Even the small farmer who hires no labor, and does not even own his

farm, will probably be held, as a class, by capitalism, but only by the

collectivist capitalism of the future, which will probably protect him

from landlordism by keeping the title to the land, but dividing the

unearned increment with him by a system of long leases, and using its

share of this increment for the promotion of agriculture and for other

purposes he approves.

Socialists, then, do not expect to include in their ranks in

considerable numbers, either agricultural employers or such tenants,

laborers, or farm owners as are becoming, or believe they will become,

employers (either under present governments or under collectivist

capitalism).

Only when the day finally comes when Socialism begins to exert a

pressure on the government adversely to the interest of the capitalist

class will higher wages and new governmental expenditures on wage

earners begin to reverse conditions automatically, making labor dearer,

small farms which employ labor less profitable, and a lease of

government land less desirable, for example, than the position of a

skilled employee on a model government farm. All governments will then

be forced by the farming population itself to lend more and more support

to the Socialist policy of great national municipal or county farms,

rather than to the artificial promotion or small-scale agriculture.

For the present and the near future the only lasting support Socialists

can find in the country is from _the surplus_ of agricultural laborers

and perhaps _a certain part_ of the tenants, _i.e._ those who cannot be

provided for even if all large estates are everywhere divided into small

farms, all practicable works of reclamation and irrigation completed,

and scientific methods introduced--and who will find no satisfactory

opportunity in neighboring countries. It must be acknowledged that such

tenants at present form no very large part of the agricultural

population in the United States. On the other hand, agriculturists are

even less backward here than in Europe, and there is less opposition

between town and country, and both these facts favor rural Socialism.

If, however, the majority of farmers must remain inaccessible to

Socialism until the great change is at hand, this is not because they

are getting an undue share of the national wealth or because they are

private property fanatics, or because agriculturists are economically

and politically backward, or because they are hostile to labor, though

all this is true of many, but because of all classes, they are the most

easily capable of being converted into (or perpetuated as) small

capitalists by the reforms of the capitalist statesman in search of

reliable and numerically important political support.

I have shown the attitude of the Socialists towards each of the

agricultural classes--their belief that they will be able to attach to

themselves the agricultural laborers and those tenants and independent

farmers who are neither landlords nor steady employers, nor expect to

become such. But what now is the attitude of laborers, tenants, etc.,

towards Socialism, and what program do the Socialists offer to attract

them? Let us first consider a few general reforms on which all

Socialists would agree and which would be acceptable to all classes of

agriculturists. Socialists differ upon certain _fundamental_ alterations

in their program which have been proposed in order to adapt it to

agriculture. Aside from these, all Socialist parties wish to do

everything that is possible to attract agriculturists. They favor such

measures as the nationalization of forests, irrigation, state fire

insurance, the nationalization of transportation, the extension of free

education and especially of free agricultural education, the

organization of free medical assistance, graduated income and

inheritance taxes, and the decrease of military expenditures, etc. It

will be seen that all these reforms are such as might be, and often are,

adopted by parties which have nothing to do with Socialism. Community

ownership of forests and national subsidies for roads are urged by so

conservative a body as Mr. Roosevelt's Commission on Country Life. They

are all typical "State Socialist" (_i.e._ State capitalist) measures,

justifiable and indispensable, but not intimately related with the

program of _Socialism_. The indorsement of such measures might indeed

assure the Socialists the friendly coöperation of political factions

representing the agriculturists, but it could scarcely secure for them

the same partisan support in the country as they have obtained from the

workingmen of the towns.

Besides such legislative reforms as the above, the Socialists generally

favor legislative encouragement for every form of agricultural

coöperation. Kautsky says that coöperative associations limited to

purchase or sale, or for financing purposes, have no special connection

with Socialism, but favors _productive_ coöperation, and in France this

is one of the chief measures advocated by the most ardent of the

Socialist agriculturist agitators, Compère-Morel, who was elected to the

Chamber of Deputies from an agricultural district. Compère-Morel notes

that the above-mentioned governmental measures of the State Socialistic

variety are likely to be introduced by reformers who have no sympathy

either with Socialism or with labor unions, and _as a counterweight_ he

lays a great emphasis on coöperative organizations for production, which

could work with the labor unions and their coöperative stores and also

with Socialist municipalities. In France and elsewhere there is already

a strong movement to municipalize the milk supply, the municipalization

of slaughterhouses is far advanced, and municipal bakeries are a

probability of the near future. Such coöperative organizations, however,

like the legislative proposals above mentioned, are already so widely in

actual operation and are so generally supported by powerful

non-Socialist organizations that Socialist support can be of

comparatively little value.

There is no reason why a collectivist but capitalist democracy should

not favor both associations for productive coöperation and friendly

relations between these and collectivist municipalities; nor why they

should fail to favor an enlightened labor policy in such cases, at least

as far as the resulting increase of efficiency in the laborer justified

it, _i.e._ as long as his product rises, as a result of such reforms,

faster than what it costs to introduce them.

Socialists also favor the nationalization of the land, but without the

expropriation of self-employing farmers, as these are felt to be more

sinned against than sinning. "With the present conservative nature of

our farmers, it is highly probable that a number of them would [under

Socialism] continue to work in the present manner," Kautsky says. "The

proletarian governmental power would have absolutely no inclination to

take over such little businesses. As yet no Socialist who is to be taken

seriously has ever demanded that the farmers should be expropriated, or

that their goods should be confiscated. It is much more probable that

each little farmer would be permitted to work on as he has previously

done. The farmer has nothing to fear from a Socialist régime. Indeed, it

is highly probable," he adds, "that these agricultural industries would

receive considerable strengthening through the new régime."

Socialists generally agree with Mr. A. M. Simons's resolution at the

last American Socialist Convention (1910): "So long as tools are used

merely by individual handicraftsmen, they present no problem of

ownership which the Socialist is compelled to solve. The same is true of

land. Collective ownership is urged by the Socialist, not as an end in

itself, not as a part of a Utopian scheme, but as the means of

preventing exploitation, and wherever individual ownership is an agency

of exploitation, then such ownership is opposed by Socialism."[228]

Exploitation here refers to the employment of laborers, and this is the

central point of the Socialist policy. To the Socialists the land

question and the labor question are one. Every agricultural policy must

deal with both. If we were confronted to-day exclusively by large

agricultural estates, the Socialist policy would be the same as in other

industries. All agricultural capital would be nationalized or

municipalized as fast as it became sufficiently highly organized to make

this practicable. And as the ground rent can be taken separately, and

with the least difficulty, this would be the first to go. Agricultural

labor, in the meanwhile, would be organized and as the day approached

when the Socialists were about to gain control of the government, and

the wages of government employees began rapidly to rise, those of

agricultural and all other privately employed labor would rise also,

until private profits were destroyed and the process of socialization

brought rapidly to completion.

But where the scale of production is so small that the farmer and his

family do the work and do not habitually hire outside labor, the whole

case is different. The chief exploitation here is self-exploitation. The

capital owned is so small that it may be compared in value with the

skilled worker's trade education, especially when we consider the small

return it brings in, allowing for wages for the farmer and his family.

Even though, as owner, he receives that part of the rise in the value of

his land due to the general increase of population and wealth and not to

his own labor (the unearned increment), his income is less than that of

many skilled laborers.

Two widely different policies are for these reasons adopted by all

reformers when dealing with large agricultural estates and small

self-employing farmers. On this point there is little room for

difference of opinion. But small farmers are not a sharply defined

class. They are constantly recruited from agricultural laborers and

tenants on the one hand, and are constantly becoming employing farmers

on the other--or the process may take the opposite course, large farms

may break up and small farmers may become laborers--for all or a part of

their time. All agricultural reforms may be viewed not only in their

relation to existing small farmers, but as to their effect on the

increase or decrease of the relative proportions of small self-employing

farmers, of employing farmers, and of agricultural laborers.

And here appears the fundamental distinction between the Socialist

program and that of collectivist capitalism as far as the small farmers

are concerned. Socialists agree in wanting to aid those small farmers

who are neither capitalists nor employers on a sufficient scale to

classify them with those elements, but they neither wish to perpetuate

the system of small farms nor to obstruct the development of the more

productive large-scale farming and the normal increase of an

agricultural working class ready for coöperative or governmental

employment. They point to the universal law that large-scale production

is more economical, and show that this applies to agriculture. Small

farming strictly limits the point to which the income of the

agricultural population can rise, prevents the cheapening of the

production of food, and furnishes a constant stream of cheap labor

composed of discontented agricultural laborers who prefer the more

steady income, limited hours, and better conditions of wage earners.

"Even the most energetic champions of small farming," says Kautsky,

"do not make the least attempt to show its superiority, as this

would be a hopeless task. What they maintain is only the

superiority of labor on one's own property to wage labor for a

strange exploiter.... But if the large farm offers the greater

possibility of lessening the work of the agricultural laborers,

then it would be a betrayal of the latter to set before them as a

goal, not the capture and technical development of large forms, but

their break up into numerous small farms. That would mean nothing

less than a willingness to perpetuate the drudgery under which the

agricultural laborers and small farmers now suffer."[229]

But how shall Socialists aid small farmers without increasing the number

of small farms? It might be thought that the nationalization of the land

would solve the problem. The government, once become the general

landlord, could use the rent fund to improve the condition of all

classes of agriculturists, without unduly favoring any, agricultural

evolution could take its natural course, and the most economical method

of production, _i.e._ large farms or large coöperative associations,

would gradually come to predominate. But the capitalist collectivists

who now control or will soon control governments, far from feeling any

anxiety about the persistence of small-scale farming, believe that the

small farmers can be made into the most reliable props of capitalism.

Accordingly collectivist reformers either promote schemes of division of

large estates and favor the creation of large masses of small owners by

this and every other available means, such as irrigation or reclamation

projects, or if they indorse nationalization of the land in order to get

the unearned increment for their governments, they still make the leases

on as small a scale and revaluations at as long intervals as possible,

and so do almost as much artificially to perpetuate the small farm under

this system as they could by furthering private ownership.

Although there is no necessary and immediate conflict of interest

between wage earners and small farmers, it is evident that it is

impossible for Socialists to offer the small farmers as much as the

capitalist collectivists do,--for the latter are willing in this

instance to promote, for political purposes, an uneconomic mode of

production which is a burden on all society.

