outside of the United States, are now owned by government," yet in his
latest book, "Business," he refers to Prussia, Japan, Mexico [under
Diaz], and other countries as having boldly purchased railways and coal
mines when they desired them _for the common good_.[167] Mr. Russell
here seems to overlook the fact that the history of Russia, Japan,
Mexico, and Prussia has shown that there is an intermediate stage
between our status and government "for the Common Good," a stage during
which the capitalist class, having gained a more firm control over
government than ever, intrusts it (with the opposition of but a few of
the largest capitalists) with some of the most important business
functions.
Yet Mr. Russell himself admits, by implication, that government by
Business "properly informed and broadly enlightened" might continue for
a considerable period, and therefore directs his shafts largely against
Business Government "as at present conducted," and he realizes fully
that the most needed _reforms_, even when they directly benefit the
workingmen, are equally or still more to the benefit of Business:--
"In the first place, if the masses of people become too much
impoverished, the national stamina is destroyed, which would be
exceedingly bad for Business in case Business should plunge us into
war. In the second place, since poverty produces a steady decline
in physical and mental capacity, if it goes too far, there is a
lack of hands to do the work of Business and a lack of healthy
stomachs to consume some of its most important products.
"For these reasons, a Government for Profits, like ours, incurs
certain deadly perils, _unless it be properly informed and broadly
enlightened_.
"Something of the truth of this has already been perceived by the
astute gentlemen that steer the fortunes of the Standard Oil
Company, a concern that in many respects may be considered the
foremost present type of Business in Government. One of the rules
of the Standard Oil Company is to pay good wages to its employees,
and to see that they are comfortable and contented. As a result of
this policy the Standard Oil Company is seldom bothered with
strikes, and most of its workers have no connection with labor
unions, do not listen to muck-rakers and other vile breeders of
social discontent, and are quite satisfied with their little round
of duties and their secure prospects in life....
"Unless Business recognizes quite fully the wisdom of similar
arrangements for its employees, Business Government (_as at present
conducted_) will in the end fall of its own weight."[168] (My
italics.)
Surely nobody has given more convincing arguments than Mr. Russell
himself why Business Government should go in for government ownership
and measures to increase the efficiency of labor. Surely no further
reasons should be needed to prove that when a government purchases a
railroad to-day, it does not practice Socialism. Yet the reverse is
sustained by a growing number of members of the Socialist Party (though
not by a growing proportion of the Party), which indicates that the
Socialism of Bebel, Liebknecht, Kautsky, Guesde, Lafargue, and the
International Socialist Congresses is at present by no means as firmly
rooted in this country as it is on the Continent of Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[144] _Journal of Political Economy_, October, 1911.
[145] In her "American Socialism of the Present Day" (p. 252) Miss
Hughan _denies that there are many varieties of American Socialism_, and
says that the assertion that there are is justified only the many shades
of _tactical policy_ to be found in the Party, "founded usually on
corresponding gradations of emphasis upon the idea of catastrophe."
I do not contend that there are _many_ varieties of Socialism within the
Party either here or in other countries, but I have pointed out that
there are _several_ and that _their differences are profound, if not
irreconcilable_. It is precisely because they are founded on differences
in tactics, _i.e. on real instead of theoretical_ grounds that they are
of such importance, for as long as present conditions continue, they are
likely to lead farther and farther apart, while new conditions may only
serve to bring new differences.
[146] Eugene V. Debs in the _International Socialist Review_ (Chicago),
Jan. 1, 1911.
[147] The _Social-Democratic Herald_ (Milwaukee), Oct. 12, 1901.
[148] The _Social-Democratic Herald_, Feb. 22, 1902.
[149] The _Social-Democratic Herald_, May 28, 1904.
[150] _Press Despatch_, Aug. 26, 1911.
[151] _New York Journal_, April 22, 1910.
[152] _Social-Democratic Herald_, Vol. XII, No. 12.
[153] _Social-Democratic Herald_, Vol. XII, No. 12.
[154] _Social-Democratic Herald_, Vol. XII, March 24, 1906.
[155] The following account is taken from the Garment Workers'
Bulletin:--
"Recently the hod carriers in San Francisco presented a petition to
their employers for increased pay and pressed for its consideration.
This gave the members of the National Association of Manufacturers the
opportunity they longed for to open war in San Francisco, and they
promptly availed themselves of it. The petition was refused, of course,
and two large lime manufacturers in the city took a hand. The
contractors resolved on heroic measures, and work was stopped on some
sixty buildings to 'bring labor to its senses.' Then Mayor McCarthy came
into the controversy. He called his board of public workers together and
remarked: 'I see all the contractors are tying up work because of the
hod carriers' request. Better notify these fellows to at once clear all
streets of building material before these structures and to move away
those elevated walks and everything else from the streets.' The board so
ordered. Then Mr. McCarthy said: 'Notice that those lime fellows are
taking quite an interest in starting trouble. Guess we had better notify
them that their temporary permits for railroad spurs to their plants are
no longer in force.' And due notice went forth. The result was that the
trouble with the hod carriers was settled in a week, and the
contemplated industrial war in the city was indefinitely postponed...."
[156] The _Bridgeport Socialist_, Oct. 29, 1911.
[157] The _New York Times_, Oct. 20, 1911.
[158] _New Yorker Volkszeitung_, Dec. 9, 1911.
[159] _New York Evening Post_, Nov. 13, 1911.
[160] _Collier's Weekly_, Dec. 9, 1911.
[161] _Saturday Evening Post_, Nov. 18, 1911.
[162] The _Outlook_, Aug. 26, 1911.
[163] The _New York Call_, Aug. 14, 1911.
[164] W. R. Shier in the _New York Call_, Aug. 16, 1911.
[165] Speech at Carnegie Hall, New York, Oct. 15, 1910.
[166] _Hampton's Magazine_, January, 1911.
[167] "Business," p. 290.
[168] "Business," p. 114.
CHAPTER V
REFORM BY MENACE OF REVOLUTION
An American Socialist author expresses the opinion of many Socialists
when he says of the movement: "It strives by all efforts in its power to
increase its vote at the ballot box. It believes that by this increase
the attainment of its goal is brought ever nearer, and also that _the
menace of this increasing vote_ induces the capitalist class to grant
concessions in the hope of preventing further increases. _It criticizes
non-Socialist efforts at reform as comparatively barren of positive
benefit_ and as tending, on the whole, to insure the dominance of the
capitalist class and to continue the grave social evils now
prevalent."[169] (My italics.)
Because non-Socialist reforms tend to prolong the domination of the
capitalist class, which no Socialist doubts, it is asserted that they
are also comparatively barren of positive benefit. And if, from time to
time and in contradiction to this view, changes are bought about by
non-Socialist governments which undeniably do very much improve the
condition of the working people, it is reasoned that this was done by
the _menace_ either of a Socialist revolution or of a Socialist
electoral majority.
"A _Socialist_ reform must be in the nature of a working-class
conquest," says Mr. Hillquit in his "Socialism in Theory and
Practice"--expressing this very widespread Socialist opinion. He says
that reforms inaugurated by small farmers, manufacturers, or traders,
cause an "arrest of development or even a return to conditions of past
ages, while the reforms of the more educated classes if less reactionary
are not of a more efficient type."
"The task of developing and extending factory legislation falls entirely
on the organized workmen," according to this view, because the dominant
classes have no interest in developing it, while the evils of the slums
and of the employment of women and children in industry can be cured
only by Socialism. Such reforms as can be obtained in this direction,
though they are not considered by Mr. Hillquit "as the beginnings or
installments of a Socialist system," he holds are to be obtained only
with Socialist aid. In other words, while capitalism is not altogether
unable or unwilling to benefit the working people, it can do little, and
even this little is due to the presence of the Socialists.
Another example of the "reformist's" view may be seen in the editorials
of Mr. Berger, in the _Social-Democratic Herald_, of Milwaukee, where he
says that the Social-Democrats never fail to declare that with all the
social reforms, good and worthy of support as they may be, conditions
_cannot be permanently improved_. That is to say, present-day reforms
are not only of secondary importance, but that they are of merely
temporary effect.
"There is nothing more to hope from the property-holding classes."
"The bourgeois reformers are constantly getting less progressive and
allying themselves more and more with the reactionaries."
"It is impossible that the capitalists should accomplish any important
reform."
"With all social reform, short of Socialism itself, conditions cannot be
permanently improved."
These and many similar expressions are either quotations from well-known
Socialist authors or phrases in common use. Many French and German
Socialists have even called the whole "State Socialist" program
"social-demagogy." As none of the reforms proposed by the capitalists
are sufficient to balance the counteracting forces and to carry society
along their direction, Socialists sometimes mistakenly feel that
_nothing whatever of benefit_ can come to the workers from capitalist
government. As the capitalists' reforms all tend "to insure the
dominance of the capitalist class," it is denied that they can cure any
of the grave social evils now prevalent, and it is even asserted that
they are reactionary.
"For how many years have we been telling the workingman, especially the
trade unionist," wrote the late Benjamin Hanford, on two successive
occasions Socialist candidate for Vice President of the United States
"that it was folly for him to beg in the halls of a capitalist
legislature and a capitalist Congress? Did we mean what we said? I did,
for one.... I not only believed it--I proved it." Obviously there are
many political measures, just as _there are many improvements in
industry and industrial organization_, that may be beneficial to the
workers as well as the capitalists, but it is also clear that such
changes will in most instances be brought about by the capitalists
themselves. _On the other hand, even where they have a group of
independent legislators of their own_, however large a minority it may
form, the Socialists can expect no concessions of political or economic
power until social revolution is at hand.
The municipal platform adopted by the Socialist Party in New York City
in 1909 also appealed to workingmen not to be deluded into the belief
"that the capitalists will permit any measures of real benefit to the
working class to be carried into effect by the municipality so long as
they remain in undisputed control of the State and federal government
and especially of the judiciary." This statement is slightly inaccurate.
The capitalists will allow the enactment of measures that benefit the
working class, provided those measures do not involve loss to the
capitalist class. Thus sanitation and education are of real benefit to
the workers, but, temporarily at least, they benefit the capitalist
class still more, by rendering the workers more efficient as wealth
producers.
The Socialist platforms of the various countries all recognize, to use
the language of that of the United States, that all the reforms indorsed
by the Socialists "are but a preparation of the workers to seize the
_whole_ power of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of
the _whole_ system of industry and thus come to their rightful
inheritance." (Italics are mine.) This might be interpreted to mean that
through such reforms the Socialists are gaining control over parts of
industry and government. Marx took the opposite view; "the first step in
the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the
position of ruling power...." He left open no possibility of saying that
the Socialists thought that without overthrowing capitalism they could
seize a _part_ of the powers of government (though they were already
electing legislative minorities and subordinate officials in his day).
Sometimes there are still more ambiguous expressions in Socialist
platforms which even make it possible for social reformers who have
joined the movement to confess publicly that they use it exclusively for
reform purposes, and still to claim that they are Socialists (see
Professor Clark's advice in the following chapter). For example,
instead of heading such proposals as the nationalization of the
railroads and "trusts" and the State appropriation of ground rent
"reforms indorsed by Socialists," they have called such reforms, perhaps
inadvertently, "_Immediate Demands_," and the American platform has
referred to them as measures of relief which "we may be able to _force_
from capitalism." There can be no doubt that Marx and his chief
followers, on the contrary, saw that such reforms would come from the
capitalists without the necessity of any Socialist force or
demand--though this pressure might hasten their coming (see Part I,
Chapter VIII). They are viewed by him and an increasing number of
Socialists not as _concessions to Socialism forced from the capitalists,
but as developments of capitalism desired by the more progressive
capitalists and Socialists alike, but especially by the Socialists_
owing to their desire that State capitalism shall develop as rapidly as
possible--as a preliminary to Socialism,--and to the fact that the
working people suffer more than the capitalists at any delay in the
establishment even of this transitional state.
