IF NOT SOCIALISM—WHAT?
I have never seen you, but I know you. Your knuckles are bloody from
continued knocking at the door of happiness. The harder you knock, the
bloodier your knuckles become. But the door does not open. It stands
like an iron gate between you and the desires of your soul.
What is the matter with this world? Was it made wrong? Is it a barren
spot to which too many have been sent? After Mr. Rockefeller and Mr.
Morgan had been sent, should you have been kept? Is this their world and
are you an intruder here?
You are not an intruder here. You know that. You have as good a right
here as anyone else. But perhaps, nevertheless, this world was made
wrong? If you had the power to make worlds, could you make a better one?
Could you make fairer skies? Could you make greener fields? Could you
improve the sun? Could you make better people?
Perhaps you could do none of these things? If not, what is the matter
with this world? Look at it again. Here it is—spinning beneath your feet
as it has spun since the dawn of time, and, never before, since the dawn
of time, has it been such a world as it is now. Never before, since the
dawn of time, was it so well suited to your purposes as it is now.
Your ancestors enjoyed no material thing that they had not wearily
created with their hands. You need create nothing with your hands. You
need but to touch with the tips of your fingers the iron hands that can
make what man could never make so well. Whatever machinery can make, you
can have. And, to drive this machinery, you have the forces of the sun,
as they come to you in the form of steam and electricity.
Make no mistake—good, bad or indifferent as this world may be, it is at
least moving. None of your ancestors ever lived in such a world. And
none of your descendants will ever live in such a world as we live in
to-day.
Edison once pictured to me the world that he already sees dawning. It
was a wonderful world, because it was filled with wonderful machinery.
Cloth would go into one end of a machine and come out at the other end
finished suits of clothes, boxed and ready for the market. Every
machine, instead of making a part of a thing, would make the complete
thing and put it together. The world would be smothered with wealth.
But there was one disquieting feature about his world. There was not
much room in it for men. Each machine, attended by but a single man,
would do the work of hundreds of men. Moreover, that one man need not be
skilled. He need be but the merest automaton. Only the inventor of the
machine need have brains.
Maybe Edison was dreaming. The easy way is to say he was dreaming. I,
who know him, have my doubts. Edison always dreams before he does, but
everything that he dreams seems pitifully small beside what he does. He
dreamed of the electric light before he made it, but his dream was
paltry beside the light he made. And, the dynamo of his dream was a
wheelbarrow beside the dynamo that to-day sings its shrill song around
the world.
This much, however, is not a dream. Some of the automatic machinery that
Edison spoke of is already here. One man behind a machine is doing the
work of hundreds of men. Men are becoming a drug upon the labor market.
More than five millions are often out of work. As invention proceeds,
the percentage of the population who cannot find work must increase.
What is going to become of these men? Do you expect them to starve
quietly? Do you believe they will make no outcry? Do you believe they
will raise no hand against a world that raises both hands against them?
Moreover, what kind of a world is it in which the greater the machinery,
the greater the curse to the men who run machinery? We do not yet live
in such a world, it is true, but if Edison be not in error, we shall
soon live in it? What shall we do when machinery does everything?
This may seem like a far cry, but it isn’t. The germ of the Socialist
philosophy is contained in this one word “machinery.” Let us put the
spot-light upon that word and show everything that is in it.
Suppose there were one machine in this country that was capable of
producing every material thing that human beings need or desire. Suppose
the machine were so wonderfully automatic that it could be perfectly
operated by pushing a button, once a day, in a Wall Street office.
Beside this push-button, suppose there were another button that operated
all of the railroads in the country; passenger trains automatically
starting and stopping at the appointed places; freight trains
automatically taking on and discharging their cargoes. Not a human being
at work anywhere.
Imagine also one man owning this great machine and the railroads.
The rest of the race, if it were to remain law-abiding, would be
compelled to change the law or starve to death, would it not? What else
could the race do? Nobody would have any work. Nobody would therefore
have anything with which to buy. The single giant machine might be
capable of producing, with the push-button help of its owner, more
necessities and luxuries than the entire race could consume. The
automatic railway system might be capable of delivering to every door
everything that everybody might want. The single owner might have more
billions of dollars than Mr. Rockefeller has cents. But nobody else
would have anything.