Here, however, appears an economic tendency that relieves the situation

for the Socialist. Under private ownership or land nationalization with

long leases and small-scale farms, it is only once in a generation or

even less frequently that farms are subdivided. But the amount of

capital and labor that can be profitably applied to a given area of

land, the intensity of farming, increases very rapidly. The former

self-employing farmer, everywhere encouraged by governments, soon comes

to employ steadily one or more laborers. And it is notable that in every

country of the world these middle-sized or moderate-sized farms are

growing more rapidly than either the large-scale or the one-family

farms. This has an economic and a political explanation. Though large

farms have more economic advantages than small, the latter have nothing

to expend for superintendence and get much more work from each person

occupied. The middle-sized farms preserve these advantages and gradually

come also to employ much of the most profitable machinery, that is out

of reach of the small farmer. Politically their position is still

stronger. They are neither rich nor few like the large landholders.

Their employees are one, two, or three on each farm, and isolated.

Here, then, is the outcome of the agricultural situation that chiefly

concerns the Socialist. The middle-sized farmer is a small capitalist

and employer who, like the rest of his kind, will in every profound

labor crisis be found with the large capitalist. His employees will

outnumber him as voters and will have little hope that the government

will intervene some day to make them either proprietors or possessors

of long-term leases. The capital, moreover, to run this kind of farm or

to compete with it, will be greater and greater and more and more out of

their agricultural laborer's reach. These employees will be Socialists.

We are now in a position to understand the divisions among the

Socialists on the agricultural question. The Socialist policy as to

agriculture may be divided into three periods. During the ascendency of

capitalistic collectivism it will be powerless to do more than to

support the collectivist reforms, including partial nationalization of

the land, partial appropriation of unearned increment by national or

local governments, municipal and coöperative production, and the

numerous reforms already mentioned. In the second period, the approach

of Socialism will hasten all these changes automatically through the

rapid rise in wages, and in the third period, when the Socialists are in

power, special measures will be taken still further to hasten the

process until all land is gradually nationalized and all agricultural

production carried on by governmental bodies or coöperative societies of

actual workers.

If the Socialists gain control of any government, or if they come near

enough to doing this to be able to force concessions at the cost of

capital, a double effect will be produced on agriculture. The general

rise in wages will destroy the profits of many farmer employers, and it

will offer to the smallest self-employing farmers the possibility of an

income as wage earners so much larger, and conditions so much better,

than anything they can hope for as independent producers that they will

cease to prefer self-employment. The high cost of labor will favor both

large scale production, either capitalistic or coöperative, and

national, state, county, and municipal farms. Without any but an

automatic economic pressure, small-scale and middle-scale farming would

tend rapidly to give place to these other higher forms, and these in

turn would tend to become more and more highly organized as other

industries have done, until social production became a possibility. Not

only would there be no need of coercive legislative measures, but the

automatic pressure would be, not that of misery or bankruptcy pressing

the self-employing farmer from behind, but of a larger income and better

conditions drawing the majority forward to more developed and social

forms of production.

In France a considerable and increasing number of the Socialist members

of Parliament are elected by the peasantry, and the same is true of

Italy. In Hervé the French have developed a world-famed

ultra-revolutionary who always makes his appeal to peasants as well as

workers, and in Compère-Morel, one of the most able of those economists

and organizers of the international movement who give the agriculturists

their chief attention. The latter has recently summed up the position of

the French Party in a few incisive paragraphs--which show its similarity

to that of the Americans. His main idea is to let economic evolution

take its course, which, in proportion as labor is effectively organized,

will inevitably lead towards collective ownership and operation and so

pave the way for Socialism:--

"As to small property, it is not our mission either to hasten or to

precipitate its disappearance. A product of labor, quite often

being merely a tool of the one who is detaining it, not only do we

respect it, we do something more yet, we relieve it from taxes,

usury, scandalous charges on the part of the middlemen, whose

victim it is. And this will be done in order to make possible its

free evolution towards superior forms of exploitation and

ownership, which become more and more inevitable.

"This means that there is no necessity at all to appeal to

violence, to use constraint and power in order to inaugurate in the

domain of rural production, the only mode of ownership fit to

utilize the new technical agricultural tools: collective ownership.

"On the other hand, a new form of ownership cannot be imposed; it

is the new form of ownership which is imposing itself.

"It is in vain that they use the most powerful, the most

artificial, means to develop, to multiply, and animate the private

ownership of the land; the social ownership of the land will impose

itself, through the force of events, on the most stubborn, on the

most obstinate, of the partisans of individual ownership of the

rural domain."

The French Socialists do not propose to interfere with titles of any but

very large properties, or even with inheritance. Whether they have to

meet government ownership and 33-year leases now being tried on a small

scale in New Zealand, or whether a capitalist collectivist government

allows agricultural evolution and land titles to take their natural

course, they expect to corner the labor supply, and in this way

ultimately to urge agriculture along in the Socialist direction. From

the moment they have done this, they expect a steady tendency on the

part of agriculturists to look forward, as the workingmen have done, to

the Socialist State:--

"The question arises, under a Socialist régime, will small

property, the property cultivated by the owner and his family, be

transmissible, allowed to be sold, or left as inheritance to the

children, to the nephews, and even to very remote cousins? From the

moment this property is not used as an instrument of

exploitation--and in a Socialist society, _labor not being sold_,

it could never become one--what do we care whether it changes hands

every morning, whether it travels around through a whole family or

country?"

For, since the Socialist State will furnish work for all that apply, at

the best remuneration, and under the best conditions, especially as it

will do this in its own agricultural enterprises, relatively few farmers

will be able to pay enough to secure other workers than those of their

own families.

In the United States the Party has definitely decided by a large

majority, in a referendum vote, that it does not intend to try to

disturb the self-employing farmer in any way in his occupation and use

of the land. In a declaration adopted in 1909, when, by a referendum

vote of nearly two to one, the demand for the immediate collective

ownership of the land was dropped from the platform, the following

paragraph was inserted:--

"There can be no absolute private title to land. All private titles,

whether called fee simple or otherwise, are and must be subordinate to

the public title. The Socialist Party strives to prevent land from being

used for the purpose of exploitation and speculation. It demands the

collective possession, control, or management of land to whatever extent

may be necessary to attain that end. It is not opposed to the occupation

and possession of land by those using it in a useful bona fide manner

_without exploitation_." (My italics.)

Those American Socialists who have given most attention to the subject,

like Mr. Simons, have long since made up their minds that there is no

hope whatever either for the victory or even for the rapid development

of Socialism in this country unless it takes some root among the

agriculturists. Mr. Simons insists that the Socialists should array

against the forces of conservatism, privilege, and exploitation, "all

those whose labor assists in the production of wealth, for all these

make up the army of exploited, and all are interested in the abolition

of exploitation."

"In this struggle," he continues, "farmers and factory wage workers

must make common cause. Any smaller combination, any division in the

ranks of the workers, must render success impossible. In a country where

fundamental changes of policy are secured at the ballot box, nothing can

be accomplished without united action by all classes of workers.... The

better organization of the factory workers of the cities, due to their

position in the midst of a higher developed capitalism and more

concentrated industry, makes them in no way independent of their rural

brothers. So long as they are not numerous enough to win, they are

helpless. 'A miss is as good as a mile,' and coming close to a majority

avails almost nothing."[230]

Looking at the question after this from the farmers' standpoint, Mr.

Simons argues that many of the latter are well aware that the ownership

of a farm is nothing more than the ownership of a job, and that the

capitalists who own the mortgages, railroads, elevators, meat-packing

establishments, and factories which produce agricultural machinery and

other needed supplies, control the lives and income of the

agriculturists almost as rigidly as they do those of their own

employees. Mr. Simons's views on this point also are probably those of a

majority of the party.

Mr. Victor Berger does not consider that farmers belong to that class by

whom and for whom Socialism has come into being. "The average farmer is

not a proletarian," he says, "yet he is a producer."[231] This would

seem to imply that the farmer should have Socialist consideration,

though perhaps not equal consideration with the workingman. Mr. Berger's

main argument apparently was that the farmers must be included in the

movement, not because this is demanded by principle but because "you

will never get control of the United States unless you have the farming

class with you," as he said at a Socialist convention.

Thus there are three possible attitudes of Socialists towards the

self-employing farmer, and all three are represented in the movement.

Kautsky, Vandervelde, and many others believe that after all he is not a

proletarian, and therefore should not or cannot be included in the

movement. The French Socialists and many Americans believe that he is

practically a proletarian and should and can be included. The

"reformists" in countries where he is very numerous believe he should be

included, even when (Berger) they do not consider him as a proletarian.

The Socialist movement, on the whole, now stands with Kautsky and

Vandervelde, and this is undoubtedly the correct position until the

Socialists are near to political supremacy. The French and American

view, that the self-employing farmer is practically a wage earner, is

spreading, and though this view is false and dangerous if prematurely

applied (_i.e._ to-day) it will become correct in the future when

collectivist capitalism has exhausted its reforms and the small farmer

is becoming an employee of the highly productive government farms or a

profit-sharer in coöperative associations.

At the last American Socialist Convention (1910) Mr. Simons's resolution

carefully avoided the "reformist" position of trying to prop up either

private property or small-scale production, by the statement that, while

"no Socialist Party proposes the immediate expropriation of the farm

owner who is cultivating his own farm," that, on the other hand, "it is

not for the Socialist Party to guarantee the private ownership of any

productive property." He remarked in the Convention that the most

prominent French Marxists, Guesde and Lafargue, had approved the action

of the recent French Socialist Congress, which had "guaranteed the

peasant ownership of his farm," but he would not accept this action as

good Socialism. Mr. Berger offered the same criticism of the French

Socialists, and added that the guarantee would not be worth anything in

any case, because our grandchildren would not be ruled by it.

However, there is a minority ready to compromise everything in this

question. Of all American States, Oklahoma has been the one where

Socialists have given the closest attention to agricultural

problems. The Socialists have obtained a considerable vote in every

county of this agricultural State, and with 20,000 to 25,000 votes

they include a considerable proportion of the electorate. It is

true that their platform, though presented at the last national

convention, has not been passed upon, and may later be disapproved

in several important clauses, but it is important as showing the

farthest point the American movement has gone in this direction.

Its most important points are:--

The retention and _constant enlargement of the public domain_.

By retaining school and other public lands.

By purchasing of arid and overflow lands and the State reclamation

of all such lands now held by the State or that may be acquired by

the State.

By the purchase of all lands sold for the non-payment of taxes.

Separation of the department of agriculture from the political

government.

Election of all members and officers of the Board of Agriculture by

the direct vote of the actual farmers.

Erection by the State of grain elevators and warehouses for the

storage of farm products; these elevators and warehouses to be

managed by the Board of Agriculture.

Organization by the Board of Agriculture of free agricultural

education and the establishment of model farms.