The platform of the American Party just quoted classes such reforms as
government relief for the unemployed, government loans for public work,
and collective ownership of the railways and trusts, as measures it may
be able "to force from capitalism," as "a preparation of the workers to
seize the whole power of government." But if the capitalists do enact
such reforms as these, not on the independent grounds I have indicated,
but out of fear of Socialism, as is here predicted, why should not the
process of coercing capitalism continue indefinitely until gradually all
power is taken away from them? Why should there be any special need to
"seize" the whole power, if the capitalists can be coerced even now,
while the government is still largely theirs?
Some "reformists" do not hesitate to answer frankly that there is indeed
no ground for expecting any revolutionary crisis. Mr. John Spargo feels
that reforms "will prove in their totality to be the Revolution itself,"
and that if the Socialists keep in sight this whole body of reforms,
which he calls the Revolution, "as the objective of every Reform," this
will sufficiently distinguish them from non-Socialist reformers. Mr.
Morris Hillquit also speaks for many other influential Socialists when
he insists that the Socialists differ from other Parties chiefly in that
they alone "see the clear connection and necessary interdependence"
between the various social evils. That there is no ground for any such
assertion is shown by the fact that the social evils discussed in the
capitalist press, and all the remedies which have any practical chance
of enactment, as is now generally perceived, are due to extreme poverty,
the lack of order in industry, and the need of government regulations,
guided by a desire to promote "efficiency," and to perfect the
_capitalist_ system. Non-Socialist reformers have already made long
strides toward improving the worst forms of poverty, without taking the
slightest step towards social democracy. These reforms are being
introduced more and more rapidly and are not likely to be checked until
what we now know as poverty and its accompanying evils are practically
abolished _by the capitalist class while promoting their own comfort and
security_. This, for example, is, as I have shown, the outspoken purpose
of Mr. Lloyd George and his capitalistic supporters in England.
Similarly, it is the outspoken purpose of the promoters of the present
"efficiency" movement among the business men of America. However the
material conditions of the working classes may be bettered by such
means, their personal liberty and political power may be so much
curtailed in the process as to make further progress by their own
associated efforts more difficult under "State Socialism" than it is
to-day.
The State platform of the Socialist Party of New York in 1910, while
seemingly self-contradictory in certain of its phrases, makes the
sharpest distinctions between Socialism and "State Socialist" reform.
Its criticism of reform parties is on the whole so vigorous and its
insistence on class struggle tactics so strong as to make it clear that
there is no expectation of reaching Socialism through reforms granted,
from whatever motive, by a non-Socialist majority. I have italicized
some significant phrases:--
"The two dominant political parties pretend to stand for all the
people; the so-called reform parties claim to speak for the good
people; the Socialist party frankly acknowledges that it is
concerned chiefly with the working people....
"The great fortunes of the wealthy come from the spoliation of the
poor. Large profits for the manufacturers mean starvation wages for
the workers; the princely revenues of the landlords are derived
from excessive rents of the tenants, and the billions of watered
stock and bonds crying for dividends and interest are a perpetual
mortgage upon the work and lives of the people of all generations
to come....
"_No political party can honestly serve all the people of the
state_--those who prey and those who toil; those who rob and those
who are robbed. _The parties as well as the voters of this state
must take their stand in the conflict of interests of the different
classes of society_--they must choose between the workers and their
despoilers.
"The Republican and Democratic Parties alike always have been the
tools of the dominating classes. They have been managed, supported,
and financed by the money powers of the State, and in turn they
have conducted the legislatures, courts, and executive offices of
the State as accessories to the business interests of those
classes.
"These vices of our government are not accidental, but are deeply
and firmly rooted in our industrial system. To maintain its
supremacy in this conflict the dominating class _must_ strive to
control our government and politics, and must influence and corrupt
our public officials.
"The two old parties _as well as the so-called reform parties of
the middle classes_, which spring up in New York politics from time
to time, all stand for the continuance of that system, hence they
are bound to perpetuate and to aggravate its inevitable evils...."
The New York Party had immediately before it the example of Mr. Hearst,
who has gone as far as the radicals of the old parties in Wisconsin, or
Kansas, Oklahoma, California, or Oregon in verbally indorsing radical
reform measures, and also of Mr. Roosevelt, who occasionally has gone
almost as far. Day after day the Hearst papers had sent out to their
millions of readers editorials which contain every element of Socialism
except its essence, the class struggle. The New York Party, like many in
other Socialist organizations, found itself _compelled by circumstances
to take a revolutionary stand_.
For when opportunistic reformers opposed to the Socialist movement go as
far as the Hearst papers in indorsing "State Socialist" reforms, what
hope would there be for Socialists to gain the public ear if they went
scarcely farther, either as regards the practical measures they propose
or the phrases they employ? If the "reformist" Socialists answer that
their _ultimate aim_ is to go farther, may they not be asked what
difference this makes in present-day affairs? And if they answer that
certain reforms must be forced through by Socialist threats, political
or revolutionary, will they not be told, first that it can be shown that
the whole "State Socialistic" reform program, if costly to many
individual capitalists, promises to prove _ultimately profitable_ to
the capitalist class, and second, that it is being carried out where
there is no present menace either of a Socialist revolution or even of a
more or less Socialistic political majority.
But the position of the politically ambitious among so-called "orthodox"
Socialists (I do not refer to personal or individual, but only to
partisan ambition) is often very similar at the bottom to that of the
"reformists"; while the latter contend that capitalism can grant few if
any reforms of any great benefit to the working people _without
Socialist aid_, some of the orthodox lay equal weight on Socialist
agitation for these same reforms, on the ground that they cannot be
accomplished by collaborating with capitalist reformers at all, but
_solely through the Socialist Party_.
"The revolutionary Marxists," says the French Socialist, Rappaport,
"test the gifts of capitalistic reform through its motives. And they
discover that these motives are not crystal clear. The reformistic
patchwork is meant to prop up and make firmer the rotten capitalistic
building. They test capitalistic reforms, moreover, by the means which
are necessary for their accomplishment. These means are either
altogether lacking or insufficient, and in any case they flow in
overwhelming proportion out of the pockets of the exploited
classes."[170]
We need not agree with Rappaport that capitalistic reforms bring no
possible benefit to labor, or that the capitalistic building is rotten
and about to fall to pieces. May it not be that it is strong and getting
stronger? May it not be that the control over the whole building, far
from passing into Socialist hands, is removed farther and farther from
their reach, so that the promise of obtaining, not reforms of more or
less importance, but a fair and satisfactory _share_ of progress
_without conquering capitalism_ is growing less?
Thus many orthodox and revolutionary Socialists even, to say nothing of
"reformists," become mere political partisans, make almost instinctive
efforts to credit all political progress to the Socialist Parties,
contradict their own revolutionary principles. All reforms that happen
to be of any benefit to labor, they claim, are due to the pressure of
the working classes within Parliaments or outside of them; which amounts
to conceding that the Socialists are already sharing in the power of
government or industry, a proposition that the revolutionaries always
most strenuously deny. For if Socialists are practically sharing in
government and industry to-day, the orthodox and revolutionists will
have difficulty in meeting the argument of the "reformists" that it is
only necessary to continue the present pressure in order to obtain more
and more, without any serious conflicts, until all Socialism is
gradually accomplished.
Kautsky makes much of the capitalists' present fear of the working
classes, though in his opinion this fear makes not only for
"concessions" but also for reactions, as in the world-wide revival of
imperialism. Foreign conquests, he believes, are the only alternative
the governing classes are able to offer to the glowing promises of the
Socialists. It is for this reason, he believes, that the capitalists are
relying more and more on imperialism, even though they know that the
conquest of colonies is no longer possible to the extent it was before,
and realize that the cost of maintaining armaments is rapidly becoming
greater than colonial profits. But this also is to underestimate the
resources of capitalism and its capacity for a certain form of progress.
If the capitalists are not to be forced to concessions, neither are they
to be forced, unless in a very great crisis, to reactionary measures
that in themselves bring no profit. The progressive "State Socialist"
program is, as a rule, a far more promising road to popularity from
their standpoint than is reactionary imperialism.
In Kautsky's view the bourgeoisie is driven by the fear of Socialism, in
a country like Germany to reaction, and in one like England to _attempt_
reform. In neither case will it actually proceed to reforms of any
considerable benefit to labor, apparently because Kautsky believes that
all such reforms would inevitably strengthen labor relatively to
capital, and will therefore not be allowed. Similarly, he feels that the
capitalists will refuse all concessions to political democracy (on the
same erroneous supposition, that they will inevitably aid labor more
than capital).
For example, the British Liberals have abolished the veto of the House
of Lords, but only to increase the power of other capitalists against
landowners, while the Conservatives have proposed the Referendum, but
only to protect the Lords. From 1884 to 1911 neither Party had
introduced any measure to democratize the House of Commons and so to
increase the representation of labor. Kautsky reminds us of the plural
voting, unequal electoral districts, and absence of primary and
secondary elections. This he believes is evidence that the capitalists
fear to extend political democracy farther. They even fear the purely
economic reforms that are being enacted, he claims, and at every
concession made to labor desert the Liberals to join the Conservatives.
Land reform, taxation reform, the eight-hour day, are being carried out,
however. But when it comes to such matters as an extended suffrage, the
capitalists will balk. His conclusion is that if economic reforms are to
continue, if, for example, the unemployed are to be set to work by the
government, or if political reforms are to be resumed, the Labourites
have to free themselves from the tutelage of the Liberal Party. And if
they do this, they can play so effectively on capitalist fears as to
force an extension of the suffrage and even change the British
Parliament into a "tool for the dictatorship of the working class." As
in Germany, all political advance of value to labor must be obtained
through playing on capitalist fears--only in England the process may be
more gradual and results easier to obtain.
"Every extension of the suffrage to the working class must be fought for
to-day," says Kautsky, "and it is only thanks to the _fear_ of the
working class that it is not abolished where it exists." By a strange
coincidence Kautsky renewed the prediction that the capitalistic Radical
government of England would never extend the ballot except when forced
by Labor only a few days before Prime Minister Asquith officially,
without any special pressure from Labor, pledged it to equal and
universal (manhood) suffrage. The passage follows:--
"In England the suffrage is still limited to-day, and capitalistic
Radicalism, in spite of its fine phrases, has no idea of enlarging
it. The poorest part of the population is excluded from the ballot.
In all Great Britain (in 1906) only 16.64 per cent possessed,
against 22 per cent in Germany. If England had the German Reichstag
suffrage law, 9,600,000 would be enfranchised, instead of
7,300,000, _i.e._ 2,300,000 more."[171]
Kautsky's view that capitalists cannot bend a more or less democratic
government to their purposes and therefore will not institute such a
government, unless forced to do so, is undoubtedly based on German
conditions. He contends that the hope of the German bourgeois lies not
in democracy nor even in the Reichstag, but in the strength of Prussia,
which spells Absolutism and Militarism. He admits in one passage that
conditions may be different in the United States, England, and British
colonies, and under certain circumstances in France, but for the peoples
of eastern Europe advanced measures of democracy such as direct
legislation belong to "the future State," while no reforms of importance
to the workers are to be secured to-day except through the menace of
revolution. It would be perfectly consistent with this, doubtlessly
correct, view of present German conditions, if Kautsky said that after
Germany has overthrown Absolutism and Militarism, progressive capitalism
may be expected to conquer reactionary capitalism in Germany as
elsewhere, and to use direct legislation and other democratic measures
for the purpose of increasing profits, with certain secondary,
incidental and lesser (but by no means unimportant) benefits to labor.