What I am trying to show is that the private ownership of machinery is a
gigantic wrong. If it were not a wrong, the world would be helped by the
private ownership of a single machine fitted to produce every material
thing that the race needs. If the people owned such a machine, there
would certainly be no more poverty. There would be no more poverty
because the people would get what the machine produced.
If this be plain, let us further consider the present situation.
We live in a wonderful world.
It is big enough and rich enough to enable everybody in it to live in
comfort.
But hundreds of millions throughout the world do not live in comfort
because the progress of the world has brought relatively little to them.
They have no share of stock in the earth—somebody who has a little piece
of paper in his hand claims the ownership of the spot of earth upon
which they wish to lay their heads and charges them rent for using it.
Another little group own all of the machinery, handing out jobs here and
there to the men who offer to work for the least.
Nor is this a chance situation. A small class has always robbed the
great class. It has been and is the rule of the world. The methods of
robbery have been changed. Method after method has been abandoned as the
people awakened to the means by which they were being robbed. But
robbery has never been abandoned. The small, greedy, cunning class that
will not be content with what it can earn is here to-day, playing the
old game with a new method.
Socialists declare the new method is to own the industrial machinery
with which all other men must work. You may not agree with this.
Probably you do not. If you do not, will you kindly answer some
questions?
Why do a few men, who will work with no machinery, want to own all of
the machinery in the country?
Would these men care to own any machinery if there were not an
opportunity in such ownership to get money?
Where can the money they get come from except from the wealth that is
produced by the men who work with their machinery?
So long as a few men own all of the machinery, must not all other men be
at their mercy?
How can anyone get a job so long as the men who own the machinery say he
can have no job?
How can anyone demand a wage that represents the full value of his
product so long as the capitalist refuses to pay any wages that do not
assure a profit to him?
Mr. Roosevelt and some others would have you believe that all of these
wrongs can be “regulated” into rights. They would have you believe that
only “strong” commissions are necessary to make all of these wrongs
right. But Mr. Roosevelt and some others do not know what they are
talking about. This is not a matter of opinion but a matter of fact. Men
have talked as they talk since robbery began. History records no
instance of one of them that made good. During all of the years that Mr.
Roosevelt was in the White House, he never appointed a commission that
was “strong” enough to make good.
We have it upon the authority of no less a man than Dr. Wiley that Mr.
Roosevelt’s commission to prevent the poisoning of food was not strong
enough to make good. The food-poisoning went on.
I mention Mr. Roosevelt’s food commission because it is a shining
example of what his “strong” commission theory of government cannot do.
Mr. Roosevelt, unquestionably, is and was opposed to the poisoning of
food. He appointed a commission to stop one kind of poisoning. But, for
reasons that you, as well as anyone else, can surmise, the commission
decided in favor of the food-poisoners instead of in favor of the
public. Which brings us to this question: If Mr. Roosevelt could not
appoint a commission “strong” enough even to prevent the poisoning of
food, what reason have you to believe that he or anyone else could
appoint a commission strong enough to prevent capitalists from robbing
workingmen?
You who oppose Socialism do so, no doubt, largely because you believe
the people could not advantageously own and manage their own industrial
machinery. We who advocate Socialism reply that it is much easier to
manage what you own than it is to manage what someone else owns. The
facts of history show that it is practically impossible to manage what
someone else owns. That is what we are trying to do to-day—and we are
failing at it. We are trying to manage the trusts. Fight as we will, the
trusts are managing us. They fix almost every fact in our lives. They
begin fixing the facts of our lives even before we are born. They
determine even whether all of us shall be born. It is a well-known fact
that when times are bad, the birth-rate decreases. Having the power to
make bad times, the trusts also have the power to diminish the number of
births. The trust panic of 1907 unquestionably prevented thousands of
children from being born. No one can ever know how many, but we do know
that both marriages and births decreased.
In view of such facts as these, is it not idle to talk about
“regulating” the property of others? Is it not stupid to believe that in
such regulation lies our greatest hope of material well-being? You must
admit that, thus far, the process of regulation has gone on painfully
slowly. If poverty, the fear of poverty and enforced idleness are any
indications of the progress of the country, it is difficult to see that
we have made any progress. Never before were so many millions of men out
of work in this country as there were during the panic of 1907. Never
before were so many millions of human beings so uncertain of their
future. A few men hold us all in the hollows of their hands. Our
destinies lie, not in ourselves, but in them.