Encouragement by the Board of Agriculture of coöperative societies

of farmers--

For the buying of seed and fertilizers.

_For the purchase and common use of implements and machinery._

For the preparing and sale of produce.

Organization by the State of loans on mortgages and warehouse

certificates, the interests charges to cover cost only.

State insurance against disease of animals, diseases of plants,

insect pests, hail, flood, storm, and fire.

Exemption from taxation and execution of dwellings, tools, farm

animals, implements, and improvements to the amount of one thousand

dollars.

_A graduated tax on the value of rented land and land held for

speculation._

Absentee landlords to assess their own lands, the State reserving

the right to purchase such lands at their assessed value plus 10

per cent.

Land now in the possession of the State or hereafter acquired

through purchase, reclamation, or tax sales to be rented to

_landless_ farmers under the supervision of the Board of

Agriculture at the prevailing rate of share rent or its equivalent.

The payment of such rent to cease as soon as the total amount of

rent paid is equal to the value of the land, and the tenant thereby

acquires for himself _and his children_ the right of occupancy. The

title to all such lands remaining with the commonwealth.[232]

I have italicized the most significant items. The preference given

to landless farmers in the last paragraph shows that the party in

Oklahoma does not propose to distribute its greatest favors to

those who are now in possession of even the smallest amount of

land. On the other hand, once the land is governmentally "owned"

and speculation and landlordism (or renting) are provided against,

the farmer passes "the right of occupancy" of this land on to his

children. European Socialist parties, with one exception, have not

gone so far as this, and it is doubtful if the American Party will

sustain such a long step towards permanent private property. It may

well be doubted whether the Socialist movement will favor giving to

children the identical privileges their parents had, simply because

they are the children of these parents, especially if these

privileges had been materially increased in value during the

parents' lifetime by community effort, _i.e._ if there has been

any large "unearned increment." Nor will they grant any additional

right after forty years of payments or any other term, but, on the

contrary, as the land rises, through the community's efforts they

would undoubtedly see to it that _rent was correspondingly

increased_. Socialists demand, not penalties against landlordism,

but the community appropriation of rent--whether it is in the hands

of the actual farmer or landlord. Why, moreover, seek to

discriminate against those who are in possession _now_, and then

favor those who will be in possession after the new dispensation,

by giving the latter an almost permanent title? May there not be as

many landless agricultural workers forty years hence as there are

now? Why should those who happen to be landless in one generation

instead of the next receive superior rights?

Not only Henry George, but Herbert Spencer and the present

governments of Great Britain (for all but agricultural land) and

Germany (in the case of cities), recognize that the element of land

values due to the community effort should go to the community. The

political principle that gives the community no permanent claim to

ground rent and is ready to give a "right of occupancy" for two _or

more_ lifetimes (for nothing is said in the Oklahoma program about

the land returning to the government) without any provisions for

increased rentals and with no rents at all after forty years, is

_reactionary_ as compared with recent land reform programs

elsewhere (as that of New Zealand).

Even Mr. Roosevelt's Commission on Country Life goes nearly as far

as the Oklahoma Socialists when it condemns speculation in farm

lands and tenancy; while Mr. Roosevelt himself has suggested as a

remedy in certain instances the leasing of parts of the national

domain. Indeed, the "progressive" capitalists everywhere favor

either small self-employing farmers or national ownership and

leases for long terms and in small allotments, and as "State

Socialism" advances it will unquestionably lean towards the latter

system. There is nothing Socialistic either in government

encouragement either of one-family farms or in a national leasing

system with long-term leases as long as the new revenue received

goes for the usual "State Socialistic" purposes.

The American Party, moreover, has failed so far to come out definitely

in favor of the capitalist-collectivist principle of the State

appropriation of ground rent, already indorsed by Marx in 1847 and again

in 1883 (see his letter about Henry George, Part I, Chapter VIII). In

preparing model constitutions for New Mexico and Arizona (August, 1910),

the National Executive Committee took up the question of taxation and

recommended graduated income and inheritance taxes, but nothing was said

about the State taking the future rise in rents. This is not a reaction

when compared to the present world status of non-Socialist land reform,

for the taxation of unearned increment has not yet been extended to

agricultural land in use, but it is decidedly a reaction when compared

with the Socialists' own position in the past.

In a semiagricultural country like the United States it is natural that

"State Socialism" should influence the Socialist Party in its treatment

of the land question more than in any other direction, and this

influence is, perhaps, the gravest danger that threatens the party at

the present writing.

By far the most important popular organ of Socialism in this

country is the _Appeal to Reason_ of Girard, Kansas, which now

circulates nearly half a million copies weekly--a large part of

which go into rural communities. The _Appeal_ endeavors, with some

success, to reflect the views of the average party member, without

supporting any faction. As Mr. Debs is one of its editors, it may

be understood that it stands fundamentally against the compromise

of any essential Socialist principle. And yet the exigencies of a

successful propaganda among small landowners or tenants who either

want to become landowners or to secure a lease that would amount to

almost the same thing, is such as to drive the _Appeal_ into a

position, not only as to the land question, but also to other

questions, that has in it many elements of "State Socialism."

A special propaganda edition (January 27, 1902) is typical. Along

with many revolutionary declarations, such as that Socialism aims

not only at the socialization of the means of production, but also

at the socialization of _power_, we find others that would be

accepted by any capitalist "State Socialist." Government activities

as to schools and roads are mentioned as examples of socialization,

while that part of the land still in the hands of our present

capitalist government is referred to as being socialized. The use

of vacant and unused lands (with "a fair return" for this use) by

city, township, and county officials in order to raise and sell

products and furnish employment, as was done by the late Mayor

Pingree in Detroit, and even the public ownership of freight and

passenger automobiles, are spoken of as "purely Socialist

propositions." And, finally, the laws of Oklahoma are said to

permit socialization without a national victory of the Socialists,

though they provide merely that a municipality may engage in any

legitimate business enterprise, and could easily be circumscribed

by state constitutional provisions or by federal courts if real

Socialists were about to gain control of municipalities and State

legislature. For such Socialists would not be satisfied merely to

demand the abolition of private landlordism and unemployment as the

_Appeal_ does in this instance, since both of these "institutions"

are already marked for destruction by "State capitalism," but would

plan public employment at wages so high as to make private

employment unprofitable and all but impossible, so high that the

self-employing farmer even would more and more frequently prefer to

quit his farm and go to work on a municipal, State, or county farm.

The probable future course of the Party, however, is foreshadowed by the

suggestions made by Mr. Simons in the report referred to, which, though

not yet voted upon, seemed to meet general approval:--

"With the writers of the Communist Manifesto we agree in the principle

of the 'application of all rents of land to public purposes.' To this

end we advocate the taxing of all lands to their full rental value, the

income therefrom to be applied to the establishment of industrial plants

for the preparing of agricultural products for final consumption, such

as packing houses, canneries, cotton gins, grain elevators, storage and

market facilities."[233]

There is no doubt that Mr. Simons here indorses the most promising line

of agrarian reform under capitalism. But there is no reason why

capitalist collectivism may not take up this policy when it reaches a

somewhat more advanced stage. The tremendous benefits the cities will

secure by the gradual appropriation of the unearned increment will

almost inevitably suggest it to the country also. This will immensely

hasten the development of agriculture and the numerical increase of an

agricultural working class. What is even more important is that it will

teach the agricultural laborers that far more is to be gained by the

political overthrow of the small capitalist employing farmers and by

claiming a larger share of the benefit of these public funds than by

attempting the more and more difficult task of saving up the sum needed

for acquiring a small farm or leasing one for a long term from the

government.

The governmental appropriation of agricultural rent and its productive

expenditure on agriculture will in all probability be carried out, even

if not prematurely promised at the present time, by collectivist

capitalism. Moreover, while this great reform will strengthen Socialism

as indicated, it will strengthen capitalism still more, especially in

the earlier stages of the change. Socialists recognize, with Henry

George, that ground rent may be nationalized and "tyranny and spoliation

be continued." For if the present capitalistic state gradually became

the general landlord, either through the extension of the national

domain or through land taxation, greater resources would be put into the

hands of existing class governments than by any other means. If, for

example, the Socialists opposed the government bank in Germany they

might dread even more the _present_ government becoming the universal

landlord, though it would be useless to try to prevent it.

It is clear that such a reform is no more a step in Socialism or in the

direction of Socialism than the rest of the capitalist collectivist

program. But it is a step in the development of capitalism and will

ultimately bring society to a point where the Socialists, if they have

in the meanwhile prepared themselves, may be able to gain the supreme

power over government and industry.

Socialists do not feel that the agricultural problem will be solved at

all for a large part of the agriculturists (the laborers) nor in the

most satisfactory manner for the majority (self-employing farmers) until

the whole problem of capitalism is solved. The agricultural laborers

they claim as their own to-day; the conditions I have reviewed lead them

to hope also for a slow but steady progress among the smaller farmers.

FOOTNOTES:

[223] Karl Kautsky, "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911,

p. 127.

[224] Karl Kautsky, "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911,

pp. 126-128.

[225] Quotations from Kautsky following in this chapter are taken

chiefly from his "Agrarfrage."

[226] Émile Vandervelde, "Le Socialisme Agraire."

[227] _Die Neue Zeit_, June 16, 1911.

[228] Proceedings of 1910 Convention of the Socialist Party of the

United States.

[229] _Die Neue Zeit_, June 16 and 30, 1911.

[230] A. M. Simons, "The American Farmer," pp. 160-162.

[231] The 1908 Convention of the Socialist Party of the United States.

[232] Reprinted at frequent intervals by the _Industrial Democrat,_

Oklahoma City.

[233] Mr. Simons's resolution also contains another proposition,

seemingly at variance with this, which would postpone Socialist action

indefinitely:--

"In the field of industry what the Socialist movement demands is the

social ownership and control of the socially operated means of

production, not of all means of production. Only to a very small extent

is it [the land] likely to be, for many years to come, a socially

operated means of production."

On the contrary, it would seem that "State Socialism," the basis on

which Socialists must build, to say nothing of Socialism, will bring

about a large measure of government ownership of land in the interest of

the farmer of the individually operated farm. Socialism, it is true,

requires besides government ownership, governmental operation, and

recognizes that this is practicable only as fast as agriculture becomes

organized like other industries. In the meanwhile it recognizes either

in gradual government ownership or in the taxation of the unearned

increment, the most progressive steps that can be undertaken by a

capitalist government and supports them _even where there is no

large-scale production or social operation_. For "wherever individual

ownership is an agency of exploitation," to quote Mr. Simons's own

resolution, "then such ownership is opposed by Socialism," _i.e.

wherever labor is employed_.