But this he refuses to do. He readily admits that Germany is backward
politically, but as she is advanced economically he apparently allows
his view of other countries to-day and of the Germany of the future to
be guided by the fact that the large capitalists now in control in that
country (with military and landlord aid) oppose even that degree of
democracy and those labor reforms which, as I have shown, would result
in an increased product for the capitalist class as a whole (though not
of all capitalists). For he pictures the reactionary capitalists in
continuous control in the future both in Germany and other countries,
and the smaller capitalists as important between these and the masses of
wage earners. The example of other countries (equally developed
economically and more advanced than Germany politically) suggests, on
the contrary, a growing unity of large and small capital through the
action of the state--and as a result the more or less progressive policy
I have outlined. (See Part I.)
But Kautsky's view is that of a very large number of Socialists,
especially in Germany and neighboring countries, is having an enormous
influence, and deserves careful consideration. The proletariat, he says,
is not afraid of the most extreme revolutionary efforts and sacrifices
to win equal suffrage where, as in Germany, it is withheld. "And every
attempt to take away or limit the German laborer's right of voting for
the Reichstag would call forth the danger of a fearful catastrophe to
the Empire."[172] It is here and elsewhere suggested, on the basis of
German experience, that this struggle over the ballot is a struggle
between Capital and Labor. The German Reichstag suffrage was made equal
by Bismarck in 1870 for purely capitalistic reasons, and the number of
voters in England was doubled as late as 1884, and the suffrage is now
to be made universal through similar motives. Yet the present domination
of the German Liberals and those of neighboring countries by a
reactionary bureaucratic, military, and landlord class, persuades
Kautsky that genuine capitalistic Liberalism everywhere is at an end.
Yet in 1910 the German Radicals succeeded, after many years of vain
effort, in forming out of their three parties a united organization, the
Progressive Peoples Party (_Fortschrittliche Volkspartei_). The program
adopted included almost every progressive reform, and, acting in
accordance with its principles, this Party quite as frequently
coöperates with the Socialists on its left as with the National Liberals
immediately on its right. The whole recent history of the more advanced
countries, including even Italy, would indicate that the small
capitalist element, which largely composes this party, will obtain the
balance of power and either through the new party or through the
Socialist "reformists" (the latter either in or out of the parent
organization)--or through both together--will before many years bring
about the extension of the suffrage in Prussia (though not its
equalization), the equalization of the Reichstag electoral districts,
and the reduction of the tariff that supports the agrarian landlords and
large capitalists, put a halt to some of the excesses of military
extravagance (though not to militarism), institute a government
responsible to the Reichstag, provide government employment for the
unemployed, and later take up the other industrial and labor reforms of
capitalist collectivism as inaugurated in other countries, together with
a large part also of the radical democratic program. There is no reason
for supposing that the evolution of capitalism is or will be basically
different in Germany from that of other countries. (See Chapter VII.)
Though he regards Socialism as the sole impelling force for reforms of
benefit to labor, Kautsky definitely acknowledges that no reforms that
are immediately practicable can be regarded as the _exclusive_ property
of the Socialist Party:--
"But this is certain," he says, "there is scarcely a single
practical demand for present-day legislation, that is peculiar to
any particular party. Even the Social Democracy scarcely shows one
such demand. That through which it differentiates itself from
other parties is the totality of its practical demands and the
goals towards which it points. The eight-hour law, for example, is
no revolutionary demand....
"What holds together political parties, especially when like the
Social Democrats they have great historic tasks to accomplish, are
their final goals; not their momentary demands, not their views as
to the attitude to be assumed on all the separate questions that
come before the party.
"Differences of opinion are always present within the Party and
sometimes reach a threatening height. But they will be the less
likely to break up the Party, the livelier the consciousness in its
members of the great goals towards which they strive in common, the
more powerful the enthusiasm for these goals, so that demands and
interests of the moment are behind them in importance."[173]
The only way to differentiate the Socialists from other parties, the
only thing Socialists have in common with one another is, according to
this view, not agreement as to practical action, but certain ideals or
goals. Socialists may want the same things as non-Socialists, and reject
the things desired by other Socialists, and their actions may follow
their desires, but all is well, and harmony may reign as long as their
hearts and minds are filled with a Socialist ideal. But if a goal thus
has no _necessary_ connection with immediate problems or actions, is it
necessarily anything more than a sentiment or an abstraction?
Kautsky's toleration of reform activities thus has an opposite origin to
that of the "reformist" Socialists. _He_ tolerates concentration on
capitalistic measures by factions within the Socialist Party, on the
ground that such measures are altogether of secondary importance; _they_
insist on these reforms as the most valuable activities Socialists can
undertake at the present time.
Kautsky and his associates will often tolerate activities that serve
only to weaken the movement, provided verbal recognition is given to the
Socialist ideal. This has led to profound contradictions in the German
movement. At the Leipzig Congress, for example (1909), the reformists
voted unanimously for the reaffirmation of the revolutionary "Dresden
resolution" of 1903, with the explanation that they regarded it in the
very opposite sense from what its words plainly stated. They had fought
this resolution at the time it was passed, and condemned it since, and
had continued the actions against which it was directed. But their vote
in favor of it and explanation that they refused to give it any
practical bearing had to be accepted at Leipzig without a murmur. Such
is the result of preaching loyalty to phrases, goals, or ideals rather
than in action. The reformists can often, though not always, escape
responsibility for their acts by claiming loyalty to the goal--often, no
doubt, in all sincerity; for goals, ideals, doctrines, and sentiments,
like the human conscience, are generally highly flexible and subtle
things.
Kautsky's policy of ideal revolutionism, combined with practical
toleration of activities given over exclusively to non-Socialist reform,
which is so widespread in the German movement under the form of a too
rigid separation between theory on the one hand and tactics on the
other, agrees at another point with the policy of the reformists. The
latter, as I have mentioned, seek to justify their absorption in reforms
that the capitalists also favor, by claiming that they determine their
attitude to a reform by its relation to a larger program, whereas the
capitalists do not. Kautsky similarly differentiates the Socialists by
the totality of their demands; the individual reform, being, as he
concedes, usually if not always supported by other parties also. Yet it
is difficult to see how a program composed wholly of non-Socialist
elements could in any combination become distinctly Socialist. A
Socialist program of _immediate_ demands may be peculiar to some
Socialist political group at a given moment, but usually it contains no
features that would prevent a purely capitalist party taking it up
spontaneously, in the interest of capitalism.
What is it that drives Kautsky into the position that I have described?
To this question we can find a definite answer, and it leads us into the
center of the seeming mysteries of Socialist policy. The preservation of
the Socialist Party organization, with its heterogeneous constituent
elements, is held to be all-important; and this party organization
cannot be kept intact, and _all_ its present supporters retained,
without a program of practical reforms that may be secured with a little
effort from capitalist governments. In order to claim this program as
distinctively theirs, Socialists must differentiate it in some way from
other reform programs. As there is no practical difference, they must
insist that the ideal is not the same, that Socialists are using the
reforms for different purposes, that only part of their program is like
that of any one capitalist party, while in other parts it resembles
those of other capitalist parties, etc.
That "party necessity" can drive even radical and influential Socialists
into such a position may seem incredible. But when it is understood that
loyalty to party also conflicts with loyalty to principle in many cases
even to the point of driving many otherwise revolutionary Socialists to
the very opposite extreme, _i.e._ to fighting _against_ progressive
capitalist reforms purely for party reasons, this willingness to allow
the Socialist organization to claim such reforms as in some sense its
own, will appear as the lesser deviation from principle.
For example, Kautsky opposes direct legislation--with the proviso that
_perhaps_ it may have _a certain value_ in English-speaking countries
and _under some circumstances_ in France. His arguments in spite of this
proviso are directed almost wholly against it, on the ground that direct
legislation would take many reforms out of the hands of the Party, would
cause them to be discussed independently of one another instead of bound
together as if they were inseparable parts of a program and would weaken
the Party in direct proportion as its use was extended.[174]
Yet Kautsky himself contends, in the same work in which this passage
occurs, that Socialists favor all measures of democracy, even when the
movement at first loses by their introduction. In a word he holds that
the function of promoting immediately practicable political reforms is
so important to the Party, and the Party with its present organization,
membership and activities, is so important to the movement, that even
the most fundamental principle may, on occasion, be disregarded.
Democracy is admitted to be a principle so inviolable that it is to be
upheld generally even when the Party temporarily loses by it. Yet
because direct legislation might rob the Socialists of all opportunity
for claiming the credit for non-Socialist reforms, because it would put
to a direct vote a program composed wholly of elements held in common
with other parties, and differing only in its combination of these
elements, because the Party tactics would have to be completely
transformed and the Party temporarily weakened by being forced to limit
itself entirely to revolutionary efforts, Kautsky turns against this
keystone of democratic reform.
"There is indeed no legislation without compromises," he writes; "the
great masses who are not experienced political leaders, must be much
easier confused and misled than the political leaders. If compromise in
voting on bills were really corrupting, then it would work much more
harm through direct popular legislation than through legislation by
Parliament, ... for that would mean nothing less than to drive the cause
of corruption from Parliament, out among the people."
"Direct legislation," he continues, "has the tendency to divert
attention from general principles and to concentrate it on concrete
questions."[175] But if the Socialists cannot educate the masses to know
what they want concretely, how much less will they understand general
principles? If they cannot judge such concrete and separate questions,
how will they control Socialist officials who, as it is now, so often
build their programs and decide their tactics for them? There is no
mechanical substitute for self-government within Socialist organizations
or elsewhere. Direct legislation will do much to destroy all artificial
situations and place society on the solid basis of the knowledge or
ignorance, the division or organization, the weakness or strength of
character of the masses. The present situation, however useful for
well-intentioned Socialist "leaders," is even better adapted to the
machinations of capitalist politicians. And because it militates against
the politically powerful small capitalists as well as against the
non-capitalists, it is doomed to an early end.
Kautsky, in a word, actually fears that the present capitalist society
will carry out, one by one, its own reforms. For the same reason that he
denies the ability or willingness of capitalism to make any considerable
improvements in the material conditions of labor, except as compelled by
the superior force (or the fear of the superior force) of Socialism, he
would, if possible, prevent the capitalists from introducing certain
democratic improvements that would facilitate reforms independently of
the Socialist Party. However, the economic and political evolution of
capitalism will doubtless continue to take its course, and through
improved democratic methods all Socialist arguments based on the
impossibility of any large measure of working-class progress under
capitalism, and all efforts to credit what is being done to the advance
of Socialism, will be seen to have been futile. The contention between
Socialists and capitalists will then be reduced to its essential
elements:--
Is progress under capitalism as great as it might be under Socialism?
Is capitalist progress making toward Socialism by improving the position
of the non-capitalists _when compared with that of the capitalists_, or
is it having the opposite effect?
Even the "syndicalists," little interested as they are in reform, seem
to fear, as Kautsky does, that so long as considerable changes for the
better are possible, progress towards Socialism, which in their case
also implies revolution, is impossible. I have shown that Lagardelle
denies that Labor and Capital have any interest whatever in common.
Similarly, a less partisan writer, Paul Louis, author of the leading
work on French unionism ("Histoire du Movement Syndicate en France"),
while he notes every evil of the coming State Socialism, yet ignores its
beneficent features, and bases his whole defense of revolutionary labor
unionism on the proposition that important reforms, even if aided by
friendly Socialist coöperation or hostile Socialist threats, can no
longer be brought about under capitalism:--
"The Parliamentary method was suited by its principle to the reform
era. Direct action corresponds to the syndicalist era. Nothing is
more simple.
"As long as organized labor believes in the possibility of amending
present society by a series of measures built up one upon the
other, it makes use of the means that the present system offers it.
It proceeds through intervening elected persons. It imagines that
from a theoretical discussion there will arise such ameliorations
that its vassalage will be gradually abolished."
The belief here appears that a steady, continuous, and marked
improvement in the position of the working class would necessarily lead
to its overtaking automatically the rapidly increasing power of
capitalism. If this were so, it would indeed be true, as Louis contends,
that no revolutionary movement could begin, except when all beneficial
labor reforms and other working-class progress had ended.
