Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement

William English Walling

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Title: Socialism As It Is  A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement

Author: William English Walling

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Language: English

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SOCIALISM AS IT IS

A SURVEY OF THE WORLD-WIDE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT

BY

WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING

New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1912, B Y THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1912. Reprinted October, 1912; January, 1915.

Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

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 onlythrough 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. A nd 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 theor etical 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 clai ms of Socialists and the attacks of their opponents and confine ourselves to the concrete activities of

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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 littl e 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 passages to be reproduced and the use made of them. I have therefore striven conscientiously to give, as far as space allows, the leading and central ideas of the persons most frequently quoted, and not their more hasty, e xtreme, and less representative expressions.

I have given approximately equal attention to the G erman, British, and American situations, considerable but somewhat less space to those of France and Australia, and only a few pages to Italy and Be lgium. This allotment of space 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, wh erever 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 dea ls 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 activ ities 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 assisted me in my work. But I must make special mention of the very careful reading of the whole manuscript by Mr. J. G. Phelps

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Stokes, and of the numerous and vital changes made at his suggestion.

P REFACE I NTRO DUCTIO N

CONTENTS

PART I

"STATE SOCIALISM" AND AFTER

CHAPTER I.  T HE C APITALIST R EFO RM P RO G RAM II.  T HE N EW C APITALISM III.  T HE P O LITICSO FTHE N EW C APITALISM IV.  "S TATE S O CIALISM " AND L ABO R V.  C O MPULSO RY A RBITRATIO N VI.  A G RARIAN "S TATE S O CIALISM " IN A USTRALASIA VII.  "E Q UALITYO F O PPO RTUNITY " VIII.  T HE "F IRST S TEP " T O WARDS S O CIALISM

PART II

THE POLITICS OF SOCIALISM

I.  "S TATE S O CIALISM " WITHINTHE M O VEMENT II.  "R EFO RMISM " IN F RANCE , I TALY , AND B ELG IUM III.  "L ABO RISM " IN G REAT B RITAIN IV.  "R EFO RMISM " INTHE U NITED S TATES V.  R EFO RMBY M ENACEO F R EVO LUTIO N VI.  R EVO LUTIO NARY P O LITICS VII.  T HE R EVO LUTIO NARY T REND

PART III

SOCIALISM IN ACTION

I.  S O CIALISMANDTHE "C LASS S TRUG G LE " II.  T HE A G RICULTURAL C LASSESANDTHE L AND Q UESTIO N III.  S O CIALISMANDTHE "W O RKING C LASS " IV.  S O CIALISMAND L ABO R U NIO NS V.  S YNDICALISM ; S O CIALISMTHRO UG H D IRECT A CTIO NO F L ABO R U NIO NS VI.  T HE "G ENERAL S TRIKE " VII.  R EVO LUTIO NIN D EFENSEO F C IVIL G O VERNMENT VIII.  P O LITICALAND S O CIAL R EVO LUTIO N IX.  T HE T RANSITIO NTO S O CIALISM I NDEX

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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 asocial class which they saw springing up all over the world with common characteristics and common problems—a class 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 propertyles s employees of modern industry would dominate the world and build up a ne w society. This class would be politically and economically organized, an d 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 class had been in conflict w ith employers and governments, and these struggles had been steadily growing in scope and intensity. Marx was not so much interested in the i mmediate 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 te nded more and more definitely and irresistibly towards a certain goal, whether the workers were yet aware of it or not. If, therefore, we Socialists participate in the real struggles of politics, Marx said of himself and his associates (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 theIndependent. "It is a political party, an economic creed, a religion, a nd 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 masses. But as yet it is only a theory, a hypothesis. It has never been triedin 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 achievedpoliticalpower, obviouslyit

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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 masses in many countries and animating them with the purpose of controlling industry and government.

Mr. John Graham Brooks, in theAtlantic 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 amon g 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 Soci alist 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, inCollier'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 aw akened sense of brotherhood in men. Stripped of all its husks, Socialism stands for no other aim than that. All its other teachings, the public ownership of the la nd, for example, the nationalization of the means of production and distribution, the economic emancipation 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 f undamentally 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

[Pg xi]

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 class or group of classes in the existing community.... No class will abolish itself, materially alter its way or life, or drastically reconstruct itself, albeit no class is indisposed to coöperate in the unlimited socialization of any other class. In that capacity of aggression upon the other classes 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 class which controls industry and government. As this class 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 hitherto 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] TheIndependentYork), commenting on the Socialist victory in the (New Milwaukee municipal elections of April, 1910.