The Socialist solution, it is true, can only come with "social

operation," but that does not mean that Socialism has nothing to say

to-day. It still favors the reforms of collectivist capitalism. Where

extended national ownership of the land is impracticable there remains

the taxation of the future unearned increment. To drop this "demand"

also is to subordinate Socialism completely to small-scale capitalism.

CHAPTER III

SOCIALISM AND THE "WORKING CLASS"

If the majority of Socialists are liberal in their conception of what

constitutes the "working class," they are equally broad in their view as

to what classes must be reckoned among its opponents. They are aware

that on the other side in this struggle will be found all those classes

that are willing to serve capitalism or hope to rise into its ranks.

In its narrow sense the term "capitalist class" may be restricted to

mean mere idlers and parasites, but this is not the sense in which

Socialists usually employ it. Mere idlers play an infinitely less

important part in the capitalist world than active exploiters. It is

even probable that in the course of a strenuous struggle the capitalists

themselves may gradually tax wholly idle classes out of existence and so

actually strengthen the more active capitalists by ridding them of this

burden. Active exploiters may pass some of their time in idleness and

frivolous consumption, without actual degeneration, without becoming

mere parasites. All exploitation is parasitism, but it does not follow

that every exploiter is nothing more than a parasite. He may work

feverishly at the game of exploitation and, as is very common with

capitalists, may be devoted to it for its own sake and for the power it

brings rather than for the opportunity to consume in luxury or idleness.

If pure parasitism were the object of attack, as certain Socialists

suppose it to be, all but an infinitesimal minority of mankind would

already be Socialists.

Nor do Socialists imagine that the capitalist ranks will ever be

restricted to the actual capitalists, those whose income is derived

chiefly from their possessions. Take, for example, the class of the

least skilled and poorest-paid laborers such as the so-called "casual

laborers," the "submerged tenth"--those who, though for the most part

not paupers, are in extreme poverty and probably are unable to maintain

themselves in a state of industrial efficiency even for that low-paid

and unskilled labor to which they are accustomed. Mr. H. G. Wells and

other observers feel that this class is likely to put even more

obstacles in the path of Socialism than the rich: "Much more likely to

obstruct the way to Socialism," says Mr. Wells, "is the ignorance, the

want of courage, the stupid want of imagination in the very poor, too

shy and timid and clumsy to face any change they can evade! But even

with them popular education is doing its work; and I do not fear but

that in the next generation we will find Socialists even in the

slums."[234]

"Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a

paralyzing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really

conscious of its own suffering," says Oscar Wilde. "They have to be told

of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is

said by great employers of labor against agitators is unquestionably

true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down

to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of

discontent amongst them."[235] It is the "very poor" who disbelieve the

agitators. They must be embraced in every plan of social reconstruction,

but they cannot be of much aid. The _least_ skilled must rather be

helped and those who can and do help them best are not any of their

"superiors," but their blood brothers and sisters of the economic class

just above them--the great mass of the unskilled workers.

The class of casual workers and the able-bodied but chronically

under-employed play a very serious rôle in Socialist politics. It is the

class from which, as Socialists point out, professional soldiers,

professional strike breakers, and, to some extent, the police are drawn.

Among German Socialists it is called the "lumpen proletariat," and both

for the present and future is looked at with the greatest anxiety. It is

not thought possible that any considerable portion of it will be brought

into the Socialist camp in the near future, though some progress has

been made, as with every other element of the working class. It is

acknowledged that it tends to become more numerous, constantly recruited

as it is from the increasing class of servants and other dependents of

the rich and well-to-do.

But Socialists understand that the mercenary hirelings drawn from this

class, and directly employed to keep them "in order," are less dangerous

than the capitalists' camp followers. Bernard Shaw calls this second

army of dependents "the parasitic proletariat." But he explains that he

means not that they do not _earn_ their living, but that their labor is

unproductive. They are parasitic only in the sense that their work is

done either for parasites or for the parasitical consumption of active

capitalists. Nor is there any sharp line between proletarian and middle

class in this element, since parts of both classes are equally conscious

of their dependence. Shaw makes these points clear. His only error is to

suppose that Socialists and believers in the class war theory, have

failed to recognize them.

"Thus we find," says Shaw, "that what the idle man of property does

is to plunge into mortal sin against society. He not only withdraws

himself from the productive forces of the nation and quarters

himself on them as a parasite: he withdraws also a body of

propertyless men and places them in the same position except that

they have to earn this anti social privilege by ministering to his

wants and whims. He thus creates and corrupts a class of

workers--many of them very highly trained and skilled, and

correspondingly paid--whose subsistence is bound up with his

income. They are parasites on a parasite; and they defend the

institution of private property with a ferocity which startles

their principal, who is often in a speculative way quite

revolutionary in his views. They knock the class war theory into a

cocked hat [I shall show below that class war Socialists, on the

contrary, have always recognized, the existence of these facts,

"whilst the present system lasts."--W. E. W.] by forming a powerful

conservative proletariat whose one economic interest is that the

rich should have as much money as possible; and it is they who

encourage and often compel the property owners to defend themselves

against an onward march of Socialism. Thus we have the phenomenon

that seems at first sight so amazing in London: namely, that in the

constituencies where the shopkeepers pay the most monstrous rents,

and the extravagance and insolence of the idle rich are in fullest

view, no Socialist--nay, no Progressive--has a chance of being

elected to the municipality or to Parliament. The reason is that

these shopkeepers live by fleecing the rich as the rich live by

fleecing the poor. The millionaire who has preyed upon Bury and

Bottle until no workman there has more than his week's sustenance

in hand, and many of them have not even that, is himself preyed

upon in Bond Street, Pall Mall, and Longacre.

"But the parasites, the West End tradesman, the West End

professional man, the schoolmaster, the Ritz hotel keeper, the

horse dealer and trainer, the impresario and his guinea stalls, and

the ordinary theatrical manager with his half-guinea ones, the

huntsman, the jockey, the gamekeeper, the gardener, the coachman,

the huge mass of minor shopkeepers and employees who depend on

these or who, as their children, have been brought up with a

little crust of conservative prejudices which they call their

politics and morals and religion: all these give to Parliamentary

and social conservatism its real fighting force; and the more

'class conscious' we make them, the more they will understand that

their incomes, _whilst the present system lasts_, are bound up with

those of the proprietors whom Socialism would expropriate. And as

many of them are better fed, better mannered, better educated, more

confident and successful than the productive proletariat, the class

war is not going to be a walkover for the Socialists."[236]

If we take into account both this "parasitic proletariat" and the

"lumpen proletariat" previously referred to, it is clear that when the

Socialists speak of a class struggle against the capitalists, they do

not expect to be able to include in their ranks all "the people" nor

even all the wage earners. This is precisely one of the things that

distinguishes them most sharply from a merely populistic movement.

Populist parties expect to include _all_ classes of the "common people,"

and every numerically important class of capitalists. Socialists

understand that they can never rely on the small capitalist except when

he has given up all hope of maintaining himself as such, and that they

are facing not only the whole capitalist class, but also their hirelings

and dependents.

Socialists as a whole have never tended either to a narrowly exclusive

nor to a vaguely inclusive policy. Nor have their most influential

writers, like Marx and Liebknecht, given the wage earners _a privileged

position in the movement_. I have quoted from Liebknecht. "Just as the

democrats make a sort of a fetish of the words 'the people,'" wrote Marx

to the Communists on resigning from the organization in 1851, "so you

may make one of the word 'proletariat.'"

But it cannot be denied that many of Marx's followers have ignored this

warning, and the worship of the words "proletariat" or "working class"

is still common in some Socialist quarters. Recently Kautsky wrote that

the Socialist Party, besides occupying itself with the interests of the

manual laborers, "must also concern itself with all social questions,

but that _its attitude on these questions is determined by the interests

of the manual laborers_."

"The Socialist Party," he continued, "is forced by its class position to

expand its struggle against its own exploitation and oppression into a

struggle against all forms of exploitation and oppression, to broaden

its struggle for class interests into a struggle for liberty and

justice for all members of the community." According to this

interpretation, the Socialist Party, starting out from the standpoint of

the economic interests of the "manual laborers," comes to represent the

interests of all classes, except the capitalists. We may doubt as to

whether the other non-capitalist classes will take kindly to this

subordination or "benevolent assimilation" by the manual workers.

Kautsky seems to have no question on this matter, however; for he

considers that the abolition of the oppression and exploitation of the

wage earners, _the class at the bottom_, can only be effected by the

abolition of all exploitation and oppression, and that therefore "all

friends of universal liberty and justice, whatever class they may spring

from, are compelled to join the proletariat and to fight its class

struggles."[237] Even if this is true, these other classes will demand

that they should have an equal voice in carrying on this struggle in

proportion to their numbers, and Socialist parties have usually (though

not always) given them that equal voice.

The kernel of the working class, "the layers of the industrial

proletariat which have reached political self-consciousness," provides

the chief supporters of the Socialist movement, according to Kautsky,

although the latter is the representative "not alone of the industrial

wage workers, but of all the working and exploited layers of the

community, that is, the great majority of the total population, what one

ordinarily calls 'the people.'" While Socialism is to represent all the

producing and exploited classes, the industrial proletariat is thus

considered as the model to which the others must be shaped and as by

some special right or virtue it is on all occasions to take the

forefront in the movement. This position leads inevitably to a

considerably qualified form of democracy.

"The backbone of the party will always be the fighting proletariat,

whose qualities will determine its character, whose strength will

determine its power," says Kautsky. "Bourgeois and peasants are

highly welcome if they will attach themselves to us and march with

us, but the proletariat will always show the way.

"But if not only wage earners but also small peasants and small

capitalists, artisans, middle-men of all kinds, small officials,

and so forth--in short, the whole so-called 'common people'--formed

the masses out of which Social Democracy recruits its adherents, we

must not forget that these classes, with the exception of the

class-conscious wage-earners, are also a recruiting ground for our

opponents; their influence on these classes has been and still is

to-day the chief ground of their political power.

"To grant political rights to the people, therefore, by no means

necessarily implies the protection of the interests of the

proletariat or those of social evolution. Universal suffrage, as it

is known, has nowhere brought about a Social Democratic majority,

while it may give more reactionary majorities than a qualified

suffrage under the same circumstances. It may put aside a liberal

government only to put in its place a conservative or catholic

one....

"Nevertheless the proletariat must demand democratic institutions

under all circumstances, for the same reasons that, once it has

obtained political power, it can only use its own class rule for

the purpose of putting an end to all class rule. It is the

bottommost of the social classes. It cannot gain political rights,

at least not in its entirety, except if everybody gets them. Each

of the other classes may become privileged under certain

circumstances, but not the proletariat. The Social Democracy, the

party of the class-conscious proletariat, is therefore the surest

support of democratic efforts, much surer than the bourgeois

democracy.