Is it not so? Don’t be blinded by “commissions,” political pow-wow and
nonsense—is it not so? If it is so, how much progress have we made
toward getting rid of poverty by trying to regulate property that we do
not own? We have been playing the game of “regulation” for more than a
generation. It has done nothing for you. How many more generations do
you expect to live? Are you willing to go to your grave with this
pestilential question of poverty still weighing upon your heart? Are you
willing to go out of the world feeling that you never really lived in
it—that it was only a place where you toiled and sweat and suffered
while others lived?
We Socialists put it to you as a common-sense affirmation that your time
can come now if you and all others like you will join in a political
effort to make it come.
Any political partisan will make you the same promise, but you know,
from sad experience, that their promises are worthless. We ask you to
consider whether our promises are worthless.
We promise you, for instance, that if you will give us power you need
never again want for work. If the people, through the government, owned
the trusts and other great industries, why should anybody ever again
want for work? Thenceforward, the great plants would always be open. No
factory door would ever be closed so long as there was a demand for the
product of the factory. If the demand for goods were greater than the
capacity of the factories, the number of factories would be increased.
Nothing is simpler than to increase the number of factories. Only men
and materials are required. We have an abundance of each.
But we promise you more. We promise you that, if you will give us power,
we will give you not only the continuous opportunity to work, but we
will give you continuous freedom from robbery. Again, nothing is simpler
than to work without robbery. All that is necessary is to enable the
worker to go to work without walking into anyone’s clutches. No one can
now go to work without walking into many men’s clutches. When a man goes
to work for the Steel Trust, he walks into the clutches of everybody who
owns the stocks or the bonds of the trust. When a man goes to work for a
railway company, he walks into the clutches of every person who owns the
stocks or the bonds of the railway company. In other words, the stock
and bondholders of these institutions, by virtue of their control of the
machinery involved, have it in their power to say whether the worker
shall work or not work. They say he shall not work unless they can make
a profit upon his labor. The worker cannot haggle too long because he
must labor or starve. Therefore, he comes to terms. He walks into the
clutches of those who want to rob him of part of what he produces. He
consents to work for a wage that represents only a part of what he has
produced.
That is robbery. You may call it business, but it is robbery. If robbery
is anything, it is the taking of the property of another against his
will. The worker knows his wage is not all he earns. He resents the fact
that he must toil long and hard for a poor living, while his employer
lives in luxury without doing any useful labor. But the worker has no
alternative. He must consent. He does consent.
Under Socialism, there would be no such robbery, because goods would not
be produced for profit. Goods would be produced only because the people
wanted them. Whatever the people wanted would be produced, not in
niggardly volume, but in abundance.
Decent homes, for instance, would be produced. Millions of people in the
great cities now live in houses that are death-traps. They are not
houses, in the sense that country dwellers understand the word, but
dingy rooms, piled one upon another in great blocks. Light seldom enters
some of them. Fresh air can hardly get into any of them. The germs of
tuberculosis abound. The germs of other diseases swirl through the dust
of the streets. The death-rate is abnormally high—particularly the
death-rate of children. Yet, nothing would be simpler, if the
profit-seeking capitalists were shorn of their power, than to give every
human being in this country a decent home.
The best material out of which to make a house is cement or brick.
Either is better than wood because wood both rots and burns. There is
practically no limit to the number of cement and brick houses that could
be built in this country. Every State contains enough clay and other
materials to build enough houses to supply the whole country. If the
five millions of men who were out of work for many years following the
panic of 1907 could have been employed at house-building, they
themselves would not only have been prosperous, but the American people
would have been housed as they had never been housed before. If the two
millions of men who are always denied employment, even in so-called
“good” times, were continuously engaged in house-building, good houses
would be so numerous that we should not know what to do with them.
The same facts apply to all other necessities of life. The nation needs
bread. Some are starving for it all the while. Yet what is simpler than
the furnishing of bread? We know how to grow wheat. With the scientific
knowledge that the government could devote to wheat growing, combined
with the improved machinery that a rich government could bring to bear
upon the problem, the wheat-production of the country could easily be
multiplied by four. Little Holland and little Belgium, with no better
soil than our own, raise almost four times as much wheat to the acre as
we do. And, with wheat once grown, nothing is more simple than to make
it into flour. Probably we already have enough milling machinery to make
all the flour we need. If not, we could easily build four times as many
mills. We should never be unable to build more mills until we had no
unemployed men to set to work. And, if we had no unemployed men to set
to work, we should have, for the first time in the history of the world,
a completely happy nation.