I shall quote (Part III, Chapter V) a passage where Louis indicates that
syndicalism, like Socialism itself, is directed in the most fundamental
way against all existing governments. He takes the further step of
saying that existing governments can do nothing whatever for the benefit
of labor, and that their _sole_ function is that of repression:--
"The State, which has taken for its mission--and no other could be
conceived--the defense of existing society, could not allow its
power of command to be attacked. The social hierarchy which itself
rests upon the economic subordination of one class to another, will
be maintained only so long as the governmental power shatters every
assault victoriously, represses every initiative, punishes without
mercy all innovators and all factious persons....
"In the new order [syndicalism] there is no room for any
capitalistic attribute, even reduced to its most simple expression.
There is no longer room for a political system for safeguarding
privileges and conquering rebels. If our definition of the State is
accepted, that it is an organ of defense, always more and more
exacting because it is in a society always more and more menaced,
it will be understood that such a State is condemned to disappear
with that society....
"The State crushes the individual, and syndicalism appeals to all
the latent energies of that individual, the State suspects and
throttles organizations, and syndicalism multiplies them against
it.... All institutions created by the State for the defense of the
capitalist system are assailed, undermined by syndicalism."[176]
Here is a view of the State as far opposed as possible to that of
Kautsky, who says truly that it is "a monster economic establishment,
and its influence on the whole economic life of a nation to-day is
already beyond the power of measurement."[177] For Kautsky, the State is
primarily economic and constructive; for Louis it is purely political
and repressive. Yet Kautsky, like Louis, seems to feel that if the State
were capable of carrying out reforms of any importance to the wage
earners, or if it were admitted that it could do so, it would be
impossible to persuade the workers that a revolution is necessary and
feasible. And so both deny that "State Socialism," which they recognize
as an _intervening stage_ between the capitalism of to-day and
Socialism, is destined to give better material conditions, if less
liberty, than the present society. Both the economic and political
revolutionists are, on such grounds, often tempted to agree with the
reformists of the party and of the labor unions, in leveling their guns
exclusively against the private capitalism of to-day--I might almost say
the capitalism of the past--instead of concentrating their attack on the
evils that will remain undiminished under the State capitalism of the
future. The reformists do this consistently, for they see in the
constructive side of "State Socialism," not a mere continuation of
capitalism, but a large installment of Socialism itself, and have
nothing more to ask for beyond a continuation of such reforms.
Revolutionary Socialists are inconsistent, because they may admit that
the conditions of the working people under "State Socialism" may be far
better than they are to-day, without invalidating their central position
that the greater evils of to-day will remain, and that there will be no
progress towards Socialism, no matter what reforms are enacted, until
the Socialists are either actually or practically in power.
When the Socialists have become so numerous as to be on the verge of
securing control of the government (by whatever means), it is unlikely
that the privileged classes will permit peaceful political or
constitutional procedures to continue and put them completely at the
mercy of the non-privileged. In all probability they will then resort to
military violence under pretext of military necessity (see Part III,
Chapter VIII). _If when this time arrives, the Socialists have not only
a large political majority, but also the physical power to back it up_,
or seem about to secure this majority and this power, then indeed,
though not before that time, the capitalists may, possibly, begin to
make concessions which involve a weakening of their position in society,
_i.e._ which necessitate more and more concessions until their power is
destroyed. The revolutionary reformers, if we may apply this term to
Kautsky and his associates, are then only somewhat premature in their
belief that the Socialist Party is _now_, or will _very shortly_ become,
a real menace to capitalism; whereas the political reformers are under
the permanent illusion that capitalism will retreat before paper
ballots.
Moreover, Kautsky and the revolutionary reformers, in order to make
_their_ (physical) menace effective, must continually teach the people
to look forward and prepare to use all the means in their power for
their advance. They are thus thoroughly in accord with the non-reformist
revolutionists who, however much they may welcome certain capitalist
reforms, do not agree that they will be very materially hastened by
anything the Socialists can do. The non-reformist revolutionists assume
that Socialists will vote for every form of progress, including the most
thoroughly capitalistic, and acknowledge that _if they fail in their
duty in this respect, these reforms might be materially retarded_. But
they are willing to let the capitalists take the lead in such reform
work, giving them the whole credit for what benefits it brings, and
placing on their shoulders the whole responsibility for its
limitations. Their criticism of capitalist reform is leveled not against
what it does, but against what it leaves undone.
Revolutions in machinery and business organization under capitalism,
with which Socialists certainly have nothing to do, they regard also as
not only important, but of vast significance, since it is by their aid
alone that Socialism is becoming a possibility. And now a new period is
coming in, during which the capitalists, on grounds that have no
connection whatever with Socialism or the Socialist movement, will
effect another equally indispensable revolution, in the organization of
labor and business by _governmental means_. Revolutionary Socialists are
ready to give the fullest credit to capitalism for what it has done,
what it is doing, and what it is about to do--for, however vast the
changes now in process of execution, they feel that the task that lies
before the Socialists is vaster still. The capitalists, to take one
point by way of illustration, develop such individuals and such latent
powers in every individual, as they can utilize for increasing the
private income of the capitalists as a class, or of governments which
are wholly or very largely in their control. _The Socialists propose to
develop the latent abilities of all individuals in proportion to their
power to serve the community._ The collectivist capitalists will
continue to extend opportunity to more and more members of the
community, but always leaving the numbers of the privileged undiminished
and always providing for all their children first--admitting only the
cream of the masses to the better positions, and this after all of the
ruling classes, including the most worthless, have been provided for.
The Socialists propose, the moment they secure a majority, to make
opportunity, not more equal, but equal.
Those Socialists, then, who expect that reforms of importance to wage
earners are to be secured to-day exclusively by the menace either of a
political overturn or of a Socialist revolution, and those who imagine
that the Socialist hosts are going to be strengthened by recruits
attracted by the rôle Socialists are playing in obtaining such immediate
reforms, make a triple error. They credit Socialism with a power it has
nowhere yet achieved and cannot expect until a revolutionary period is
immediately at hand; that is, they grossly exaggerate the present powers
of the Socialist movement and grossly underestimate the task that lies
before it. They are seemingly blind to the possibilities of
transformation and progress that still inhere in capitalism--the
increased unity and power it will gain through "State capitalism," and
the increased wealth that will come through a beneficent and scientific
policy of producing, through wholesale reforms and improvements, more
efficient and profitable laborers. They fail to see that the strength of
the enemy will lie henceforth more frequently in deception than in
repression. But even this is not their most fatal blunder. In attacking
individualistic and reactionary rather than collectivistic and
progressive capitalism, these Socialists are not only wasting their
energies by assaulting a moribund power, but are training their forces
to use weapons and to practice evolutions that will soon be obsolete and
useless. They are doing the work and filling the function of the small
capitalists. The large capitalists organized industry; the small
capitalists will nationalize it; in so far at least as it has been or
will have been organized. Socialists gain from both processes, approve
of both, and aid them in every way within their power. But their chief
function is to overthrow capitalism. And as the larger part of this task
lies off some distance in the future, it is the capitalism of the future
and not that of the past with which Socialists are primarily concerned.
Evidently but a few years will elapse before State capitalism will
everywhere dominate. In the meanwhile, to attribute its progress to the
_menace_ of the advance of Socialism, is to abandon the Socialist
standpoint just as completely as do the reformist Socialists in
regarding capitalist-collectivist reforms as installments of Socialism,
to be achieved only with Socialist _aid_.
For Socialists will be judged by what they are doing rather than by what
they promise to do. If political reformists and revolutionary reformists
are both directing their chief attention to promoting the reforms of
"State Socialism," it will make little difference whether the first
argue that these beneficial measures are a part of Socialism and a
guarantee of the whole; or the second claim that, though such reforms
are no part of Socialism, the superiority of the movement is shown
chiefly by the fact that they could not have been brought about except
through its efforts. Mankind will rightly conclude that the things that
absorb the chief Socialist activities are those that are also forming
the character of the movement. In direct proportion as reforming
Socialists spend their energies in doing the same things as reforming
capitalists do, they tend inevitably to become more and more alike. Only
in proportion as Socialists can differentiate themselves from
non-Socialists _in their present activities_ will the movement have any
distinctive meaning of its own.
FOOTNOTES:
[169] W. J. Ghent, "Socialism and Success," p. 47.
[170] Rappaport, "Der Kongress von Nimes," _Die Neue Zeit_, 1910, p.
821.
[171] _Die Neue Zeit_, Oct. 27, 1911.
[172] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, p. 121.
[173] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 132-133.
[174] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 131-134.
[175] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 131-134.
[176] "Le Syndicalisme contre L'État," pp. 223-235, 239-242.
[177] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," p. 114.
CHAPTER VI
REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS
In the most famous document of international Socialism, the "Communist
Manifesto" (published by Marx and Engels in 1847), there is a
fulmination against "reactionary Socialism," which it will be seen is
approximately what we now call "State Socialism." After describing the
Utopian Socialism of Fourier, of Saint-Simon and of Owen, the
"Manifesto" says:--
"A second form of Socialism, less systematic but more practical,
tried to disgust the working people with every revolutionary
movement, by demonstrating to them that it is not such and such a
political advantage, but only a transformation of the relations of
material life and of economic conditions that could profit them.
Let it be noted that by transformation of the material relations of
society this Socialism does not mean the abolition of capitalist
relations of production, but only administrative reforms brought
out precisely on the basis of capitalist production, and which
consequently do not affect the relation of capital and wage labor,
but in the best case only diminish the expenses and simplify the
administrative labor of a capitalist government.... In the
promotion of their plans they act always with the consciousness of
defending first of all the interest of the working class. The
working class only exists for them under this aspect of the
suffering class.
"But in accordance with the undeveloped state of the class struggle
and their social position, they consider themselves quite above
antagonism. They desire to ameliorate the material condition of
life for all the members of society, even the most privileged. As a
consequence, they do not cease to appeal to all society without
distinction, or rather they address themselves by preference to the
reigning class."[178]
Marx points out that the chief aim of these "reactionary Socialists" was
the transformation of the State into a mere organ for the administration
of industry in their interest, which is precisely what we mean to-day by
"State Socialism."
In contrast with this "reactionary Socialism," now prevalent in Great
Britain and Australia, the Socialist parties of every country of the
European Continent (where such parties are most developed), without
exception are striving for a social democracy and a government of the
non-privileged and not for a scheme of material benefits bestowed by an
all-powerful capitalist State. Professor Anton Menger, of the University
of Vienna, one of the most acute and sympathetic observers of the
movement, remarks correctly that--"in all countries, at all times, the
proletariat [working class] has rightly thought that the continuous
development of its _power_ is worth more than any _economic advantage_
that can be granted it."[179]
The late Paul Lafargue, perhaps the leading thinker of the French
Socialist movement, a son-in-law of Karl Marx, made a declaration at a
recent Party Congress which brings out still more clearly the prevailing
Socialist attitude. Denying that the Socialists are opposed to reforms,
he said: "On the contrary, we demand all reforms, even the most
bourgeois [capitalist] reforms like the income tax and the purchase of
the West [the Western railroad, lately purchased by the government]. It
matters little to us who proposes reforms, and I may add that the most
important of them all for the working class have not been presented by
Socialist deputies, but by the bourgeois [capitalists]. Free and
compulsory education was not proposed by Socialists." That is to say,
Lafargue believed that reforms extremely beneficial to the working class
might be enacted without any union of Socialists with non-Socialists,
without the Socialists gaining political power and without their even
constituting a menace to the rule of the anti-Socialist classes.
Capitalism of itself, in its own interest and without any reference to
Socialism or the Socialists, may go very far towards developing a
society which in turn develops an ever growing and developing working
class, though without increasing the actual political or economic powers
of this class when compared with its own.