"But if the Social Democracy is also the most strenuous fighter for

democracy, it cannot share the latter's illusions. It must always

be conscious of the fact that every popular right which it wins is

a weapon not only for itself, but also for its opponents; it must

therefore under certain circumstances understand that democratic

achievements are more useful at first to the enemy than to itself;

but only at first. For in the long run the introduction of

democratic institutions in the State can only turn out to the

profit of Social Democracy. They necessarily make its struggle

easier, and lead it to victory. The militant proletariat has so

much confidence in social evolution, so much confidence in itself,

that it fears no struggle, not even with a superior power; it only

wants a field of battle on which it can move freely. The democratic

State offers such a field of battle; there the final decisive

struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat can best be fought

out."

The reader might understand this somewhat vacillating position on the

whole to favor democracy, but only a few pages further on Kautsky

explains his reasons for opposing the initiative and referendum, and we

see that when the point of action arrives, his democratic idealism is

abandoned:--

"In our opinion it follows from the preceding that the initiative

and referendum do _not_ belong to those democratic institutions

which must be furthered by the proletariat in the interest of its

own struggle for emancipation everywhere and under all

circumstances. The referendum and initiative are institutions which

may be very useful under certain circumstances if one does not

overvalue these uses, but under other circumstances may cause

great harm. The introduction of the initiative and referendum is,

therefore, not to be striven for everywhere and under all

circumstances, but only in those places where certain conditions

are fulfilled.

"Among these conditions precedent we reckon, above all, the

preponderance of the city population over that of the country--a

condition which at the present moment has only been reached in

England. A further condition precedent is a highly developed

political party life which has taken hold of the great masses of

the population, so that the tendency of direct legislation to break

up parties and to bridge over party opposition are no more to be

feared.

"But the weightiest condition precedent is the lack of an

overwhelmingly centralized governmental power, standing

independently against the people's representatives."[238] (My

italics.)

The first condition mentioned I have discussed in the previous chapter;

the second indicates that Kautsky, speaking for many German Socialists,

for the present at least, puts party above democracy.

The industrial proletariat is supposed to have the mission of saving

society. Even when it is not politically "self-conscious," or educated

to see the great rôle it must play in the present and future

transformation of society, it is supposed that it is _compelled_

ultimately "by the logic of events" to fill this rôle and attempt the

destruction of capitalism and the socialization of capital. This

prediction may _ultimately_ prove true, but time is the most vital

element in any calculation, and Kautsky himself acknowledges that the

industrial proletariat "had existed a long time before giving any

indication of its independence," and that during all this long period

"no militant proletariat was in existence."

The chief practical reason for relying so strongly on the industrial

wage earners as stated by Bebel and other Socialists is undoubtedly that

"the proletariat increases more and more until it forms the overwhelming

majority of the nation." No doubt, in proportion as this tendency

exists, the importance of gathering certain parts of the middle class

into the movement becomes less and less, and the statement quoted, if

strongly insisted upon, even suggests a readiness to attempt to get

along entirely without these elements. The figures of the Census

indicate that in this country, at least, we are some time from the point

when the proletariat will constitute even a bare majority, and that it

is not likely to form an overwhelming majority for decades to come. But

the European view is common here also.

The moderate Vandervelde also says that the Socialist program has been

"formulated by or for the workingmen of large-scale industry."[239] This

may be true, but we are not as much interested to know who formulated

the program of the movement as to understand its present aim. Its aim,

it is generally agreed, is to organize into a single movement all

anti-capitalistic elements, all those who want to abolish capitalism,

those exploited classes that are not too crushed to revolt, those whose

chief means of support is socially useful labor and not the ownership of

capital or possession of some privileged position or office. In this

movement it is generally conceded by Socialists that the workingmen of

industry play the central part. But they are neither its sole origin nor

is their welfare its sole aim.

The best known of the Socialist critics of Marxism, Edward Bernstein,

shares with some of Marx's most loyal disciples in this excessive

idealization of the industrial working class. Indeed, he says, with more

truth than he realizes, that in proportion as revolutionary Marxism is

relegated to the background it is necessary to affirm more sharply the

class character of the Party. That is to say, if a Socialist Party

abandons the principles of Socialism, then the only way it can be

distinguished from other movements is by the fact that it embraces other

elements of the population, that it is a class movement. But Socialism

is something more than this, it is a class movement of a certain

definite character, composed of classes that are naturally selected and

united, owing to certain definite characteristics.

"The social democracy," says Bernstein, "can become the people's party,

but only in the sense that the workingmen form the _essential_ kernel

around which are grouped social elements having identical interests....

Of all the social classes opposed to the capitalist class, the working

class _alone_ represents an invincible factor of social progress," and

social democracy "addresses itself principally to the workers." (My

italics.)

Perhaps the most orthodox Socialist organ in America, and the ablest

representative in this country of the international aspects of the

movement (the _New Yorker Volkszeitung)_, insists that "the Socialist

movement consists in the fusion of the Socialist doctrine with the labor

movement and in nothing else," and says that students and even doctors

have little importance for the Party. The less orthodox but more

revolutionary _Western Clarion_, the Socialist organ of British

Columbia, where the Socialists form the chief opposition party in the

legislature, asserts boldly, "We have no leaning towards democracy; all

we want is a short supply of working-class autocracy."

Some of the ultra-revolutionists have gone so far in their hostility to

all social classes that do not work with their hands, that they have

completed the circle and flown into the arms of the narrowest and least

progressive of trade unionists--the very element against which they had

first reacted. The Western Socialist, Thomas Sladden, throwing into one

single group all the labor organizations from the most revolutionary to

the most conservative, such as the railway brotherhoods, says that all

"are in reality part of the great Socialist movement," and claims that

whenever "labor" goes into politics, this also is a step towards

Socialism, though Socialist principles are totally abandoned. Mayor

McCarthy of San Francisco, for instance, satisfied his requirements.

"McCarthy declares himself a friend of capital," says Sladden, but, he

asks defiantly, "Does any sane capitalist believe him?" Here we see one

of the most revolutionary agitators becoming more and more "radical"

until he has completed the circle and come back, not only to "labor

right or wrong," but even to "labor working in harmony with capital."

"The skilled workingman," he says, "is not a proletarian. He has an

interest to conserve, he has that additional skill for which he receives

compensation in addition to his ordinary labor power."

Mr. Sladden adds that the _real_ proletarian is "uncultured and uncouth

in appearance," that he has "no manners and little education," and that

his religion is "the religion of hate." Of course this is a mere

caricature of the attitude of the majority of Socialists.

Some of the partisans of revolutionary unionism in this country are

little less extreme. The late Louis Duchez, for example, reminds us that

Marx spoke of the proletariat as "the lowest stratum of our present

society," those "who have nothing to lose but their chains," and that he

said that "along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates

of capital who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process

of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery,

degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, grows the revolt of the

working class." It is true that Marx said these things and said them

with emphasis. But he did not wish to make any rigid or dogmatic

definition of "the proletariat" and much that he has said pointed to an

entirely different conception than would be gained from these

quotations.

In speaking of "the lowest stratum of society" Marx was thinking, not of

a community divided into numerous strata, but chiefly of three classes,

the large capitalists, the workers, and the middle class. It was the

lowest of these three, and not the lowest of their many subdivisions,

that he had in mind. From the first the whole Socialist movement has

recognized the almost complete hopelessness, as an aid to Socialism, of

the lowest stratum in the narrow sense, of what is called the "lumpen

proletariat," the bulk of the army of beggars and toughs. Mr. Duchez

undoubtedly would have accepted this point, for he wishes to say that

the Socialist movement must be advanced by the organization of unions

not among this class, but among the next lowest, economically speaking,

the great mass of unskilled workers. This argument, also, that the

unskilled have a better strategic position than the skilled on account

of their solidarity and unity is surely a doubtful one. European

Socialists, as a rule, have reached the opposite conclusion, namely,

that it is the comparatively skilled workers, like those of the

railways, who possess the only real possibility of leading in a general

strike movement (see Chapters V and VI).

FOOTNOTES:

[234] H. G. Wells, "This Misery of Boots," p. 34.

[235] Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man under Socialism", (brochure).

[236] Bernard Shaw's series in the _New Age_ (1908).

[237] Karl Kautsky, the _New York Call_, Nov. 14, 1909.

[238] Karl Kautsky, "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," pp. 124, 125,

138.

[239] Émile Vandervelde, "Le Socialisme Agraire," p. 236.

CHAPTER IV

SOCIALISM AND THE LABOR UNIONS

One of the grounds on which it is proposed by some Socialists to give

manual labor a special and preferred place in the movement is that it is

supposed to be the only numerically important non-capitalist element

that is at all well organized or even organizable. Let us see, then, to

what degree labor is organized and what are the characteristics of this

organization.

First, the labor unions represent manual wage earners almost

exclusively--not by intention, but as a matter of fact. They include

only an infinitesimal proportion of small employers, self-employing

artisans, or salaried employees.

Second, the unions by no means include all the manual wage earners, and

only in a few industries do they include a majority. Those organized

are, as a rule, the more developed and prosperous, the skilled or

comparatively skilled workers.

Third, their method of action is primarily that of the strike and

boycott--economic and not political. They demand certain legislation and

in several cases have put political parties in the field; they exert a

political pressure in favor of government employees. But their chief

purpose, even when they do these things, is to develop an organization

that can strike and boycott effectively; and to secure only such

political and civil rights as are needed for this purpose.

The unions are primarily economic, and the Socialist Party is primarily

political--both, to have any national power, must embrace a considerable

proportion of the same industrial wage-earning class. It is evident that

conflict between the two organizations is unnecessary and we find,

indeed, that it arises only in exceptional cases. Many Socialists,

however, look upon the unions primarily as an economic means, more or

less important, of advancing political Socialism--while many unionists

regard the Socialist parties primarily as political instruments for

furthering the economic action of the unions.

There are several groups of Socialists, on the other hand, who ascribe

to the economic action of the unions a part in attaining Socialism as

important or more important than that they ascribe to the political

action of the party. These include, first, all those for whom Socialism

is to be brought about almost exclusively by wage earners, whether by

political or by economic action; second, those who do not believe the

capitalists will allow the ballot to be used for anti-capitalistic

purposes; third, those who believe that, in spite of all that

capitalists and capitalistic governments can do, strikes and boycotts

cannot be circumvented and in the end are irresistible.