Do you doubt any of these statements? How can you doubt them? We have
the men. We have the materials. The only trouble is that they are kept
apart. They are kept apart because a few men control things and will not
allow men and material to come together unless that means a profit for
the few men. We Socialists purpose to put them together. If they were
put together, how much longer do you believe the people would have to
shiver in winter for lack of woolen clothing? There is no secret about
raising sheep. We have vast areas upon which we could raise more than we
shall ever need. Even a concern like the Woolen Trust—the head of which
was indicted for conspiring to “plant” dynamite at Lawrence to besmirch
the strikers—even such a concern enables some of us to wear wool in the
winter time. How many more do you believe would wear wool if the United
States government were to take the place of this concern as a
manufacturer of woolen goods? Do you believe anybody would be compelled
to suffer from cold for lack of woolen clothing? How can you so believe?
The government, if necessary, could build four woolen mills for every
one that exists. The government could not fail to supply the people’s
needs. And, with all goods sold at cost, prices would be so low that the
people could buy.
These, and many other possibilities, are entirely within your reach. You
can realize them now. Will you kindly tell when you expect to realize
them by voting for the candidates of any other party except the
Socialist party? No other party except the Socialist party proposes to
put men and materials together. Every other party except the Socialist
party proposes that a small class of men shall continue to own all of
the great industrial machinery, while the rest shall continue to be
robbed as the price of its use. Every other party except the Socialist
party proposes that a small body of men shall continue to graft off the
rest by wringing profits from them. No party except the Socialist party
puts the people above profits.
Even Mr. Roosevelt and his party do not. Mr. Roosevelt stands as firmly
for the principle of profits as does Mr. Morgan. Mr. Roosevelt differs
from the most besotted reactionary only in his hallucination that he
could appoint “strong” commissions that would successfully regulate
other people’s property. Mr. Roosevelt does not seem to recognize that,
so long as profits are in the capitalist system, the workers must not
only be robbed of part of what they produce, but that they must be
periodically denied even the right to work at any wage. Nor does he seem
to realize that, if he were to reduce the profits to the point where
there was not much robbery, the capitalists would no longer have any
incentive for remaining in business.
With profits eliminated, or cut to the vanishing point, the capitalist
system cannot stand.
With profits not eliminated or cut near the vanishing point, the people
cannot stand.
Therefore, Mr. Roosevelt is trying to bring about the impossible. He is
trying to prevent the people from being robbed without destroying the
power of the capitalist to live by robbery. Mr. Roosevelt probably would
like to decrease, somewhat, the extent to which capitalists practice
robbery. But he is not willing to take away from them the power to rob.
If Mr. Roosevelt were chasing burglars instead of the Presidency, we
should first laugh at him and then put a new man on the force in his
place. Imagine a policeman trying to prevent burglary by “regulating”
the burglars, saying to them in a hissing voice: “Now, gentlemen, this
burglary must stop. We really can have no more of it. None of you must
carry a ‘jimmy’ more than four feet long. Any burglar caught with more
than twenty skeleton keys will be sent to prison.”
Yet that is practically what Mr. Roosevelt says to the capitalists. The
“jimmy” of the capitalist is his ownership of the tools with which his
employees work, but Mr. Roosevelt makes no move to take this instrument
from the men who are despoiling the workers. All that Mr. Roosevelt
purposes to do is to place a limit upon the amount that the capitalist
can legally abstract. And he depends upon “strong” commissions to keep
the ferocious capitalist in order.
We Socialists have no faith in such measures. We frankly predict their
failure, precisely as twenty years ago we predicted the failure of the
Sherman Anti-Trust Law. We were then known to so few of our own people
that not many persons had the pleasure of calling us fools. Now, nobody
wants to call us fools for that. We are now fools because we do not
believe in Wilson or in Roosevelt.
We are not content to await the verdict of time, but we await it with
confidence. We dislike to waste twenty-five more years in chasing up
this Roosevelt blind alley, but if you should determine to make the
trip—which we hope you will not—we shall still be on the main track when
you come back.