[5]Socialist Literature," by John Graham Broo  "Recent ks,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

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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 firs t numbers ofLa Follette's Weeklyls to deal with protested against any program of reform "which fai society as a whole, which proposes to remedy certai n 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 S ocialism. Mr. J. R. MacDonald, recently chairman of the British Labour Party, for example writes that the problem set up by the Socialists is that o f "co-ordinating the forces making for a reconstruction of society and of giving them rational coherence and unity,"[9] while the organ of the middle-class Socialists of England says that their purpose is "to compel legislators to organize industry."[10]

Indeed, the necessity and practicability of an orde rly and systematic reorganization in industrial society has been the c entral idea of British Socialists from the beginning, while they have been its chief exponents in the international Socialist movement. But the idea is equally widespread outside of Socialist circles. It will be hard for British Socialists to lay an exclusive claim to this conception when comrades of such international prominence as Edward Bernstein, who holds the British view of Socialism, assert that Socialism itself is nothing more than "organizing Liberalism."[11]

Whether Socialists were the first to promote the new political philosophy or not, it is undeniable that the Radicals and Liberals of Great Britain and other countries have now taken it up and are making it th eir own. Mr. Winston Churchill, while Chairman of the Board of Trade, an d Mr. Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, members of the British Cabinet, leaders of the Liberal Party, recognize that the movement among go vernments towards a consciousreorganization of industryis general and demands that Great Britain should keep up with other countries.

"Look at our neighbor and friendly rival, Germany," said Mr. Churchill recently. "I see that great State organized for peace and organized for war, to a degree to which we cannot pretend.... A more scientific, a mo re elaborate, a more comprehensive social organization is indispensable to our country if we are to surmount the trials and stresses which the future years will bring. It is this organization that the policy of the Budget will create."[12]

Advanced and radical reformers of the new type all over the world, those who put forward ageneralplan of reform and wish togo to the common roots of our

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social evils, demand, first of all,reorganization. But how is such a reorganization to be worked out? The general programs have in every country many features in common. To see what this common basis is, let us look at the generalizations of some of the leading reformers.

One of the most scientific and "constructive" is Mr. Sidney Webb. No one has so thoroughly mastered the history of trade unionism, and no one has done more to promote "municipal Socialism" in England, b oth in theory and in practice, for he has been one of the leaders of the energetic and progressive London County council from the beginning of the present reform period. He has also been one of the chief organizers of the more or less Socialistic Fabian Society, which has done more towards popularizing social reform in England than any other single educative force, besides sending into all the corners of the world a new and rounded theory of social reform—the work for the most part of Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw, and a few others.

Mr. Webb has given us several excellent phrases which will aid us to sum up the typical social reformers' philosophy in a few w ords. He insists that what every country requires, and especially Great Britain, is to center its attention on the promotion of the "national efficiency." This re fers largely to securing a businesslike and economic administration of the existing government functions. But it requires also thatallthe industries and economic activities of the country should be considered the business of the nation, that the industrial functions of the government should be extended, and that, even from the business point of view, the chief purpose of government should be to supervise economic development.

To bring about the maximum of efficiency in production would require, in Mr. Webb's opinion and that of the overwhelming majority of reformers everywhere, a vast extension of government activities, including not only the nationalization and municipalization of many industries and service s, but also that the individual workman or citizen be dealt with as the chief business asset of the nation and that wholesale public expenditures be entered into to develop his value. Mr. Webb does not think that this policy is necessarily Socialistic, for, as he very wisely remarks, "the necessary basis of soc iety, whether the superstructure be collectivist or individualist, is the same."

Mr. Wells in his "New Worlds for Old" also claims that the new policy of having the State do everything that can promote industrial efficiency (which, unlike Mr. Webb, he persists in calling Socialism) is to the interest of the business man.

"And does the honest and capable business man stand to lose or gain by the coming of such a Socialist government?" he asks. "I submit that on the whole he stands to gain....

"Under Socialist government such as is quite possible in England at the present time:—

"He will be restricted from methods of production and sale that are socially mischievous.

"He will pay higher wages.

"He will pay a large proportion of his rent-rate outgoings to the State

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and Municipality, and less to the landlord. Ultimately he will pay it all to the State or Municipality, and as a voter help to determine how it shall be spent, and the landlord will become a g overnment stockholder. Practically he will get his rent returned to him in public service.

"He will speedily begin to get better-educated, better-fed, and better- trained workers, so that he will get money value fo r the higher wages he pays.