Other Socialists, agreeing that economic action, and therefore labor

unions, both of the existing kind and of that more revolutionary type

now in the process of formation, are indispensable, still look upon the

Socialist Party as the chief instrument of Socialism. As these include

nearly all Party members who are not unionists as well as a considerable

part of the unionists, they are perhaps a majority--internationally.

As the correct relationship between Party and unions, Mr. Debs has

indorsed the opinion of Professor Herron, who, he said, "sees the trend

of development and arrives at conclusions that are sound and commend

themselves to the thoughtful consideration of all trade unionists and

Socialists." Professor Herron says that the Socialist is needed to

educate the unionists to see their wider interests:--

"He is not to do this by seeking to commit trade-union bodies to

the principles of Socialism. Resolutions or commitments of this

sort accomplish little good. Nor is he to do it by taking a servile

attitude towards organized labor nor by meddling with the details

or the machinery of the trade unions. It is better to leave the

trade unions to their distinctive work, as the workers' defense

against the encroachments of capitalism, as the economic

development of the worker against the economic development of the

capitalist, giving unqualified support and sympathy to the

struggles of the organized worker to sustain himself in his

economic sphere. But let the Socialist also build up the character

and harmony and strength of the Socialist movement as a political

force, that it shall command the respect and confidence of the

worker, irrespective of his trade or his union obligations. It is

urgent that we so keep in mind the difference between the two

developments that neither shall cripple the other."[240]

Here is a statement of the relation of the two movements that

corresponds closely to the most mature and widespread Socialist opinion

and to the decisions of the International Socialist Congresses.

This view also meets that of the unions in most countries. The President

of the American Federation, Mr. Gompers, understands this thoroughly and

quotes with approval the action taken recently by the labor unions in

Sweden, Hungary, and Italy, which demand the enforcement of this policy

of absolute "neutrality." Formerly the federation of the unions of

Sweden, for example, agreed to use their efforts to have the local

unions become a part of the local organization of the Social Democratic

Party. These words providing for this policy were struck out of the

constitution by the Convention of 1909, which at the same time adopted

(by a considerable majority) a resolution that "by this decision it was

not intended to break up the unity and solidarity of labor's forces, for

the convention considers the Social Democratic Party as the natural

expression of the political ambitions of the Swedish workers." A similar

relation prevails in nearly every country of the Continent.

The Secretary of the German Federation (who is its highest officer)--a

man who is at the same time an active Socialist,--has defined accurately

the relation between the two organizations in that country. He says that

the unions cannot accomplish their purposes without securing political

representation "through a Party that is active in legislative bodies."

This is also the view now of the British unions, which in overwhelming

majority support the Labor Party. And they do this for the same purposes

mentioned by Legien: to protect the working people from excessive

exploitation, to enact into law the advantages already won by the

unions, and so to smooth the way for better labor conditions. Similarly,

the American Federation of Labor secures representation on legislative

bodies, and hesitates to form a national Labor Party, not on principle,

but only because American conditions do not in most localities promise

that it would be effective.

Mr. Mitchell expresses the position of the American Federation when he

says that the "wage earners should in proportion to their strength

secure the nomination and the election of a number of representatives to

the governing bodies of city, State, and nation," but that "a third

Labor Party is not for the present desirable, because it would not

obtain a majority and could not therefore force its will upon the

community at large." The European Socialists would perhaps not

understand the political principle of our governmental system, which

requires a plurality in the State or nation in order to obtain immediate

results. For in this country the more important branches of the

government are the executive and judges, and these, unlike the

legislatures, cannot as a rule be divided, and therefore give no

opportunity for the representation of minorities, and are necessarily

elected by State or national pluralities and usually by majorities. In

the monarchical countries of the Continent either such officials are not

elected, or their powers are circumscribed, and even England lies in

this respect halfway between those countries and the United States. What

Mr. Mitchell says is in so far true; it would certainly require a large

number of elections before a party beginning on the basis of a minority

of representatives in Congress or the legislatures could win enough

control over the executive and judges to "force its will upon the

community at large." Mr. Mitchell and the other leaders of the

Federation are, it is seen, unwilling to undertake a campaign so long

and arduous, and, since they have no means of attracting the votes of

any but wage-earning voters, so doubtful as to its outcome.

Mr. Mitchell says that the workingmen in a separate party could not

even secure a respectable minority of the legislators. The

numerical strength of the Unions in proportion to the _voting_

population is scarcely greater than it was when he wrote (1903),

and what he said then holds true as ever to-day.

Mr. Gompers has also stated that labor would not be able to secure

more than twenty-five or fifty Congressmen by independent political

action. This is undoubtedly true, and we may take it for granted,

therefore, that, unless the unions most unexpectedly increase their

strength, there will be no national or even State-wide Trade Union

or Labor Party in this country, though the San Francisco example of

a city Labor party may be repeated now and then, and State

organizations of the Socialist Party, which enjoy a large measure

of autonomy, may occasionally, without changing their present

names, reduce themselves to mere trade-union parties in the narrow

sense of the term. President Gompers has claimed that 80 per cent

of the voting members of the American Federation of Labor followed

his advice in the election of 1908, which was, in nearly every

case, to vote the Democratic ticket. There were not over 2,000,000

members of the Federation at this time, and of these (allowing for

women, minors, and non-voting foreigners) there were not more than

1,500,000 voters. About 60 per cent of this number have always

voted Democratic, so that if Mr. Gompers's claim were conceded it

would mean a change of no more than 300,000 votes. It is true that

such a number of voters could effect the election or defeat of a

great many Democrats or Republican Congressmen, but, as Mr. Gompers

says, it could only elect a score or two of Independents, a number

which, as the example of Populism has shown, would be impotent

under our political system. Moreover, as such a Congressional group

would be situated politically not in the middle, but at one of the

extremes, _it could never hold the balance of power in this or any

other country_ until it became _a majority_.

Mr. Mitchell is careful to qualify his opposition to the third party (or

Labor Party) idea. He writes: "I wish it to be understood that this

refers only to the immediate policy of the unions. One cannot see what

the future of the dominant parties in the United States will be, and

should it come to pass that the two great American political parties

oppose labor legislation, as they now favor it, it would be the

imperative duty of unionists to form a third party in order to secure

some measure of reform."[241] Certainly both parties are becoming more

and more willing to grant "some measure" of labor reform, so that Mr.

Mitchell is unlikely to change his present position.

Whether the unions form a separate party or not, is to them a matter not

of principle, but of ways and means, of time and place. Where they are

very weak politically they seek only to have their representatives in

other parties; where they are stronger they may form a party of their

own to coöperate with the other parties and secure a share in

government; where they are strongest they will seek to gain control over

a party that plays for higher stakes, brings to the unions the support

of other elements, and remains in opposition until it can secure

undivided control over government, _e.g._ the Socialist Party. Whether

the unions operate through all parties or a Labor Party or a Socialist

Party, is of secondary importance also to Socialists; what is of

consequence is the character of the unions, and the effect of their

political policy on the unions themselves. In all three cases the

principles of the unions may be at bottom the same, and in any of the

three cases they may be ready to use the Socialist Party for the sole

purpose of securing a modest improvement of their wages--even

obstructing other Party activities--as some of the German union leaders

have done. They may also use a Labor Party for the same purpose--as in

Great Britain. Or they may develop a political program without really

favoring any political party or having any distinctive political aim--as

in the United States.

The labor unions, even the most conservative, have always and everywhere

had some kind of a political program. They have naturally favored the

right to organize, to strike and boycott, free speech and a free press.

They have demanded universal suffrage, democratic constitutions, and

other measures to increase the political power of their members. They

have favored all economic reform policies of which working people got a

share, even if a disproportionately small one, and all forms of taxation

that lightened their burdens.[242] And, finally, they have usually

centered their attacks on the most powerful of their enemies, whether

Emperor, Church, army, landlords, or large capitalists.

In economic and political reform, the American unions, like those of

other countries, support all progressive measures, including the whole

"State Socialist" program. As to political machinery, they favor, of

course, every proposal that can remove constitutional checks and give

the majority control over the government, such as the easy amendment of

constitutions and the right to recall judges and all other officials by

majority vote. Like the Socialists, they welcome the "State Socialist"

labor program, government insurance for workingmen against old age,

sickness, accidents, and unemployment, a legal eight-hour day, a legal

minimum wage, industrial education, the prohibition of child labor, etc.

The unions and the parties they use also join in the effort of the small

capitalist investors and borrowers, consumers and producers, to control

the large interests--the central feature of the "State Socialist"

policy. But the conservative unions do not stop with such progressive,

if non-Socialist, measures; they take up the cause of the smaller

capitalists also _as competitors_. The recent attack of the Federation

of Labor on the "Steel Trust" is an example. The presidents of the

majority of the more important unions, who signed this document, became

the partisans not only of small capitalists who buy from the trust, sell

to it, or invest in its securities, but also of the unsuccessful

competitors that these combinations are eliminating. The Federation here

spoke of "the American institution of unrestricted production," which

can mean nothing less than unrestricted competition, and condemned the

"Steel Trust" because it controls production, whereas the regulation or

control of production is precisely the most essential thing to be

desired in a progressive industrial society--a control, of course, to be

turned as soon as possible to the benefit of all the people.

The Federation's attack was not only economically reactionary, but it

was practically disloyal to millions of employees. It applies against

the "trust," which happens to be unpopular, arguments which apply even

more strongly to competitive business. The trust, it said, corrupts

legislative bodies and is responsible for the high tariff. As if all

these practices had not begun before the "trusts" came into being, as if

the associated manufacturers are not even more strenuous advocates of

all the tariffs--which are life and death matters to them--than the

"trusts," which might very well get along without them. Finally, the

Federation accuses the "Steel Trust" of an especially oppressive policy

towards its working people, apparently forgetting its arch enemy, the

manufacturer's association. It is notorious, moreover, that the smallest

employers, such as the owners of sweat shops, nearly always on the verge

of bankruptcy and sometimes on the verge of starvation themselves, are

harder on their labor than the industrial combinations, and that in

competitive establishments, like textile mills, the periods when

employers are forced to close down altogether are far more frequent,

making the average wages the year round far below those paid by any of

the trusts. The merest glance at the statistics of the United States

census will be sufficient evidence to prove this. For not only are

weekly wages lower in the textile mills and several other industries

than they are in the steel corporation, but also employment year in and

year out is much more irregular. Here we see the unions adopting the

politics of the small capitalists, not only on its constructive or

"State Socialist" side, but also in its _reactionary_ tendency, now

being rapidly outgrown, of trying to restore competition, and actually

working against their own best interests for this purpose.