If somebody else had the key to your house and would not let you in
unless you paid him his price, you would not value highly the services
of a policeman who should tell you that the way to deal with the
gentleman was to “regulate” him. If the gentlemen had locked you out
upon an average of four times a week, you would feel even less kindly
disposed toward such a policeman.
We Socialists feel that the capitalist class has keys that belong to the
American people, and that it has used and is using those keys to prevent
the people from using their own, except upon the payment of tribute.
We feel that the capitalist class holds the keys to our workshops and
will not let us enter except upon such tribute terms as they can wring
from us.
We feel that the capitalist class has the keys to our coal fields and
will not let us be warm in winter except upon the payment of money that
should go, perhaps, for food or clothing.
We feel that the capitalist class has the keys of our national pantry
and compels those to go hungry whom it has denied the right to work.
In short, we feel that the capitalists have the keys of our happiness—so
far as happiness depends upon material things—and are compelling us to
subsist upon uncertainty and fear, when security and contentment lie
just at our elbows, awaiting the turn of the keys.
We Socialists are ready to stand behind any party that will pledge
itself to return these keys to the people, reserving only the right to
be convinced that the pledge is made in good faith and will be kept.
If Mr. Roosevelt will promise to use his best efforts to take from the
capitalists the private ownership of industry, we Socialists shall
believe he means business and shall begin to respect him.
If Mr. Wilson will make a similar promise, we shall feel the same toward
him.
But if Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Wilson should make such a promise, they
would have absolutely no capitalist support. Mr. Perkins would not be
with Mr. Roosevelt. Mr. Ryan would not be with Mr. Wilson. So far as
great capitalists are concerned, Armageddon and Sea Girt would look a
good deal like a baseball park two weeks after the close of the season.
All the world over, the Socialist party is the only political
organization that frankly stands up to the guns and demands the keys. It
is the only party that minces no words and looks for no favors from the
rich. The Socialist party is avowedly and earnestly committed to the
task of compelling the capitalist class to surrender the power with
which it robs. And, anyone who believes that power does not lie in the
private ownership of industrial machinery need only try to become rich
without owning any such machinery or gambling in its products. We
Socialists are willing to stake our lives on the statement that if you
will transfer the ownership of industry from the capitalist class to the
people, those who now constitute the capitalist class will never get
another dollar that they do not work for or steal in common burglar or
pickpocket fashion. If we are in error about the significance of the
private ownership of industry, the transfer of such ownership to the
people would not hurt the capitalist class. But the capitalist class
evidently does not believe the Socialists are wrong in holding this
belief, because the capitalists are fighting us tooth and nail.
Nothing is the matter with this world. Whatever is the matter is with
you. You can begin to get results now if you will begin to vote right
now. The election of Victor L. Berger to Congress in 1910 threw more of
the fear of God into the capitalist class of this country than any other
event that has happened in a generation. If fifty Socialists were in
Congress, the old parties would outdo each other in offering concessions
to the people.
As an illustration of what fifty Socialist Congressmen could do I will
relate an incident that took place in Washington in the winter of 1912.
Berger, by playing shrewd politics, had brought about a congressional
investigation of the Lawrence woolen mill strike. He had brought to
Washington a carload of little tots from the mills—boys and girls—and
they had spent the day telling a committee of the House of
Representatives of their wrongs. The stories were heartbreaking. Here
was a stunted little boy who declared he worked in a temperature of 140
degrees for $5 a week. A young girl—the daughter of a mill-worker—told
of an insult offered to her by a soldier and of her own arrest when she
struck him. A skilled weaver described the difficulty of keeping life in
his four children on a diet of bread and molasses. Every story was
different in detail, but all were alike in the depths of poverty that
they revealed. The testimony bore heavily upon those who listened, and
when the session was suspended for the day the members of Congress
hastened quickly from the room.
As Berger walked rapidly toward the door an old man stopped him.
Apparently he was a business man, 55 or 60 years old. Certainly he was
not a workingman. But he had heard the day’s testimony and he could not
remain silent.
“Mr. Berger,” he said, “I have always been against you and all
Socialists. I was sorry when I heard you had been elected to Congress.
But if you brought about this investigation, as I am informed you did, I
want to say to you that if you were never to do another thing during
your term, your election would have been more than justified. I hope
your people will keep you in Congress as long as you live.”
