laborer.[120]

This is just as true of the small dealer, and the small manufacturer.

But mere poverty of income, companions.h.i.+p in misery, the sharing of an equally poor existence, does not suffice to place the farmer in the proletarian cla.s.s, as many Socialist writers have shown.[121] The small farmers const.i.tute a distinct cla.s.s. They are not, as the small dealers and manufacturers are, mere remnants of a disappearing cla.s.s. The cla.s.s is a permanent one, apparently, as much so as the cla.s.s of industrial wage-workers. As a cla.s.s it is just as essential to agricultural production as the industrial proletariat is essential to manufacture. It is thus a cla.s.s a.n.a.logous to the industrial proletariat, and Kautsky has well said that the small farmer is the "proletariat of the country." The exploitation of the small farmer is not direct, like that of the wage-worker by his employer, but indirect, through the great capitalist trusts and railroads. It also happens that these derive their chief income from the direct exploitation of the wage-workers, so that the small farmer and the wage-worker in the city factory have common exploiters. As they become conscious of this, the two cla.s.ses will tend to unite their forces in the one sphere where such unity of action is possible, the sphere of political action.

This is also true, in some degree at least, of a considerable fraction of the one million five hundred thousand workers included in the professional and agent cla.s.ses, and of the two million employers, the small dealers and manufacturers being included in this enumeration. That there is such a considerable fraction of each of these two cla.s.ses whose interests lead them to make common cause with the proletariat is not at all a matter of theory or speculation, but of experience. These cla.s.ses are represented very largely in the members.h.i.+p of the Socialist parties of this country and of Europe.

IV

Although it is sometimes so interpreted, the theory that cla.s.ses are based upon commonality of interests does not imply that men are never actuated by other than selfish motives; that a sordid materialism is the only motive force at work in the world. Marx and Engels carefully avoided the use of the word _interests_ in such manner as to suggest that material interests control the course of history. They invariably used the term _economic conditions_, and the careful reader will not fail to perceive that although economic conditions produce interests which form the basis of cla.s.s divisions, it is not unusual for men to act contrary to their personal _interests_ as a result of existing _conditions_. In general, cla.s.s interests and personal interests coincide, but there are certainly occasions when they conflict. Many an employer, having no quarrel with his employees and confident that he will be the loser thereby, joins in a fight upon labor unions because he is conscious that the interests of his cla.s.s are involved. In a similar way, workingmen enter upon sympathetic strikes, consciously, at an immediate loss to themselves, because they place cla.s.s loyalty before personal gain. It is significant of cla.s.s feeling and temper that when employers act in this manner, and lock out employees with whom they have no trouble, simply to help other employers to win their battles, they are lauded by the very newspapers which denounce the workers when they adopt a like policy.

It is also true that there are individuals in both cla.s.ses who never become conscious of their cla.s.s interests, and steadfastly refuse to join with the members of their cla.s.s. The workingman who refuses to join a union, or who "scabs" when his fellow-workers go out on strike, may act from ignorance or from sheer self-interest and greed. His action may be due to his placing personal interest before the larger interest of his cla.s.s, or from being too shortsighted to see that ultimately his own interests and those of his cla.s.s must merge. Many an employer, likewise, may refuse to join in any concerted action of his cla.s.s for either of these reasons, or he may even rise superior to his cla.s.s and personal interests and support the workers because he believes in the justness of their cause, realizing perfectly well that their gain means loss to him or to his cla.s.s. This ought to be a sufficient answer to those shallow critics who think that they dispose of the cla.s.s struggle theory of modern Socialism by enumerating those of its leading exponents who do not belong to the proletariat.

The influence of cla.s.s environment upon men's beliefs and ideals is a subject which our most voluminous ethicists have scarcely touched upon as yet. It is a commonplace saying that each age has its own standards of right and wrong, but little effort has been made, if we except the Socialists, to trace this fact to its source, to the economic conditions prevailing in the different ages.[122] Still less effort has been made to account for the different standards held by the different social cla.s.ses at the same time, and by which each cla.s.s judges the others. In our own day the idea of slavery is generally held in abhorrence. There was a time, however, when it was almost universally looked upon as a divine inst.i.tution, alike by slaveholder and slave. It is simply impossible to account for this complete revolution of feeling upon any other hypothesis than that slave-labor then seemed absolutely essential to the life of the world. The slave lords of antiquity, and, more recently, the Southern slaveholders in our own country, all believed that slavery was eternally right. When the slaves took an opposite view and rebelled, they were believed to be in rebellion against G.o.d and nature. The Church represented the same view just as vigorously as it now opposes it. The slave owners who held slavery to be a divine inst.i.tution, and the priests and ministers who supported them, were just as honest and sincere in their belief as we are in holding antagonistic beliefs to-day.

What was accounted a virtue in the slave was accounted a vice in the slaveholder. Cowardice and a cringing humility were not regarded as faults in a slave. On the contrary, they were the stock virtues of the pattern slave and added to the estimation in which he was held, just as similar traits are valued in personal servants--butlers, waiters, valets, footmen, and other flunkies--in our own day. But similar traits in the slaveholder, or the "gentleman" of to-day, would be regarded as terrible faults. As Mr. Algernon Lee very tersely puts it, "The slave was not a slave because of his slavish ideals and beliefs; the slave was slavish in his ideals and beliefs because he lived the life of a slave."[123]

In the industrial world of to-day we find a similar divergence of ethical standards. What the laborers regard as wrong, the employers regard as absolutely and immutably right. The actions of the workers in forming unions and compelling unwilling members of their own cla.s.s to join them, even resorting to the bitter expedient of striking against them with a view to starving them into submission, seem terribly unjust to the employers and the cla.s.s to which the employers belong. To the workers themselves, on the other hand, such actions have all the sanctions of conscience. Similarly, many actions of the employers, in which they themselves see no wrong, seem almost incomprehensibly wicked to the workers.