A writer in the _Federationist_ demands "a reduction of railway

charges, express rates, telegraph rates, telephone rates," and a

radical change in the great industrial corporations such as the

Steel Trust, which is to be subjected to thorough regulation.

Swollen fortunes are to be broken up, together with the power of

the monopolists, of "the gamblers in the necessities of life,

etc."[243] In this writer's opinion (Mr. Shibley), the monopolists

are the chief cause of high prices and the only important

anti-social group, and all the other classes of society have a

common interest with the wage earners. But business interests,

manufacturers, the owners of large farms, and employers in lines

where competition still prevails, would also, with the fewest

exceptions, take sides against the working people in any great

labor conflict--as the history of every modern country for the past

fifty years has shown. It is not "Big Business" or "The Interests,"

but business in general, not monopolistic employers, but the whole

employing class, against which the unions have contended and always

must contend--on the economic as well as the political field. Mr.

Gompers and his associates, like Mr. Bryan and Senator La Follette,

demand that the people shall rule, but they all depend upon the

hundreds of thousands of business men as allies, who, if opposed to

government by monopolies, are still more opposed to government by

their employees or by the consumers of their products, and are

certain to fight any political movement of which they are a

predominating part.

The American Federation of Labor, and the majority of the labor unions

comprising it, are thus seen to have a political program scarcely

distinguishable from that of the radical wing of either of the large

parties,--for it seeks little if any more than to join in with the

general movement against monopolists and large capitalists in a conflict

that can never be won or lost, since the leaders in the movement are

themselves indirectly and at the bottom a part of the capitalist class.

The President of the American Federation views this partly reactionary

and partly "State Socialist" program as being directed against

"capitalism." "The votes of courageous and honest citizens in all

civilized lands," says Mr. Gompers, "are cutting away the capitalistic

powers' privilege to lay tribute on the producers. Capitalism, as a

surviving form of feudalism,--the power to deprive the laborer of his

product,--gives signs of expiring."[244] Democratic reform and

improvement in economic conditions are apparently taken by Mr. Gompers

as a sign that capitalism is expiring and that society is progressing

satisfactorily to the wage earners. Although the constitution of the

Federation says that the world-wide "struggle between the capitalist and

the laborer" is a struggle between "oppressors and oppressed," Mr.

Gompers gives the outside world to understand that the unions have no

inevitable struggle before them, but are as interested in industrial

peace as are the employers. He has expressed his interpretation of the

purpose of the Federation in the single word "more." He sees progress

and asks a share for the unionists as each forward step is taken. He

does not ask that labor's share be increased in proportion to the

progress made--to say nothing of asking that this share should be made

disproportionately large in order gradually to make the distribution of

income more equal. A capitalism inspired by a more enlightened

selfishness might, without any ultimate loss, grant all the Federation's

present demands, political as well as economic. Therefore, Mr. Gompers,

quite logically, does not see any necessity for an aggressive attitude.

"Labor unions," says Mr. John Mitchell, who takes a similar view, "are

_for_ workmen, but _against_ no one. They are not hostile to employers,

not inimical to the interests of the general public. They are for a

class, because that class exists and has class interests, but the unions

did not create and do not perpetuate the class or its interests and do

not seek to evoke a class conflict."[245] Here it is recognized that the

working class exists as a class and has interests of its own. But, if,

as Mr. Mitchell adds, the unions do not wish to perpetuate this class or

its interests, then surely they must see to it, as far as they are able,

that members of this class have equal industrial opportunities with

other citizens, and that its children should at least be no longer

compelled to remain members of a class from which, as he expressly

acknowledges, there is at present no escape.

Both Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell have gone to the defense of the

leading anti-Socialist organization in this country, Civic

Federation--and nothing could draw in stronger colors than do their

arguments the complete conflict of the Gompers-Mitchell labor union

policy to that of the Socialists. Mr. Gompers defends the Federation as

worthy of labor's respect on the ground that many of its most active

capitalist members have shown a sustained sincerity, "always having in

mind the rights and interests of labor," which is the very antithesis to

the Socialist claim that nobody will always have in mind the rights and

the interests of labor, except the laborers--and least of all those who

buy labor themselves, or are intimately associated with those who buy

labor.

Mr. Mitchell says that through the Civic Federation many employers have

become convinced that their antagonism to unions was based on prejudice,

and have withdrawn their opposition to the organization of the men in

their plants. No doubt this is strictly true. It shows that the unions

had been presented to the employers as being profitable to them. This,

Socialists would readily admit, might be the case with some labor

organizations as they have been shaped by leaders like Mr. Mitchell and

conferences like those of the Civic Federation. To Socialists

organizations that create this impression of harmony of interests do

exactly what is most dangerous for the workers--that is, they make them

less conscious and assertive of their own interests.

The Civic Federation, composed in large part of prominent capitalists

and conservatives, endeavors to allay the discontent of labor by

intimate association with the officers of the unions. Socialists have

long recognized the tendency of trade-union leaders to be persuaded by

such methods to the capitalist view. Eight years ago at Dresden, August

Bebel had already seen this danger, for he placed in the same class with

the academic "revisionists" those former proletarians who had been

raised into higher positions and were lost to the working classes

through "intercourse with people of the contrary tendency." It is this

class of leaders, according to the Socialists, which, up to the present,

has dominated the trade unions of Great Britain and the United States

and occasionally of other countries.

No Socialist has been more persistent in directing working-class opinion

against all such "leaders" than Mr. Debs, who does not mince matters in

this direction. "The American Federation of Labor," he writes, "has

numbers, but the capitalist class do not fear the American Federation

of Labor; quite the contrary. There is something wrong with that form of

unionism whose leaders are the lieutenants of capitalism; something is

wrong with that form of unionism that forms an alliance with such a

capitalist combination as the Civic Federation, whose sole purpose is to

chloroform the working class while the capitalist class go through their

pockets.... The old form of trade unionism no longer meets the demands

of the working class. The old trade union has not only fulfilled its

mission and outlived its usefulness, but is now positively reactionary,

and is maintained, not in the interest of the workers who support it,

but in the interest of the capitalist class who exploit the workers who

support it."

In a recent speech Mr. Debs related at length the Socialist view as to

how, in his opinion, this misleading of labor leaders comes about:--

"There is an army of men who serve as officers, who are on the

salary list, who make a good living, keeping the working class

divided. They start out with good intentions as a rule. They really

want to do something to serve their fellows. They are elected

officers of a labor organization, and they change their clothes.

They now wear a white shirt and a standing collar. They change

their habits and their methods. They have been used to cheap

clothes, coarse fare, and to associating with their fellow workers.

After they have been elevated to official position, as if by magic

they are recognized by those who previously scorned them and held

them in contempt. They find that some of the doors that were

previously barred against them now swing inward, and they can

actually put their feet under the mahogany of the capitalist.

"Our common labor man is now a labor leader. The great capitalist

pats him on the back and tells him that he knew long ago that he

was a coming man, that it was a fortunate thing for the workers of

the world that he had been born, that in fact they had long been

waiting for just such a wise and conservative leader. And this has

a certain effect upon our new-made leader, and unconsciously,

perhaps, he begins to change--just as John Mitchell did when Mark

Hanna patted him on the shoulder and said, 'John, it is a good

thing that you are at the head of the miners. You are the very man.

You have the greatest opportunity a labor leader ever had on this

earth. You can immortalize yourself. Now is your time.' Then John

Mitchell admitted that this capitalist, who had been pictured to

him as a monster, was not half as bad as he had thought he was;

that, in fact, he was a genial and companionable gentleman. He

repeats his visit the next day, or the next week, and is

introduced to some other distinguished person he had read about,

but never dreamed of meeting, and thus goes on the transformation.

All his dislikes disappear, and all feeling of antagonism vanishes.

He concludes that they are really most excellent people, and, now

that he has seen and knows them, he agrees with them there is no

necessary conflict between workers and capitalists. And he proceeds

to carry out this pet capitalist theory, and he can only do it by

betraying the class that trusted him and lifted him as high above

themselves as they could reach.

"It is true that such a leader is in favor with the capitalists;

that their newspapers write editorials about him and crown him a

great and wise leader; and that ministers of the gospel make his

name the text for their sermons, and emphasize the vital point that

if all labor leaders were such as he, there would be no objections

to labor organizations. And the leader feels himself flattered. And

when he is charged with having deserted the class he is supposed to

serve, he cries out that the indictment is brought by a discredited

labor leader. And that is probably true. The person who brings a

charge is very likely discredited. By whom? By the capitalist

class, of course; and its press and pulpit and 'public' opinion.

And in the present state of the working class, when he is

discredited by the capitalists, he is at once repudiated by their

wage slaves."[246]

Mr. Debs's attitude toward Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Gompers is by no means

exceptional among Socialists. Mr. Gompers visited Europe in 1909, spoke

at length in Paris and Berlin, and was viewed by the majority of the

European Socialists and unionists almost exactly as he is by Mr. Debs.

Among other things he said there, was that the very kernel of the

difference between the European and the American labor movement and the

reason why the wages are so much better in America than in Europe was

the _friendlier_ relations between the government and the working people

in this country--this after all the recent court decisions against the

unions, decisions which, even when outwardly milder, have precisely the

same effect as the hostile legislation and administration of the

Continent. Mr. Gompers, while in Europe, said that it was unnecessary

that governments and the working people should misunderstand one

another, and asked, "Is there not for us all the common ground of the

fatherland, of common interest and the wish that we feel to make our

people more prosperous, happier and freer?" "I do not know what I will

see there [in Hungary]," he continued, "but this much I will say, that I

know that nothing will convince me that this readiness of the workingmen

to fight against the government and of the government to fight against

the workingmen can bring anything good to either side."[247]

Such expressions naturally aroused the European Socialist and Labor

press, and Kautsky even devoted a special article to Gompers in the

_Neue Zeit_.[248] It was not necessary in a Socialist periodical to say

anything against Gompers's preaching of the common interests of capital

and labor, since there is practically no Socialist who would not agree

that such a belief amounts to a total blindness to industrial and

political conditions. But Kautsky feared that the German workingmen

might give some credit to Gompers's claim that the non-Socialist policy

of the American unions was responsible for the relatively greater

prosperity of the working people in America. "The workingmen," he

explained, referring to this country, "have not won their higher wages

in the last decade, but have inherited them from their forefathers. They

were principally a result of the presence of splendid lands from which

every man who wanted to become independent got as much as he needed."