How many more men would change their minds if there were fifty
Socialists in Congress? How many capitalists would change their minds as
to how far they could safely go in robbing the people?
Three millions of votes for the Socialist ticket would by no means elect
a Socialist president. But they would squeeze out more justice from the
capitalist parties than the people have had since this government began.
Moreover, if you want the world during your own lifetime you will have
to take it during your own lifetime. It will not do you much good to let
your grandchildren take it during their lifetime.
APPENDIX.
NATIONAL SOCIALIST PLATFORM
(Adopted at Indianapolis, May, 1912)
The Socialist Party of the United States declares that the capitalist
system has outgrown its historical function, and has become utterly
incapable of meeting the problems now confronting society. We denounce
this outgrown system as incompetent and corrupt and the source of
unspeakable misery and suffering to the whole working class.
Under this system the industrial equipment of the nation has passed into
the absolute control of a plutocracy which exacts an annual tribute of
millions of dollars from the producers. Unafraid of any organized
resistance, it stretches out its greedy hands over the still undeveloped
resources of the nation—the land, the mines, the forests and the
water-powers of every State in the Union.
In spite of the multiplication of labor-saving machines and improved
methods in industry which cheapen the cost of production, the share of
the producers grows ever less, and the prices of all the necessities of
life steadily increase. The boasted prosperity of this nation is for the
owning class alone. To the rest it means only greater hardship and
misery. The high cost of living is felt in every home. Millions of
wage-workers have seen the purchasing power of their wages decrease
until life has become a desperate battle for mere existence.
Multitudes of unemployed walk the streets of our cities or trudge from
State to State awaiting the will of the masters to move the wheels of
industry.
The farmers in every State are plundered by the increasing prices
exacted for tools and machinery and by extortionate rents, freight rates
and storage charges.
Capitalist concentration is mercilessly crushing the class of small
business men and driving its members into the ranks of propertyless wage
workers. The overwhelming majority of the people of America are being
forced under a yoke of bondage by this soulless industrial despotism.
It is this capitalist system that is responsible for the increasing
burden of armaments, the poverty, slums, child-labor, most of the
insanity, crime and prostitution, and much of the disease that afflicts
mankind.
Under this system the working class is exposed to poisonous conditions,
to frightful and needless perils to life and limb, is walled around with
court decisions, injunctions and unjust laws, and is preyed upon
incessantly for the benefit of the controlling oligarchy of wealth.
Under it also, the children of the working class are doomed to
ignorance, drudging toil and darkened lives.
In the face of these evils, so manifest that all thoughtful observers
are appalled at them, the legislative representatives of the Republican,
Democratic, and all reform parties remain the faithful servants of the
oppressors. Measures designed to secure to the wage earners of this
nation as humane and just treatment as is already enjoyed by the wage
earners of all other civilized nations have been smothered in committee
without debate, and laws ostensibly designed to bring relief to the
farmers and general consumers are juggled and transformed into
instruments for the exaction of further tribute. The growing unrest
under oppression has driven these two old parties to the enactment of a
variety of regulative measures, none of which has limited in any
appreciable degree the power of the plutocracy, and some of which have
been perverted into means for increasing that power. Anti-trust laws,
railroad restrictions and regulations, with the prosecutions,
indictments and investigations based upon such legislation, have proved
to be utterly futile and ridiculous. Nor has this plutocracy been
seriously restrained or even threatened by any Republican or Democratic
executive. It has continued to grow in power and insolence alike under
the administrations of Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft.
In addition to this legislative juggling and this executive connivance,
the courts of America have sanctioned and strengthened the hold of this
plutocracy as the Dred Scott and other decisions strengthened the slave
power before the Civil War.
We declare, therefore, that the longer sufferance of these conditions is
impossible, and we purpose to end them all. We declare them to be the
product of the present system in which industry is carried on for
private greed, instead of for the welfare of society. We declare,
furthermore, that for these evils there will be and can be no remedy and
no substantial relief except through Socialism, under which industry
will be carried on for the common good and every worker receive the full
social value of the wealth he creates.
Society is divided into warring groups and classes, based upon material
interests. Fundamentally, this struggle is a conflict between the two
main classes, one of which, the capitalist class, owns the means of
production, and the other, the working class, must use these means of
production on terms dictated by the owners.