In Germany especially, Marx's co-workers and successors developed marked
hostility to "State Socialism" from the moment when it was taken up by
Bismarck nearly a generation ago (1883). August Bebel's hostility to the
existing State goes so far that he predicts that it will expire "with
the expiration of the ruling class,"[180] while Engels contended that
the very phrase "the Socialist State" was valueless as a slogan in the
present propaganda of Socialism, and scientifically ineffective.[181]
Engels had even predicted, as long ago as 1880, that the coming of
monopolies would bring it about that the State, being "the official
representative of capitalistic society," would ultimately have to
undertake "the protection of production," and that this necessity would
first be felt in the case of the railways and the telegraphs. Later
events have shown that his prediction was so correct that even America
and England are approaching the nationalization of their railways, while
the proposal to nationalize monopolies is rapidly growing in popularity
in every country in the world, and among nearly all social classes.
Engels did not consider that such developments were necessarily in the
direction of Socialism any more than the nationalization of the railways
by the Czar or the Prussian government. On the contrary, he suggested
that it meant the strengthening of the capitalism.
"The modern State," he wrote in 1880, "no matter what its form, is
essentially a capitalistic machine, the State of the capitalists, the
ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it
proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more it actually
becomes the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The
workers remain wageworkers--proletarians. The capitalist relation is not
done away with. It is rather brought to a head."[182] Engels did not
think that State ownership necessarily meant Socialism; but he thought
that it might be utilized for the purposes of Socialism if the working
class was sufficiently numerous, organized, and educated to take charge
of the situation. "State ownership of the productive forces is not the
solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical
conditions that give the elements of the solution."
As early as 1892 Karl Kautsky, at the present moment perhaps the
greatest living Socialist editor and economist, wrote that the system of
laissez-faire, for which "State Socialism" offers itself as a remedy,
had long ago lost whatever influence it once had on the capitalist
class--which was never very great. If, then, the theory that "that
government is best which governs least" had been abandoned by the
capitalists themselves, there was no ground why Socialists should devote
their time to the advocacy of a view ("State Socialism") that was merely
a reaction against an outworn standpoint. The theory of collectivism,
that the functions of the State ought to be widely extended, had long
been popular among the capitalists themselves.
"It has already been seen," wrote Kautsky, "that economic and political
development has made necessary and inevitable the taking over of certain
economic functions by the State.... It can by no means be said that
every nationalization of an economic function or of an economic
enterprise is a step towards Socialistic coöperation and that the latter
would grow out of the general nationalization of all economic
enterprises without making a fundamental change in the nature of the
State."[183] In other words, Kautsky denies that partial nationalization
or collectivism is necessarily even a step towards Socialism, and
asserts that it may be a step in the other direction. The German
Socialists acted on this principle when they opposed the nationalization
of the Reichsbank, and it has often guided other Socialist parties.
Kautsky feels that it is often a mistake to transfer the power over
industry, _e.g._ the ownership of the land, into the hands of the State
as now constituted, since this puts a tremendous part of the national
wealth at the disposal of capitalist governments, one of whose prime
functions is to prevent the increase of the political and economic power
of the working people. And, although the State employees would probably
receive a somewhat better treatment than they had while the industry was
privately owned, they would simply form a sort of aristocracy of labor
opposed in general to the interests of the working people.
"Like every State," says Kautsky, "the modern State is in the first
place a tool for the protection of the general interests of the
ruling classes. It changes its nature in no way if it takes over
functions of general utility which aim at advancing the interests
not only of the ruling classes, but also of those of society as a
whole _and_ of the ruling classes, and on no condition does it take
care of these functions in a way which might threaten the general
interests of the ruling classes or their domination.... If the
present-day State nationalizes certain industries and functions, it
does this, not to put limitations on capitalistic exploitation, but
to protect and to strengthen the capitalistic mode of production,
or in order itself to take a share in this exploitation, to
increase its income in this way, and to lessen the payments that
the capitalist class must obtain for its own support in the way of
taxes. And as an exploiter, the State has this advantage over
private capitalists: that it has at its disposal to be used against
the exploited not only the economic powers of the capitalists, but
the political force of the State." (My italics.)
As an illustration of Kautsky's reference to the lessening of taxes
through the profits of government ownership, it may be pointed out that
the German Socialists fear the further nationalization of industries in
Germany on account of the danger that with this increased income the
State would no longer depend on the annual grants of the Reichstag and
would then be in a position to govern without that body. The king of
Prussia and the Emperor of Germany could in that event rule the country
much as the present Czar rules Russia.
As a rule, outside of Great Britain, the advocates of the collectivist
program are also aware that their "Socialism" is not that of the
Socialist movement. In an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Mr. John
Martin, for example, indicates the "State Socialist" tendency of
present-day reform measures in America, and at the same time shows that
they are removed as far as possible from that anti-capitalist trend
which is held by most Socialist Party leaders to be the essence of their
movement. Mr. Martin points to the irrigation projects, the conservation
of national resources, the railway policy of the national
administration, the expansion of the Federal government, and the
tendency towards compulsory arbitration since the interference of
President Roosevelt in the coal strike of 1902, as being "Socialistic"
and yet in no sense class movements. They tend towards social
reconstruction and to greater social organization and order; and there
are no "logical halting places," says Mr. Martin, "on the road to
Collectivism." But so far is this movement from a class movement in Mr.
Martin's opinion that its advance guard consists in part of millionaires
like Mr. Carnegie and Mrs. Sage, "who aim at a social betterment of both
getting and spending of fortunes," while "behind them, uncommitted to
any far-reaching theory, but patriotic and zealous for an improved
society, there are marching philanthropists, doctors, lawyers, business
men, and legislators, people of distinction." And finally the army is
completed by millions of common privates "_for_ whose children the
better order will be the greatest boon." (The italicizing is mine.) The
privates apparently figure rather as mere recipients of public and
private benefactions than as active citizens.[184]
Some of the reformers openly advise joining the Socialist movement with
the hope of using it for the purpose of reform and without aiding it in
any way to reach a goal of its own. Professor John Bates Clark, one of
America's most prominent economists, says of the Socialist Party that it
is legitimate because "it represents the aspirations of a large number
of workingmen" and because "its immediate purposes are good."
"It has changed the uncompromising policy of opposing all halfway
measures," continues Professor Clark. "It welcomes reforms and
tries to enroll in its membership as many as possible of the
reformers.... In short, the Socialist and the reformer may walk
side by side for a considerable distance without troubling
themselves about the unlike goals which they hope in the end to
reach.... What the reformers will have to do is to take the
Socialistic name, walk behind a somewhat red banner, and be ready
to break ranks and leave the army when it reaches the dividing of
the ways."[185]
Professor Clark, it will be seen, has no difficulty in suggesting a
"logical halting place on the road to collectivism"; namely, when the
Socialists turn from collectivist reforms and start out towards
Socialism.
Anti-Socialists may share the Socialist _ideal_ and even favor all the
reforms that the capitalists can permit to be put into practice without
resigning their power and allowing the overthrow of capitalism. But
Socialists have long since seen a way to mark off all such idealists and
reformers--by presenting Socialism for what it really is, not as an
ideal, nor a program of reform under capitalist direction, but as a
method, and the only practical method, of ending capitalist rule in
industry and government.
When Liebknecht insists on "the extreme importance of tactics and the
necessity of maintaining the party's class struggle character," he makes
"tactics," or the practical methods of the movement, _identical_ with
its basic principle, "the class struggle." Kautsky does the same thing
when he says that Socialism is, _both in theory and practice_, a
revolution against capitalism.
"Those who repudiate political revolution as the principal means of
social transformation, or wish to confine the latter to such measures as
have been granted by the ruling class," says Kautsky, "are social
reformers, no matter how much their social ideas may antagonize existing
forms of society."
The Socialists' wholly practical grounds against "reformism" have been
stated by Liebknecht, in his "No Compromise." "This political
Socialism, which in fact is only philanthropic humanitarian radicalism,
has retarded the development of Socialism in France exceedingly," he
wrote in 1899, before Socialist politicians and "reformists" had come
into prominence in other countries than France. "It has diluted and
blurred principles and weakened the Socialist Party because it brought
into it troops upon which no reliance could be placed at the decisive
moment." If, in other words, Socialism is a movement of non-capitalists
against capitalists, nothing could be more fatal to it than a reputation
due chiefly to success in bringing about reforms about which there is
nothing distinctively Socialistic. For this kind of success could not
fail ultimately to swamp the movement with reformers who, like Professor
Clark, are not Socialists and never will be.
It must not be inferred from this that Socialists are indifferent to
reform. They are necessarily far more anxious about it than its
capitalist promoters. For while many "State Socialist" reforms are
profitable to capitalism and even strengthen temporarily its hold on
society, they are in the long run indispensable to Socialism. But this
does not mean that Socialism is compelled to turn aside any of its
energies from its great task of organizing and educating the workers, in
order to hasten these reforms. On the contrary, the larger and the more
revolutionary the Socialist army, the easier it will be for the
progressive capitalists to overcome the conservatives and reactionaries.
Long before this army has become large enough or aggressive enough to
menace capitalism and so to throw all capitalists together in a single
organization wholly devoted to defensive measures, there will be a long
period--already begun in Great Britain, France, and other
countries--when the growth of Socialism will make the progressive
capitalists supreme by giving them _the balance of power_. In order,
then, to hasten and aid the capitalistic form of progress, Socialists
need only see that their own growth is sufficiently rapid. As the
Socialists are always ready to support every measure of capitalist
reform, the capitalist progressives need only then secure enough
strength in Parliaments so that their votes added to those of the
Socialists would form a majority. As soon as progressive capitalism is
at all developed, reforms are thus automatically aided by the Socialist
vote, without the necessity of active Socialist participation--thus
leaving the Socialists free to attend to matters that depend wholly on
their own efforts; namely, the organization and education of the
non-capitalist masses for aggressive measures leading towards the
overthrow of capitalism.
Opposition to the policy of absorption in ordinary reform movements is
general in the international movement outside of Great Britain. Eugene
V. Debs, three times presidential candidate of the American Socialist
Party, is as totally opposed to "reformism" as are any of the Europeans.
"_The revolutionary character of our party and of our movement_," he
said in a personal letter to the present writer, which was published in
the Socialist press, "_must be preserved in all its integrity at all
cost, for if that be compromised we had better cease to exist_.... If
the trimmers had their way we should degenerate into bourgeois
reformers.... But they will not have their way." (Italics mine.)
No American Socialist has more ably summarized the dangers opportunism
brings to the movement than Professor George D. Herron in his pamphlet,
"From Revolution to Revolution," taken from a speech made as early as
1903. Later events, it will be noted, have strikingly verified his
predictions as to the growing popularity of the word "Socialism" with
nearly all political elements in this country.
"Great initiatives and revolutions," Herron says, "have always been
robbed of definition and issue when adopted by the class against
which the revolt was directed....
"Let Socialists take knowledge and warning. The possessing class is
getting ready to give the people a few more crumbs of what is
theirs.... If it comes to that, they are ready to give some things
_in the name of Socialism_.... The old political parties will be
adopting what they are pleased to call Socialistic planks in their
platforms; and the churches will be coming with the insipid
'Christian Socialism,' and their hypocrisy and brotherly love. We
shall soon see Mr. Hanna and Bishop Potter, Mr. Hearst and Dr.
Lyman Abbott, even Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Bryan, posing as
reasonable kinds of Socialists. You will find the name of Socialism
repeatedly taken in vain, and perhaps successfully. You will see
the Socialist movement bridled and saddled by capitalism, in the
hope of riding it to a new lease of capitalistic power....
"But Socialism, like liberty or truth, is something you cannot have
a part of; you must have the whole or you will have nothing; you
can only gain or lose the whole, you cannot gain or lose a part.
You may have municipal ownerships, nationalized transportation,
initiative and referendum, civil service reforms and many other
capitalist concessions, and be all the farther away from Social
Democracy.... You may have any kind and number of reforms you
please, any kind and number of revolutions or revivals you please,
any kind and number of new ways of doing good you please, it will
not matter to capitalism, so long as it remains at the root of
things, the result of all your plans and pains will be gathered
into the Capitalist granary." (The italics are mine.)