"He will get a regular, safe, cheap supply of power and material. He will get cheaper and more efficient internal and external transit.

"He will be under an organized scientific State, which will naturally pursue a vigorous scientific collective policy in s upport of the national trade.

"He will be less of an adventurer and more of a citizen."[13]

Mr. Churchill while denying any sympathy for Social ism, as both he and the majority of Socialists understand it, frankly avows himself a collectivist. "The whole tendency of civilization," he says, "is towards the multiplication of the collective functions of society. The ever growing complications of civilizations create for us new services which have to be underta ken by the State, and create for us an expansion of the existing services. There is a growing feeling, which I entirely share, against allowing those services which are in the nature of monopolies to pass into private hands. [Mr. Churchill has expressed the regret that the railways are not in the hands of th e State.] There is a pretty steady determination, which I am convinced will bec ome effective in the present Parliament to interceptallfuture unearned increment, which may arise from the increase in the speculative value of the land."[14](Italics mine.)

Mr. Churchill's declared intention ultimately "to i nterceptallunearned future increment" of the land is certainly a tremendous step towards collectivism, as it would ultimately involve the nationalization of perhaps a third of the total wealth of society. With railways and monopolies of all kinds also in government hands, a very large part of the industrial capital of the country would be owned by the State, and, though all agricultural capital, and therefore the larger part of the total, remained in private hands, we are certainly justified in calling such a state of societycapitalist collectivism.

But not one of the elements of this collectivism is a novelty. Railroads are owned by governments in most countries, and monopol ies often are. The partial appropriation of the "unearned increment" is by no means new, since a similar policy is being adopted in Germany at the p resent moment, and is favored not by the radicals alone, but by the most conservative forces in the country; namely, the party of landed Prussian nobil ity. Count Posadovsky, a former minister, has written a pamphlet in which he urges that the State should buy up the land in and about the cities, and also that it should fix a definite limit beyond which land values must not rise. Nearly all the chief cities of Prussia, more than a hundred, are enforcing such a tax in a moderate form, and the conservatives in the Reichstag proposed that the national government should be given a right to tax in the same field. Their bi ll was enacted, and, in the

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second half of 1911, the German government, it was estimated, would raise over $3,000,000 by this tax, and in 1912 it is expected to give $5,000,000. This tax, which is collected when land changes hands by sale or exchanges, rises gradually to 30 per cent when the increase has been 290 per cent or more. Of course this scale is likely to be still further raised and to be made more steep as the tax becomes more and more popular.

Mr. Churchill's defense of the new policy of the British government is as significant as the new laws it has enacted:—

"You may say that unearned increment of the land," he says, "is on all-fours with the profit gathered by one of those American speculators who engineer a corner in corn, or meat, or cotton, or some other vital commodity, and thatthe unearned increment in land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact prop ortion, not to the service but to the disservice done. It is monopoly which is the keynote; and where monopoly prevails, the greater the injury to society the greater the reward of the monopolist will be....

"Every form of enterprise, every step in material progress, is only undertaken after the land monopolist has skimmed the cream off for himself, and every where to-day the man, or the public body, who wishes to put land to its highest use is forced to pay a preliminary fine in land values to the man who is putting it to an inferior use, and in some cases to no use at all....If there is a rise in wages, rents are able to move forward because the workers can afford to pay a little more. If the opening of a new railway or a new tramway, or the institution of an improved service of workmen's tra ins, or the lowering of fares, or a new invention, or any other public convenience affords a benefit to the workers in any particular district, it becomes easier for them to live, and therefore the landlord and the ground landlord, one on top of the other, are able to charge them more for the privilege of living there." (Italics mine.)[15]

But we cannot believe that the government of Great Britain, which draws so much of its support from the wealthy free trade merchants and manufacturers has been persuaded to adopt this new principle so much by the argument that a land rent weighs on the working classes, though it is true that the manufacturer may have to pay for this in highermoneyas it has by that other wages, argument of Mr. Churchill's that it weighs directly on business.

"The manufacturer proposing to start a new industry ," he says, "proposing to erect a great factory offering employment to thousands of hands, is made to pay such a price for his land that the purchase price hangs around the neck of his whole business, hampering his competitive power in every market, clogging far more than any foreign tariff in his export competition; and the l and values strike down through theprofits of the manufactureron to the wages of the workman. The railway company wishing to build a new line finds that the price of land which yesterday was only rat ed at its agricultural value has risen to a prohibitive figure the moment it was known that the new line was projected; and either the railway is not

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