The capitalist class, though few in numbers, absolutely controls the
Government-legislative, executive and judicial. This class owns the
machinery of gathering and disseminating news through its organized
press. It subsidizes seats of learning—the colleges and schools—and even
religious and moral agencies. It has also the added prestige which
established customs give to any order of society, right or wrong.
The working class, which includes all those who are forced to work for a
living, whether by hand or by brain, in shop, mine or on the soil,
vastly outnumbers the capitalist class. Lacking effective organization
and class solidarity, this class is unable to enforce its will. Given
such class solidarity and effective organization, the workers will have
the power to make all laws and control all industry in their own
interest.
All political parties are the expression of economic class interests.
All other parties than the Socialist Party represents one or another
group of the ruling capitalist class. Their political conflicts reflect
merely superficial rivalries between competing capitalist groups.
However they result, these conflicts have no issue of real value to the
workers. Whether the Democrats or Republicans win politically, it is the
capitalist class that is victorious economically.
The Socialist Party is the political expression of the economic
interests of the workers. Its defeats have been their defeats, and its
victories their victories. It is a party founded on the science and laws
of social development. It proposes that, since all social necessities
to-day are socially produced, the means of their production shall be
socially owned and democratically controlled.
In the face of the economic and political aggressions of the capitalist
class the only reliance left the workers is that of their economic
organizations and their political power. By the intelligent and
class-conscious use of these they may resist successfully the capitalist
class, break the fetters of wage slavery, and fit themselves for the
future society, which is to displace the capitalist system. The
Socialist Party appreciates the full significance of class organization
and urges the wage earners, the working farmers and all other useful
workers everywhere to organize for economic and political action, and we
pledge ourselves to support the toilers of the fields as well as those
in the shops, factories and mines of the nation in their struggle for
economic justice.
In the defeat or victory of the working class party in this new struggle
for freedom lies the defeat or triumph of the common people of all
economic groups, as well as the failure or the triumph of popular
government. Thus the Socialist Party is the party of the present day
revolution, which marks the transition from economic individualism to
Socialism, from wage slavery to free co-operation, from capitalist
oligarchy to industrial democracy.
As measures calculated to strengthen the working class in its fight for
the realization of its ultimate aim, the Co-operative Commonwealth, and
to increase the power of resistance against capitalist oppression, we
advocate and pledge ourselves and our elected officers to the following
program:
COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP
1. The collective ownership and democratic management of railroads, wire
and wireless telegraphs and telephones, express services, steamboat
lines and all other social means of transportation and communication and
of all large scale industries.
2. The immediate acquirement by the municipalities, the States or the
federal government of all grain elevators, stock yards, storage
warehouses and other distributing agencies, in order to reduce the
present extortionate cost of living.
3. The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil
wells, forests and water power.
4. The further conservation and development of natural resources for the
use and benefit of all the people:
(_a_) By scientific forestation and timber protection.
(_b_) By the reclamation of arid and swamp tracts.
(_c_) By the storage of flood waters and the utilization of water power.
(_d_) By the stoppage of the present extravagant waste of the soil and
of the products of mines and oil wells.
(_e_) By the development of highway and waterway systems.
5. The collective ownership of land wherever practicable, and, in cases
where such ownership is impracticable, the appropriation by taxation of
the annual rental value of all land held for speculation.
6. The collective ownership and democratic management of the banking and
currency system.
UNEMPLOYMENT
The immediate government relief of the unemployed by the extension of
all useful public works. All persons employed on such works to be
engaged directly by the government under a workday of not more than
eight hours and not less than the prevailing union wages. The government
also to establish employment bureaus; to lend money to States and
municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public
works, and to take such other measures within its power as will lessen
the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the
capitalist class.
INDUSTRIAL DEMANDS
The conservation of human resources, particularly of the lives and
well-being of the workers and their families:
1. By shortening the workday in keeping with the increased
productiveness of machinery.
2. By securing to every worker a rest period of not less than a day and
a half in each week.
3. By securing a more effective inspection of workshops, factories and
mines.
4. By forbidding the employment of children under 16 years of age.
5. By the co-operative organization of industries in federal
penitentiaries and workshops for the benefit of convicts and their
dependents.
6. By forbidding the interstate transportation of the products of
child-labor, of convict labor and of all uninspected factories and
mines.