Yet no Socialist dreams that the presence in the movement of
semi-Socialist or non-Socialist elements, which is both the cause and
the effect of reformism and compromise, is a mere accident, or that
there is any device by which they may either be kept out or
eliminated--until the time is ripe. The presence of opportunists and
reformists in all Socialist parties is as much an inevitable result at a
certain stage of social evolution as the appearance of Socialism itself.
The time will come when these "Mitlaüfer," as the Germans call them,
will either become wholly Socialist or will desert the movement, as has
so often happened, to become a part of the rising tide of "State
Socialism," but that day has not yet arrived.
The division of the organization at a certain stage into two wings is
held by the able Austrian Socialist, Otto Bauer, to be a universal and
necessary process in its development. The first stage is one where all
party members are agreed, since it is then merely a question of the
propaganda of general and revolutionary _ideas_. The second stage (the
present one) arises when the party has already obtained a modest measure
of power which can be either _cashed in_ and utilized for immediate and
material gains or saved up and held for obtaining more power, or for
both objects in degrees varying according as one or the other is
considered more important. Bauer shows that these two policies of
accumulating power and of spending it arise necessarily out of the
social composition of the party at its present stage and the general
social environment in which it finds itself.
At the third stage, he says, when the proletariat has come to form the
overwhelming majority of the population, their campaign for the conquest
of political power appears to the possessing classes for the first time
as a threatening danger. The capitalist parties then unite closely
together against the Social Democracy; what once separated them now
appears small in comparison to the danger which threatens their profits,
their rents, and their monopolistic incomes. So there arises again at
this higher stage of capitalist domination, as was the case at its
beginning, "a Social Democracy in battle _against all the possessing
classes, against the whole power of the organized state_." (Italics
mine.)[186] When the third stage arrives, these reformists who do not
intend to leave the revolutionary movement, begin to get ready to follow
it. Already the most prominent reformist Socialists outside of England
_claim_ that their position is revolutionary. This is true of the
best-known German reformist, Bernstein; it is true of Jaurès; and it is
also true of Berger in this country. Bernstein argues in his book,
"Evolutionary Socialism," that constitutional legislation is best
adapted to positive social-political work, "to the creation of permanent
economic arrangements." But he also says that "the revolutionary way
does quicker work as far as it deals with removal of obstacles which a
privileged minority places in the path of social progress." As for
choosing between the revolutionary and non-revolutionary methods, he
admits that revolutionary tactics can be abandoned only when the
non-propertied majority of a nation has become firmly established in
power; that is, when political democracy is so deeply rooted and
advanced that it can be applied successfully to questions of property;
"when a nation has attained a position where the rights of the
propertied minority have ceased to be a serious obstacle of social
progress." Certainly no nation could claim to be in such a position
to-day, unless it were, possibly, Australia, though there the empire of
unoccupied land gives to every citizen possibilities at least of
acquiring property, and relieves the pressure of the class struggle
until the country is settled. This view of Bernstein's, let it be noted,
is a far different one from that prevailing in England--as expressed,
for example, in an organ of the Independent Labour Party, where it is
said that "fortunately 'revolution' in this country has ceased to be
anything more than an affected phrase." Certainly there are few modern
countries where the "propertied minority," of which Bernstein speaks,
constitutes a more serious obstacle to progress than it does in England.
Jaurès's position is quite similar to that of Bernstein. He declared in
a recent French Congress that he was both a revolutionist and a
reformer. He indorses the idea of the general strike, but urges that it
should not be used until the work of education and propaganda has made
the time ready, "until a very large and strong organization is ready to
back up the strikers," and until a large section of public opinion is
prepared to recognize the legitimacy of their object. He says he expects
the time to arrive when "the reforms in the interest of the whole
working class which have been promised will have been systematically
refused," and then "the general strike will be the only resource left";
and finally cries, "Never in the name of the working people will we give
up the right of insurrection." This position is verbally correct from
the Socialist standpoint, and it shows the power of the revolutionary
idea in France, when even Jaurès is forced to respect it. But any
capitalist politician might safely use the same expressions--so long, at
least, as revolution is still far away.
So also Mr. Berger has written in the _Social Democratic Herald_ of
Milwaukee that "all the ballot can do is to strengthen the power of
resistance of the laboring people."
"We whom the western ultra class-conscious proletarians ... are
wont to call 'opportunists,'" writes Berger, "we know right well
that the social question can no more be solved by street riots and
insurrections than by bombs and dynamite.
"Yet, by the ballot _alone_, it will never be solved.
"Up to this time men have always solved great questions by _blood_
and _iron_." Berger says he is not given to reciting revolutionary
phrases, but asserts that the plutocrats are taking the country in
the direction of "a violent and bloody revolution."
"Therefore," he says, "each of the 500,000 Socialist voters, and of
the two million workingmen who instinctively incline our way,
should, besides doing much reading and still more thinking, also
have a good rifle and the necessary rounds of ammunition in his
home and be prepared to back up his ballot with his bullets if
necessary.... Now, I deny that dealing with a blind and greedy
plutocratic class as we are dealing in this country, the outcome
can ever be peaceable, or that any reasonable change can ever be
brought about by the ballot in the end.
"I predict that a large part of the capitalist class will be wiped
out for much smaller things ... most of the plutocratic class,
together with the politicians, will have to disappear as completely
as the feudal lords and their retinue disappeared during the French
revolution.
"That cannot be done by the ballot, or _only_ by the ballot.
"The ballot cannot count for much in a pinch."[187] (My italics.)
And in another number Mr. Berger writes:--
"As long as we are in the minority we, of course, have _no right to
force_ our opinion _upon an unwilling majority_.... Yet we do not
deny that _after we have convinced the majority of the people_, we
are going to use force if the minority should hesitate."[188] (My
italics.)
Few will question the revolutionary nature of this language. But such
expressions have always been common at critical moments, even among
non-Socialists. We have only to recall the "bloody-bridles" speech of a
former populist governor of Colorado, or the advice of the _New York
Evening Journal_ that every citizen ought to provide against future
contingencies by keeping a rifle in his home. Revolutionary language has
no necessary relation to Socialism.
Mr. Berger, moreover, has also used the threat of revolution, not as a
progressive but as a reactionary force, not in the sense of Marx, who
believed that a revolution, when the times were ripe and the Socialists
ready, would bring incalculably more good than evil, but in the sense of
the capitalists, for whom it is the most terrible of all possibilities.
It is common for conservative statesmen to use precisely the same threat
to secure necessary capitalist reforms.
"Some day there will be a volcanic eruption," said Berger in his first
speech in Congress; "a fearful retribution will be enacted on the
capitalist class as a class, and the innocent will suffer with the
guilty. Such a revolution would throw humanity back into semi-barbarism
and cause even a temporary retrogression of civilization."
Such is the language used against revolutions by conservatives or
reactionaries. Never has it been so applied by a Marx or an Engels, a
Liebknecht, a Kautsky or a Bebel. Without underestimating the enormous
cost of revolutions, the most eminent Socialists reckon them as nothing
compared with the probable gains, or the far greater costs of continuing
present conditions. The assertion of manhood that is involved in every
great revolution from below in itself implies, in the Socialist view,
not retrogression, but a stupendous advance; and any reversion to
semi-barbarism that may take place in the course of the revolution is
likely, in their opinion, to be far more than compensated in other
directions, even during the revolutionary period (to say nothing of
ultimate results).
Revolutionary phrases and scares are of course abhorred by capitalistic
parties, and considered dangerous, unless there is some very strong
occasion for reverting to their use. But such occasions are becoming
more and more frequent. Conservative capitalists are more and more
grateful for any outbreak that alarms or burdens the neutral classes and
serves as a useful pretext for that repression or reaction which their
interests require. Progressive capitalists, on the other hand, use the
very same disturbances to urge reforms they desire, on the ground that
such measures are necessary to avoid "revolution." The disturbance may
be as far as possible from revolutionary at bottom. It is only necessary
that it should be sufficiently novel and disagreeable to attract
attention and cause impatience and irritation among those who have to
pay for it. Like the British strikes of 1911, it may not cost the
capitalist class as a whole one-hundredth part of one per cent of its
income. And it might be possible to repress, within a short time and at
no greater expense, a movement many times more menacing. Provided it
serves to put the supporters of capitalism on their feet, whatever they
do as a result, whether in the way of repression or of reform, will be
but to carry out long-cherished plans for advancing their own interests,
plans that would have been the same even though there had been no shadow
of a "revolutionary" movement on the horizon. The only difference is
that such pseudo-revolutionary or semi-revolutionary disturbances serve
as stimuli to put the more inert of the capitalist forces in motion,
and, until the disturbances become truly menacing, strengthen the
capitalist position.
The use of revolutionary phrases does not then, of itself, demonstrate
an approach to the revolutionary position, though we may assume, on
other grounds, that the majority of the reformist Socialists, who take a
revolutionary position as regards certain _future_ contingencies, are in
earnest. But this indicates nothing as to the character of their
Socialism to-day. The important question is, how far their revolutionary
philosophy goes when directed, not at a hypothetical future situation
but to questions of the present moment.
In all the leading countries of the world, except Great Britain, the
majority of Socialists expect a revolutionary crisis in the future,
because they recognize, with that able student of the movement,
Professor Sombart, that "history knows of no case where a class has
freely given up the rights which it regarded as belonging to
itself."[189] This does not mean that Socialists suppose that all
progress must await a revolutionary period. Engels insisted that he and
his associates were profiting more by lawful than by unlawful and
revolutionary action. It means that Socialists do not believe that the
capitalists will allow such action to remain lawful long enough
materially to increase the income of the working class and its economic
and political power as compared with their own.
Jaurès's position as to present politics is based on the very opposite
view. "You will have to lead millions of men to the borders of an
impassable gulf," he says to the revolutionists, "but the gulf will not
be easier for the millions of men to pass over than it was for a hundred
thousand. What we wish is to try to diminish the width of the gulf which
separates the exploited in present-day society from their situation in
the new society."[190] The revolutionaries assert, on the contrary, that
nothing Socialists can do at the present time can moderate the class
war, or lessen the power of capitalism to maintain and increase the
distance between itself and the masses. In direct disagreement with
Jaurès, they say that when a sufficient numerical majority has been
acquired, especially in this day when the masses are educated, it will
be able to overcome any obstacle whatever, even what Jaurès calls the
impassable gulf--whether in the meanwhile that gulf will have become
narrower or wider than it is to-day, and they believe that the day of
this triumph would be delayed rather than brought nearer if the workers
were to divert their energies from revolutionary propaganda and
organization, to political trading in the interest of reforms that bring
no greater gains to the workers than to their exploiters. The
revolutionary majority believes that the best that can be done at
present is for the workers to train and organize themselves, and always
to devise and study and prepare the means by which capitalism can be
most successfully and economically assaulted when sufficient numbers are
once aroused for successful revolt.