Leaving aside the wholesale fraud of our ordinary commercial advertis.e.m.e.nts, the shameful adulteration of goods, and a mult.i.tude of other such nefarious practices, it is at once interesting and instructive to compare the employers' denunciations of "the outrageous infringement of personal liberty," when the "oppressor" is a labor union, with some of their everyday practices. The same employers who loudly, and, let it be said, quite sincerely, condemn the members of a union who endeavor to bring about the discharge of a fellow-worker because he declines to join their organization, have no scruples of conscience about discharging a worker simply because he belongs to a union, and so effectually "blacklisting" him that it becomes almost or quite impossible for him to obtain employment at his trade elsewhere.

They do not hesitate to do this secretly, conspiring against the very life of the worker. While loudly declaiming against the "conspiracy" of the workers to raise wages, they see no wrong in an "agreement" of manufacturers or mine owners to reduce wages. If the members of a labor union should break the law, especially if they should commit an act of violence during a strike, the organs of capitalist opinion teem with denunciation, but there is no breath of condemnation for the outrages committed by employers or their agents against union men and their families.

During the great anthracite coal strike of 1903, and again during the disturbances in Colorado in 1904, it was evident to every fair-minded observer that the mine owners were at least quite as lawless as the strikers.[124] But there was hardly a scintilla of adverse comment upon the mine owners' lawlessness in the organs of capitalist opinion, while they poured forth torrents of righteous indignation at the lawlessness of the miners. When labor leaders, like the late Sam Parks, for example, are accused of extortion and receiving bribes, the employers and their retainers, through pulpit, press, and every other avenue of public opinion, denounce the culprit, the bribe taker, in unmeasured terms--but the bribe giver is excused, or, at worst, only lightly criticised. These are but a few common ill.u.s.trations of cla.s.s conscience. Any careful observer will be able to add almost indefinitely to the number.

It would be easy to compile a catalogue of such examples as these from the history of the past few years sufficient to convince the most skeptical that cla.s.s interests do produce a cla.s.s conscience. Mr. Ghent aptly expresses a profound truth when he says: "There is a spiritual alchemy which trans.m.u.tes the base metal of self-interest into the gold of conscience; the trans.m.u.tation is real, and the resulting frame of mind is not hypocrisy, but conscience. It is a cla.s.s conscience, and therefore partial and imperfect, having little to do with absolute ethics. But partial and imperfect as it is, it is generally sincere."[125] No better test of the truth of this can be made than by reading carefully for a few weeks the comments of half a dozen representative capitalist newspapers, and of an equal number of representative labor papers, upon current events. The ant.i.thetical nature of their judgments of men and events demonstrates the existence of a distinct cla.s.s conscience. It cannot be interpreted in any other way.

V

A great many people, while admitting the important role cla.s.s struggles have played in the history of the race, strenuously deny the existence of cla.s.ses in the United States. They freely admit the cla.s.s divisions and struggles of the Old World, but deny that a similar cla.s.s antagonism exists in this country; they fondly believe the United States to be a glorious exception to the rule, and regard the claim that cla.s.ses exist here as falsehood and treason. The Socialists are forever being accused of seeking to apply to American life judgments based upon European facts and conditions. It is easy to visualize the cla.s.s divisions of monarchical countries, where there are hereditary ruling cla.s.ses--even though these are only nominally the ruling cla.s.ses in most cases--fixed by law. But it is not so easy to recognize the fact that, even in these countries, the power is held by the financial and industrial lords, and not by the kings and their t.i.tular n.o.bility. The absence of a hereditary, t.i.tular ruling cla.s.s serves to hide from many people the real cla.s.s divisions existing in this country.

Nevertheless, there is a perceptible growth of uneasiness and unrest; a widening and deepening conviction that while we may retain the outward forms of democracy, and shout its s.h.i.+bboleths with patriotic fervor, its essentials are lacking. The feeling spreads, even in the most conservative circles, that we are developing, or have already developed, a distinct ruling cla.s.s. The anomaly of a ruling cla.s.s without legal sanction or t.i.tular prestige has seized upon the popular mind; t.i.tles have been created for our great "unt.i.tled n.o.bility"--mock t.i.tles which have speedily a.s.sumed a serious import and meaning. Our financial "Kings," industrial "Lords," "Barons," and so on, have received their crowns and patents of n.o.bility from the populace. President Roosevelt gives expression to the serious thought of our most conservative citizenry when he says: "In the past, the most direful among the influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the cla.s.s spirit.... If such a spirit grows up in this republic, it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it has proven fatal to every community in which it has become dominant."[126]

With the exception of the chattel slaves, we have had no hereditary cla.s.s in this country with a legally fixed status. But

"Man is more than const.i.tutions,"

and there are other laws than those formulated in senates and recorded in statute books. The vast concentration of industry and wealth, resulting in immense fortunes on the one hand, and terrible poverty on the other, has separated the two cla.s.ses by a chasm as deep and wide as ever yawned between czar and moujik, kaiser and vagrant, prince and pauper, feudal baron and serf. The immensity of the power and wealth thus concentrated into the hands of the few, to be inherited by their sons and daughters, tends to establish this cla.s.s division hereditarily.