7. By abolishing the profit system in government work, and substituting
either the direct hire of labor or the awarding of contracts to
co-operative groups of workers.
8. By establishing minimum wage scales.
9. By abolishing official charity and substituting a non-contributory
system of old age pensions, a general system of insurance by the State
of all its members against unemployment and invalidism and a system of
compulsory insurance by employers of their workers, without cost to the
latter, against industrial disease, accidents and death.
POLITICAL DEMANDS
The absolute freedom of press, speech and assemblage.
The adoption of a gradual income tax, the increase of the rates of the
present corporation tax and the extension of inheritance taxes,
graduated in proportion to the value of the estate and to nearness of
kin—the proceeds of these taxes to be employed in the socialization of
industry.
The abolition of the monopoly ownership of patents and the substitution
of collective ownership, with direct rewards to inventors by premiums or
royalties.
Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women.
The adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall and of
proportional representation, nationally as well as locally.
The abolition of the Senate and the veto power of the President.
The election of the President and the Vice President by direct vote of
the people.
The abolition of the power usurped by the Supreme Court of the United
States to pass upon the constitutionality of the legislation enacted by
Congress. National laws to be repealed only by act of Congress or by the
voters in a majority of the States.
The granting of the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia with
representation in Congress and a democratic form of municipal government
for purely local affairs.
The extension of democratic government to all United States territory.
The enactment of further measures for general education and particularly
for vocational education in useful pursuits. The Bureau of Education to
be made a department.
The enactment of further measures for the conservation of health. The
creation of an independent Bureau of Health with such restrictions as
will secure full liberty for all schools of practice.
The separation of the present Bureau of Labor from the Department of
Commerce and Labor and its elevation to the rank of a department.
Abolition of the federal district courts and the United States Circuit
Courts of Appeals. State courts to have jurisdiction in all cases
arising between citizens of the several States and foreign corporations.
The election of all judges for short terms.
The immediate curbing of the power of the courts to issue injunctions.
The free administration of justice.
The calling of a convention for the revision of the Constitution of the
United States.
Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are
but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers of government
in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of
socialized industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps you have a friend who believes he knows what Socialism is, but
doesn’t. If so, a copy of “The Truth About Socialism” will be mailed to
him for twenty-five cents. Prices for larger numbers follow:
QUANTITIES PRICE
5 copies (prepaid) $1.00
25 copies f.o.b. New York $4.50
100 copies f.o.b. New York $15.00
The Socialist Party maintains a National office, for the purpose, among
other things, of furnishing any desired information about the party.
Upon request, it will furnish lists of Socialist books, newspapers and
magazines. Services of this sort are rendered not only freely, but
gladly. Address,
NATIONAL SEC’Y OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY
111 North Market Street
CHICAGO
The Truth About Socialism
As the reviewers see it
Philadelphia _North American_
Nothing in the current and accepted literature of economics avails
entirely to controvert the arguments and offset the data here presented,
in lucid and almost colloquial form. Mr. Benson’s book takes on readily
the aspect of a burning and a shining light.
New York _Globe_
Many writers have told the truth about Socialism, but not many have told
it so racily and with such fire and no beating about the bush as Mr.
Benson....
In writing his book he has evidently had in mind every doubt that was
ever expressed about Socialism, every question, foolish or otherwise,
that was ever asked.... He has sought to write about Socialism sensibly
and practically and in the present tense.
J. B. Kerfoot in _Life_
But the book that did the biting, a reading of which inspired this
review ... lays before us not a theory, but a programme ... instead of
being merely intellectually alive, Mr. Benson’s book is emotively living
and magnetically, radio-actively in earnest. And unless you are mighty
thin-blooded or mighty thick-skinned it will raise a good, big itchy
lump either on your enthusiasm or your combativeness.
Horace Traubel in _The Conservator_
The man who can’t make out Socialism after reading Benson ought to
suspect himself. There’s something wrong with his machinery. There’s an
idiot around somewhere. And that idiot’s not Benson.
Detroit _Times_
The book will appeal to the thoughtful who desire a concise expression
of Socialist thought and argument. He has written clearly and forcibly;
he discusses his subject from the practical, not the technical side.
Springfield _Union_
It is a clearly written statement and the book may be regarded as
authoritative.
Send for catalogue of miscellaneous books published by
B. W. HUEBSCH, 225 Fifth avenue, New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.