When revolutionary Socialism is not pure speculation, it takes the form
of the present-day "class struggle" against capitalism. The view that
existing society can be _gradually_ transformed into a social democratic
one, Kautsky believes to be merely an inheritance of the past, of a
period "when it was generally believed that further development would
take place exclusively on the _economic_ field, without the necessity of
any kind of change in the relative distribution of _political_
institutions." (Italics mine.)[191]
"Neither a railroad [that is, its administration] nor a ministry can be
changed gradually, but only at a single stroke," says Kautsky, to
illustrate the sort of a change Socialists expect. The need of such a
complete change does not decrease on account of any reforms that are
introduced before such a change takes place. "There are some
politicians," he says, "who assert that only _despotic_ class rule
necessitates revolution; that revolution is rendered superfluous by
_democracy_. It is claimed that we have to-day sufficient democracy in
all civilized countries to make possible a peaceable revolutionless
development." (My italics.) As means by which these politicians hope to
achieve such a revolutionless development, Kautsky mentions the gradual
increase of the power of the trade unions, the penetration of Socialists
into local governments, and finally the growing power of Socialist
minorities in parliaments where they are supposed to be gaining
increasing influence, pushing through one reform after another,
restricting the power of the capitalists by labor legislation and
extending the functions of the government. "So by the exercise of
democratic rights upon existing grounds, the capitalist society is
[according to these opportunists] gradually and without any shock
growing into Socialism."[192]
"This idyl becomes true," Kautsky says, "only if we grant that but one
side of the opposed forces [the proletariat] is growing and increasing
in strength, while the other side [the capitalists] remains immovably
fixed to the same spot." But he believes that the very contrary is the
case, that the capitalists are gaining in strength all the time, and
that the advance of the working class merely goads the capitalists on
"_to develop new powers and to discover and apply new methods of
resistance and repression_."[193]
Kautsky says that the present form of democracy, though it is to the
Socialist movement what light and air are to the organism, hinders in no
way the development of capitalism, the organization and economic powers
of which improve and increase faster than those of the working people.
"To be sure, the unions are growing," say Kautsky, "but simultaneously
and faster grows the concentration of capital and its organization into
gigantic monopolies. To be sure, the Socialist press is growing, but
simultaneously grows the partyless and characterless press that poisons
and unnerves even wider circles of people. To be sure, wages are rising,
but still faster rise the accumulations of profits. Certainly the
number of Socialist representatives in Parliament grows, but still more
rapidly sinks the significance and efficiency of this institution, while
at the same time parliamentary majorities, like the government, fall
into ever greater dependence on the powers of high finance." (Possibly
events of the past year or two mark the beginning of the waning of the
powers of monopolists, and of the partial transfer of those powers to a
capitalistic middle class; but exploitation of _the working class_
continues under such new masters no less vigorously than before.)
A recent discussion between Kautsky and the reformist leader,
Maurenbrecher, brought out some of these points very sharply.[194]
Maurenbrecher said, "In Parliament we wish to do practical work, to
secure funds for social reforms--so that step by step we may go on
toward the transformation of our class government." Kautsky replied that
while the revolutionaries wish also to do practical work in Parliament,
they can "see beyond"; and he says of Maurenbrecher's view: "This would
all be very fine, if we were alone in the world, if we could arrange our
fields of battle and our tactics to suit our taste. But we have to do
with opponents who venture everything to prevent the triumph of the
proletariat. Comrade Maurenbrecher will acknowledge, I suppose, that the
victory of the proletariat will mean the end of capitalist exploitation.
Does he expect the exploiters to look on good-naturedly while we take
one position after another and make ready for their expropriation? If
so, he lives under a mighty illusion. Imagine for a moment that our
parliamentary activity were to assume forms which threatened the
supremacy of the capitalists. What would happen? The capitalists would
try to put an end to parliamentary forms of government. In particular
they would rather do away with the universal, direct, and secret ballot
than quietly capitulate to the proletariat." As Premier von Buelow
declared while in office that he would not hesitate to take the measure
that Kautsky anticipates, we have every reason to believe that this very
_coup d'état_ is still contemplated in Germany--and we have equally good
reason to believe that if the Socialists were about to obtain a majority
in the governments of France, Great Britain, or the United States, the
capitalist class, yet in control, would be ready to abolish, not only
universal suffrage and various constitutional rights, but any and all
rights of the people that stood in the way of the maintenance of
capitalistic rule. Declarations of Briand and Roosevelt quoted in later
chapters (Part III, Chapters VI and VII) are illustrations of what might
be expected.
The same position taken by Kautsky in Germany is taken by Otto Bauer,
who seems destined to succeed Victor Adler (upon the latter's death or
retirement) as the most representative and influential spokesman of the
Austrian Party. Reviewing the political situation after the Vienna food
riots of 1911, Dr. Bauer writes:--
"The illusion that, once having won equal suffrage, we might
peacefully and gradually raise up the working class, proceeding
from one 'positive result' to another, has been completely
destroyed. In Austria, also, the road leads to the increase of
class oppositions, to the heaping up of wealth on the one side, and
of misery, revolt, and embitterment on the other, to the division
of society into two hostile camps, arming and preparing themselves
for war."[195]
Even though underlying economic forces should be found to be improving
Labor's condition at a snail's pace, instead of actually heaping up more
misery, no changes would be required in any of the other statements, or
in the conclusion of this paragraph, which, with this exception,
undoubtedly expresses the views of the overwhelming majority of
Socialists the world over.
"Democracy cannot do away with the class antagonisms of capitalist
society," says Kautsky, referring to the "State Socialist" reforms of
semidemocratic governments like those of Australia and Great Britain.
"Neither can we avoid the final outcome of these antagonisms--the
overthrow of present society. One thing it can do. It cannot abolish the
revolution, but it can avert many premature, hopeless revolutionary
attempts and render superfluous many revolutionary uprisings. It creates
clearness regarding the relative strength of the different parties and
classes."
The late Paul Lafargue stated the same principle at a recent congress of
the French Socialist Party, contending that, as long as capitalists
still control the national administration, representatives are sent by
the Socialists to the Chamber of Deputies, _not in the hope of
diminishing the power of the capitalist State to oppress, but to combat
this power, "to procure for the Party a new and more magnificent field
of battle_."
FOOTNOTES:
[178] Marx and Engels, the "Communist Manifesto."
[179] Anton Menger, "L'État Socialiste" (Paris, 1904), p. 359.
[180] August Bebel, "Woman, Past, Present, and Future" (San Francisco,
1897), p. 128.
[181] Frederick Engels, "Anti-Duhring" (3d ed., Stuttgart, 1894), p. 92.
[182] Frederick Engels, "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific," pp. 71-72.
[183] Karl Kautsky's "Erfurter Programm," p. 129.
[184] John Martin, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1908.
[185] Professor John Bates Clark, in the _Congregationalist and
Christian World_ (Boston), May 15, 1909.
[186] Otto Bauer, "Die Nationalitaeten-frage und die Sozial-demokratie,"
p. 487.
[187] _Social-Democratic Herald_, July 31, 1909.
[188] _Social-Democratic Herald_, Vol. XII, No. 5.
[189] Professor Werner Sombert, "Socialism and the Socialist Movement,"
p. 59.
[190] Jaurès, "Studies in Socialism."
[191] Kautsky, "The Road to Power," p. 101.
[192] Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," p. 66.
[193] Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 66-67.
[194] Kautsky, _International Socialist Review_, 1910.
[195] _Die Neue Zeit_, Sept. 11, 1911.
CHAPTER VII
THE REVOLUTIONARY TREND
With the exception of a few years (1899 to 1903) the revolutionary and
anti-"reformist" (not anti-reform) position of the international
movement has become stronger every year. It is a relatively short time,
not more than twenty years, since the reformists first began to make
themselves heard in the Socialist movement, and their influence
increased until the German Congress at Dresden in 1903, the
International Congress of 1904 at Amsterdam, and the definite separation
of the Socialists of France from Millerand at this time and from Briand
shortly afterwards (Chapter II). Since then their influence has rapidly
receded.
The spirit of the international movement, on the whole, is more and more
that of the great German Socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht, who advised the
party to be "always on the offensive and never on the defensive,"[196]
or of La Salle when he declared, "True political power will have to be
fought for, and cannot be bought."[197]
The revolutionary policy of the leading Socialist parties has not become
less pronounced with their growth and maturity as opponents hoped it
would. On the contrary, all the most important Socialist assemblies of
the last ten years, from the International Congress at Paris in 1900,
have reiterated or strengthened the old position. The Congress of Paris
in 1900 adopted a resolution introduced by Kautsky which declared that
the "Social Democracy has taken to itself the task of organizing the
working people into an army ready for the social war, and it must,
therefore, above all else, make sure that the working classes become
conscious of their interests and of their power." The great task of the
Socialists at the present time is the preparation of the social war of
the future, and not any effort to improve the capitalists' society. The
working classes are to be made conscious of _their own strength_--which
will surely not be brought about by any reforms which, however much they
may benefit the workers, favor equally or to a still greater degree the
capitalistic and governing classes.
The resolution continued: "The proletariat in a modern democratic State
cannot obtain political power accidentally. It can do so only when the
long and difficult work of the political and economic organization of
the proletariat is at an end, when its physical and moral regeneration
have been accomplished, and when more and more seats have been won in
municipal and other _legislative_ bodies.... But where the government is
centralized, political power cannot be obtained step by step." (The
italics are mine.)[198]
According to the proposer and mover of this resolution and its
supporters, nearly all, if not all, modern governments are at the bottom
centralized in one form or another. So the resolution amounts to saying
that political power cannot be obtained step by step. The election of
Socialist minorities in the legislatures can only be used to urge
capitalism on its work of bringing up the physical condition and
industrial productivity of the masses, and not for the purpose of
organizing and educating them with the object of seizing the reins of
power, of overthrowing capitalism, and revolutionizing the present form
of government.
The resolution adopted at the following International Congress at
Amsterdam (in 1904) was necessitated by certain ambiguities in the
former one. Yet Kautsky's explanation of his own meaning makes it quite
clear that even the Paris resolution was revolutionary in its intent,
and the Amsterdam Congresses, moreover, readopted its main proposition
that "the Social Democracy could not accept any participation in
government in capitalist society."
At this latter congress Jaurès's proposed reformist tactics were
definitely and finally rejected so that they have not even been
discussed at the later international gatherings. This was a critical
moment in the international movement; for it was about this time that
the tendency to opportunism was at its strongest, and this was the year
in which it was decided against Jaurès that all Millerands of the
future, impatient to seize immediate power in the name of Socialism, no
matter how sincerely they might hope in this way to benefit the
movement, should be looked upon as traitors to the cause. The _terms
upon which such power was secured or held_ were considered necessarily
to be such as to compromise the principles of the movement. Socialists
in high government positions, it was pointed out, by the very fact of
their acceptance of such responsibilities, become servants of a
capitalistic administration--and of the economic régime it supports.
Jaurès began his argument with the proposition that the difference
between Socialism and mere reform consisted in the fact that the former
alone worked for "a total realization of all reforms" and "the complete
transformation of capitalistic property into social property"--which is
merely the statement of Socialism as an ultimate ideal, now indorsed
even by many anti-Socialists. He next quoted Liebknecht to the effect
that there were only 200,000 individuals in Germany, and Guesde,
Jaurès's chief Socialist opponent in France, to the effect that the
number was the same in the latter country, who, on account of their
economic interests, were directly and completely opposed to Socialism;
and this being the case, he held that the task of the body of working
people already organized by the Socialists against capitalism, was
gradually to draw all but this 200,000 into the Socialist ranks. He
concluded that it was the duty of the Socialists to "ward off reaction,
to obtain reforms and to develop labor legislation" by the help of this
larger mass, which, when added to their own numbers, constituted 97 or
98 per cent of the population.
It goes without saying, replied the revolutionaries, that all Socialists
will lend their assistance to any elements of the population who are
fighting against reaction and in favor of labor legislation and reform,
but it does not follow that they should consider this the chief part of
their work, nor that they should even feel it necessary to claim that
the Socialists were _leading_ the non-Socialists in these matters.
In contrasting his section of the French Party with the German movement,
Jaurès claimed that the French were both more revolutionary than the
German, and more practical in their efforts at immediate reform. "You,"
he said, speaking to the Germans, "have neither a revolutionary nor a
parliamentary activity." He reminded them that having never had a
revolution they could not have a revolutionary tradition, that universal
suffrage had been given to them from above (by Bismarck), instead of
having been conquered from below, that they had been forced tamely to
submit when they had recently been robbed of it in Saxony. "You continue
in this way too often," he continued, "to obscure and to weaken, in the
German working class, the force of a revolutionary tradition already
too weak through historic causes." And finally he asserted that the
German Socialists, who, a year or so before this conference, had
obtained the enormous number of 3,000,000 votes, had been able to do
nothing with them in the Reichstag. He said that this was due in part to
the character of the German movement, as shaped by the circumstances of
the past, and partly to the fact that the Reichstag was powerless in the
German government, and claimed that they would have been only too glad
to follow the French reformists' course, if they could have done so,
just as their only reason for not using revolutionary measures was also
that the German government was too strong for them.
"Then," concluded Jaurès, "you do not know which road you will choose.
There was expected from you after this great victory a battle cry, a
program of action, a policy. You have explored, you have spied around,
watched events; the public's state of mind was not ripe. And then before
your own working class and before the international working class, you
masked the feebleness of your activity by taking refuge in extreme
theoretical formulas which your eminent comrade, Kautsky, will furnish
to you until the life goes out of him." As time has not yet tested
Jaurès's accusations, they cannot yet be finally disproved or proved.
The replies of his revolutionary opponents at the Congress were chiefly
counter-accusations. But the later development of the German movement
gives, as I shall show, strong reasons why Jaurès's criticisms should be
accepted as being true only of the reformist minority of the German
Party.
Jaurès referred to the British unionists as an example of the success of
reformist tactics. Bebel was able to dispose of this argument. "The
capitalists of England are the most able in the world," he said. "If
next year at the general elections English Liberalism is victorious, it
will again make one of you, perhaps John Burns, an Under Secretary of
State, not to take an advance towards Socialism, but to be able to say
to the working people that it gives them voluntarily what has been
refused after a struggle on the Continent, in order to keep the votes of
the workers." (This is just what happened.)
"Socialism," he concluded, "cannot accept a share of power; it is
obliged to wait for all of the power."
The Amsterdam resolution, passed by a large majority after this debate,
was almost identical with that which had been adopted by a vote of 288
to 11 at the German Congress at Dresden in the previous year (1903),
and although the Austrian delegates and others, nearly half the total,
had expressed a preference for a substitute of a more moderate
character, they did not hesitate, when this motion was defeated, to
indorse the more radical one that was finally adopted. And in 1909, when
this Dresden (or Amsterdam) resolution came up for discussion at the
German Congress of Leipzig, it was unanimously reaffirmed. Those
opposing it did not dare to dispute it at all in principle, but merely
expressed the mental reservation that it was qualified by another
resolution adopted at a recent Congress which had declared that the
party should be absolutely free to decide the question of _temporary_
political alliances in _elections_. As such electoral combinations,
valid only for the _second ballot_, and lapsing immediately after the
elections, had always been common, the Dresden resolution was never
meant by the majority of those voting for it to forbid them. Its purpose
was only to insist that the object of the Socialists must always be
social revolution and not reform, since, to use its own words, supreme
political power "cannot be obtained step by step."
"The Congress condemns most emphatically," the Dresden resolution
declared, "the revisionist attempt to alter our hitherto victorious
policy, a policy based upon the class struggle; just as in the past _we
shall go on achieving power by conquering our enemies, not by
compromising with the existing order of things_." (My italics.) In a
recent letter widely quoted by the continental press, August Bebel
contended that in Germany at least the Social Democracy and the other
political parties have grown farther and farther apart during the last
fifty years. While Bebel claims that Socialists support every form of
progress, he insists that nevertheless they remain fundamentally opposed
even to the Liberal parties, for the reason, as he explained at the Jena
Congress (1905), that "_an opposition party can, on the whole, have no
decisive influence until it gains control of the government_," that
until the Socialists themselves have a majority, governments could be
controlled only by an alliance with non-Socialist parties. "If you (the
Socialist Party) want to have that kind of an influence," said Bebel,
"then stick your program in your pocket, leave the standpoint of your
principles, concern yourself only with purely practical things, and you
will be cordially welcome as allies." (Italics mine.) At the Nuremburg
Congress (1908) he said: "We shall reach our goal, not through little
concessions, through creeping on the ground, and coming down to the
masses in this way, but by raising the masses up to us, by inspiring
them with our great aims."
Another question arose in the German Party which at the bottom involved
the same principles. It had been settled that Socialists could not
accept a share in any non-Socialist administration, no matter how
progressive it might be. But if a social reform government is ready to
grant one or more measures much desired by Socialists, shall the latter
vote the new taxes necessary for these measures, thus affording new
resources to a hostile government, and shall it further support the
annual budget of the administration, thus extending the powers of the
capitalist party that happens to be in power? The Socialist policy, it
is acknowledged, has hitherto been to vote for these individual reforms,
but never to prolong the life of an existing non-Socialist government.
The fundamental question, says Kautsky, _is to whom is the budget
granted_, and not _what measures are proposed_. "To grant the budget,"
he says, "means to give the government the right to raise the taxes
provided for; it means to put into the hands of the governor the control
of hundreds of millions of money, as well as hundreds of thousands of
people, laborers and officeholders, who are paid out of these millions."
That is to say, the Socialist Party, according to the reasoning of
Kautsky and the overwhelming majority of Socialists, wherever it has
become a national factor of the first importance, must remain an
opposition party--until the main purpose for which it exists has been
accomplished; namely, the capture of the government, and for this
purpose it must make every effort to starve out one administration after
another by refusing supplies. At the National Congress at Nuremburg in
1908 it was decided by a two-thirds vote that in no one of the
confederated governments of Germany would Socialists be allowed to vote
for any government other than that of their own party, no matter how
radical it might be, unless under altogether extraordinary
circumstances, such as are not likely to occur. Some of the delegates of
South Germany said that they would not be bound by this decision, but
later a number expressed their willingness to accede to it, while others
of them were forced to do so by the local congresses of their own party.
This question was brought up at the German Congress at Leipzig in 1909.
The parties in possession of the government had proposed a graduated
inheritance tax, which nearly all Socialists approve. Moreover, a _part_
of the taxes of the year would be used for social reforms. Favoring as
they did the change in the method of taxation, would the Socialist
members of the Reichstag be justified in voting for the proposed tax at
the third reading? All agreed that it was well to express their friendly
attitude to this form of tax at the earlier readings, but approval at
the third reading might have the effect of finally turning over a new
sum of money to an unfriendly government; although it would be collected
from the wealthier classes alone, it might be expended largely for
anti-democratic purposes. The revolutionaries, with whom stood the
chairman of the convention, the late Paul Singer, were against voting
for the tax on the third reading, for they argued that if the Socialists
granted an increased income to a hostile government merely because they
were pleased with the form of the taxes proposed, it might become
possible in the future for capitalist governments to secure Socialist
financial support in raising the money for any kind of reactionary
measures merely by proving that they were not obtaining the means for
carrying them out from the working people.
Half of the members of the Parliamentary group, on the other hand,
decided in favor of voting for the tax on the third reading, the
reformists largely on the ground that it would furnish the means for
social reforms, Bebel and others, however, on the entirely different
ground that if the upper classes had to pay the bill for imperialism and
militarism, the increase of expenditures on armaments would not long
continue.
The "radical" Socialists represented by Ledebour proposed that not one
penny should be granted the Empire except in return for true
constitutional government by the Kaiser. Certainly this was not asking
too much, even though it would constitute a political revolution, for
the majority of the whole Reichstag afterwards adopted a resolution
proposed by Ledebour demanding such guarantees. In other words, he would
make all other questions second to that of political power--no economic
reform whatever being a sufficient price to compensate for turning aside
from the effort to obtain democratic government, _i.e._ more power.
Bebel, however, said he would have voted for the bill if he had been
present, though he made it clear both at this and at the succeeding
congress that he had no intention of affording the least support to a
capitalistic administration (see below).
It appears that Bebel's position on this matter is really the more
radical. Ledebour and Singer seemed to feel that the further
democratization of the government depends on Socialist pressure. The
more revolutionary view is that capitalism in Germany, with the
irresponsible Kaiser, the unequal Reichstag election districts, the
anti-democratic suffrage law and constitution in Prussia, is
impregnable--but that the progressive capitalists may themselves force
the reactionaries to take certain steps toward democracy in order to
check absolutism, bureaucracy, church influence, agrarian legislation,
and certain excesses of militarism. (See the previous chapter.) The
position of the "radicals" was that capitalism was so profoundly
reactionary that even the shifting of the burdens of taxation for
military purposes to capitalist shoulders should not check it. Bebel's
view was more revolutionary. For even conceding to capitalism the
possibility of checking armaments and ending wars, and of establishing
semidemocratic governments on the French or English models, he finds the
remainder of the indictment against it quite sufficient to justify the
most revolutionary policy.
However, the main question was not really involved at this Congress. A
government might be supported on this tax question and the support be
withdrawn later when it came to a critical vote on the budget as a
whole, or on some other favorable occasion.
It was only at the Congress at Magdeburg, in 1910, that the latter
question was finally disposed of. The Magdeburg Congress not only
reaffirmed the revolutionary policy previously decided upon by the
German and International Congresses already mentioned, but it also
showed that the revolutionary majority, stronger and more determined
than ever, was ready and able to carry out its intention of forcing the
reformist minority to follow the revolutionary course. This congress,
besides more accurately defining the view of the revolutionary majority,
made clearer than ever the profound differences of opinion in the
Socialist camp. The subject under discussion was: Can a Socialist party
support a relatively progressive capitalist government by voting for the
budget when no fatal danger threatens the party's existence, such as
some _coup d'état_? Seventeen of the twenty Socialist members of the
Legislature of Baden, without any such excuse, had supported a more or
less progressive government and kept it in power, the very action that
had been so often forbidden.
The importance of this act of revolt lay in the fact that the government
the Socialists had supported, however progressive it might be, was
frankly anti-Socialist. On several occasions the Prime Minister, Herr
von Bodman, has made declarations of the most hostile character, as, for
instance, that no employee of the government could be a Social-Democrat,
and that the local officials should make reports of the personnel of the
army recruits "so that those of Social-Democratic leanings could be
properly attended to." After one of these declarations, even the
Socialist members of the legislature who had previously planned to vote
for the government, were repelled, and decided that was impossible to
carry out their intentions. The Prime Minister thereupon made a
conciliatory speech for the purpose of once more obtaining this vote.
But even this speech was by no means free from the most marked hostility
to Socialism. "To portray the Social-Democracy as a mere disease is not
correct," said he; "it is to be cast aside in so far as it fights the
monarchy and the political order. But, on the other hand, it is a
tremendous movement for the uplift of the fourth estate, and therefore
it deserves recognition."
It will be seen that the Prime Minister withdrew nothing of his previous
accusations. But the Baden Social-Democrats finally decided that, if
they did not support him, some important reforms would be lost,
especially a proposed improvement of the suffrage for town and township
officials. This was not a very radical advance, for even the
_Frankfurter Zeitung_, a strongly anti-Socialist organ, wrote that "from
the standpoint of consistent Liberalism the bill left so many
aspirations and so many just demands unfulfilled that even the parties
of the left, not to speak of the Social-Democrats, would be justified in
declining to pass the measure."
Indeed the South German reformists do not really pretend that it is any
one particular reform that justifies laying aside or temporarily
subordinating the fight against capitalist government. At the Nuremburg
Congress in 1908 the ground given for an act of this kind was that if
Socialists did not vote for that budget particularly, a large number of
the officials and workingmen employed by the government would fail to
receive the raise of wages or salary that it offered. Herr Frank,
spokesman of the Baden Party, now defended the capitalist government of
Baden and the Socialist action in supporting it, on the general ground
that _advantages could thus be secured for the working classes_. Of
course, this brings up immediately the question: if moderate material
advantages are all the working people are striving for, why cannot some
other party which has more _power_ than the Socialists give still more
of these advantages? Indeed, the fact that all these reforms were
supported by capitalist parties and were allowed to pass by a frankly
capitalistic government (progressive, no doubt, but anti-Socialist),
gives this government and these parties a superior claim to the credit
of having brought the reforms about.