Then he proceeded to show by the statistics of the Department of Labor

that daily real wages, measured in terms of what they would buy, had

actually decreased for the majority of American workingmen during the

last decade. It is true, as Mr. Gompers replied, that the hours have

become somewhat less, and that therefore the amount of real wages

received _per hour of work_ has slightly increased, though there are few

working people who will count themselves very fortunate in a decrease of

hours if it is paid for _even in a part_ by a decrease of the real wages

received at the end of the day. And even if we compare _the early_

nineties with the _last years_ of the recent decade, we find that the

slight increase in the purchasing power of the total wages received

(_i.e._ real wages) amounted at the most to no more than two or three

per cent in these fifteen years. In a word, the disproportion between

the prosperity of the wage earning and capitalist classes has in the

past two decades become much greater than ever before.

The basis of the Socialist economic criticism of existing society--and

one that appeals to the majority of the world's labor unionists also--is

that while the proportion of the population that consists of wage

earners is everywhere increasing, the share of the national income that

goes to wages is everywhere growing less. There is no more striking,

easily demonstrable, or generally admitted fact in modern life. The

whole purpose of Socialism--in so far as it can be expressed in terms of

income, is to reverse this tendency and to keep it reversed until

private capital is reduced to impotence, as far as the control of

industry is concerned.

Contrast with the position of Gompers and Mitchell the chief official of

the German unions, Karl Legien, a relatively conservative representative

of Continental unionism.

"The unions," he says, "are based on the conviction that there is

an unbridgeable gulf between capital and labor. This does not mean

that the capitalists and laborers may not, as men, find points of

contact; it means only that the accumulation of capital, resting as

it does on keeping from the laborer a part of the products of his

labor, forces a propertyless proletariat to sell its labor at any

price it can get. Between those who wish to maintain these

conditions and the propertyless laborers there is a wall which can

be done away with only by the abolition of wage labor. Here the

views prevailing in the unions are at one with those of the Social

Democratic Party."

"The unions are chiefly occupied in the effort to use their power

to shape the labor contract in their favor, and do not consider it

as their task to propagate this view, but holds the propaganda as

being the task rather of the Social Democratic Party and its

organizations."

Even the struggle for higher wages and shorter hours carried on by the

unions, Legien says, is fought in the consciousness that it will make

labor "more capable of the final solution of the social problem." He

reminds us that the overwhelming majority of the German unionists are

Socialists, and says that the labor conflict itself must have led to

this result, though he does not want the unions to support the party as

unions. In other countries of the Continent, unionists go even farther.

In Austria, Belgium, and elsewhere the two organizations act as a single

body, and in France, not satisfied with working for Socialism as members

of the party, unionists also make it a declared end of their unions,

independently of all political action, and shape their everyday policies

accordingly.

It is only when we come to Great Britain that we find the unions in a

conciliatory relation with employers such as has hitherto prevailed in

the United States. The relation between the unions and capitalistic

"State Socialists" of Great Britain has been friendly. As I have already

noted, the enthusiasm of the British unions for the social reforms of

the Liberal Party and government has hitherto been so great that they

consented that the increase of the taxation needed to pay for these

reforms should fall on their shoulders, while the wealthy classes made

the world ring with epithets of "revolution" because a burden of almost

exactly the same weight was placed on them to pay for the Dreadnoughts

they demanded, and because land was nationally taxed for the first time,

Mr. Churchill himself conceded that his social reform budget "draws

nearly as much from the taxation of tobacco and spirits, which are the

luxuries of the working classes, who pay their share with silence and

dignity, as it does from those wealthy classes upon whose behalf such

heart-rending outcry is made."[249]

Perhaps the fact that the labor unions of Great Britain _up to 1910_

spent less than a tenth part of their income on strikes was a still

stronger ground for Mr. Churchill's admiration, since he had to deal

with the strikers as President of the Board of Trade. While the national

income of the country has been increasing enormously in the past two

decades, and the higher or taxed incomes have more than doubled (which

is a rate of increase far greater than the rise in prices), the income

even of unionized workers has not kept up with this rise. In a word, the

propertied classes are getting a larger and larger share of the national

income (see Mr. Churchill's language in preceding chapter). Now should

the unions continue in the moderation of their demands,--or even should

they obtain a 10 or 20 per cent increase (as some have done since the

railway and seamen's strike of 1911),--_the propertied classes would

still have been getting a larger and larger share of the national

income_. From 1890 to 1899 prices in England are estimated to have

fallen 5 per cent, while wages _of organized working-men_ rose 2 per

cent; from 1900 to 1908 prices rose 6 per cent, while these wages fell 1

per cent. A 7 per cent improvement in the first decade was followed by a

7 per cent retrogression in the second--_among organized workers_.[250]

There is then no probability that the British unions will check the

constant decrease in the share of the total wealth of the country that

goes to the wage earner, until they have completed the reversal of older

policies now in progress. That this may soon occur is indicated by the

great strikes of 1911 (which I shall consider in the next chapter).

The American unions also are beginning to take a more radical and

Socialistic attitude. At its Convention at Columbus, Ohio (January,

1911), the United Mine Workers, after prolonged discussion, passed by a

large majority an amendment to their constitution, forbidding their

officers from acting as members of the Civic Federation. This resolution

was confessedly aimed at Mr. John Mitchell, as Vice President of the

Civic Federation, and resulted in his resignation from that body. It

marks a crisis in the American Labor movement. The Miners' Union had

already indorsed Socialism, its Vice President is a party Socialist, and

its present as well as its former President vote the Socialist ticket.

Having forced the Federation of Labor to admit the revolutionary Western

Federation of Miners into the Federation of Labor Congresses, the

element opposed to Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell's conservative tactics

has, for the first time, become formidable, embracing one third of the

delegates, and is likely to bring about great changes within a few

years, both as to the Federation's political and as to its labor-union

policy.

This action of the Miners was followed a few months later by the

election to office of several of Mr. Gompers's Socialist opponents in

his own union (the Cigarmakers). Then another of Mr. Gompers's most

valued lieutenants (after Mr. Mitchell), Mr. James O'Connell, for many

years President of the very important Machinists' Union, was defeated by

a Socialist, Mr. W. H. Johnston,--after a very lively contest in which

Socialism and the Civic Federation, and their contrasting the labor

policies, played a leading part. The old conservative trade unionism is

not only going, but it is going so fast that one or two more years like

the last would overwhelm it in the national convention of the Federation

of Labor and revolutionize the policy of the whole movement.

The change in the political attitude of the American unions has been

equally rapid. Until a few years ago the majority of them were opposed

to coöperation with any political party. Then they decided almost

unanimously to act nationally, and for the time being with the

Democrats, and this decision still holds. More recently several local

labor parties have been formed, and the Socialist Party has occasionally

been supported. The only question that interests us, however, is the

purpose behind these changing political tactics.

It is natural that unionists on entering into the Socialist Party

should seek to control it. Socialists make no objection at this point.

The only question relates to their purpose in seeking control. A

prominent Socialist miner, John Walker, has frankly advocated a Labor

Party of the British type, while others wish to turn the Socialist Party

into that sort of an organization; while the Secretary of the Oklahoma

Federation of Labor, on joining the Party said: "Let us get into the

Socialist Party--on the inside--and help run it as we think it should be

run," and then gave an idea of how he proposed to run it by accusing the

Party of containing too many people "who are Socialists before anything

else." This is a common feeling among new labor-union recruits in the

Party. It is difficult to see the difference between those who share

Walker's view and want to carry out the present non-Socialist political

program of the unions through a non-Socialist Labor Party and those who,

like this other union official, expect to use the Socialist Party for

the same purpose. Let us notice the similarity of certain arguments used

in favor of each method.

"The Socialist Party," says the organ of the Garment Workers'

Union, "does not command the confidence of American labor to the

extent of becoming a national power in our day and generation, and

it is, therefore, necessary that the working class should turn its

attention to the formation of a party that will be productive of

practical results in sweeping away the legislative and the legal

obstacles that now stand in the way of our rights and

progress."[251]

"Much is being written and said nowadays as to the danger of

Socialism and in favor of trades unionism," writes the _Mine

Workers' Journal_, "To us the condemnation of the Socialists,

coming as it does from the capitalistic press, is a reminder that

of the two evils to their selfish class interest, they prefer the

least.... It is useless to attempt to divide trades unionism from

Socialism. It cannot be done. They have all learned that their

interests are common; they know that labor divided will continue to

suffer, and will hang together before they will allow capital to

hang them separately.

"Indeed, looking at trades unionism in all its phases and from

every angle, we fail to see why Socialism and it should be

separated. The man or men in the movement to-day who are not more

or less Socialistic in their belief are few and far between and do

not know what the principles of unionism are, or what it stands

for. We are all more or less Socialistic in our belief."[252]

A perusal of the labor papers in general shows that while a number agree

with the Garment Workers a still larger number share the opinion of the

_Mine Workers' Journal_. Yet what is the essential difference?

The Garment Workers' organ claims that the European Socialists and trade

unionists support one another's candidates and unite their power without

the Socialists demanding the indorsement of their program, and argues

for that policy in this country. This statement is not accurate. Only in

England, where there has hitherto been no independent Socialist action

of any consequence, has there been any such compromise. On the Continent

of Europe the Socialists usually agree to leave the unions perfect

freedom in their business, and not to interfere in the slightest with

their action _on the economic field_, but there is no important instance

in recent years where they have compromised with them at the ballot box.

And this error is shared by the _Mine Workers' Journal_, which, as I

have just shown, is friendly rather than hostile to Socialism. In

another editorial in this organ we find it said that "whenever Socialism

in America adopts the methods of the British, and other European toilers

and pulls in harness with trade unionism, it is bound to make headway

faster than at present, because there is scarcely a man in the labor

movement that is not more or less of a Socialist." Here again the

British (Labor Party) and the Continental (Socialist) methods are

confused. It is true that the Socialist parties and the labor unionists

everywhere act together. But there are two fundamental differences

between the situation in Great Britain and that on the Continent. A

large part of the unions on the Continent are extremely radical if not

revolutionary in their labor-union tactics, and secondly, the

overwhelming majority of their members are Socialists in politics.

Surely there could be no greater contrast than that between the

swallowing up of the budding Socialist movement by non-Socialist labor

unions in Great Britain and the support of the Socialist Party by the

revolutionary unionist on the Continent.

In America only a minority of the unions are definitely and clearly

Socialist. The local federations of the unions in many of our leading

cities have declared for the Party. Among the national organizations,

however, only the Western Federation of Miners, the Brewers, the Hat and

Cap Makers, the Bakers, and a few others, numbering together no more

than a quarter of a million members, have definitely indorsed Socialism.

The Coal Miners, numbering nearly 300,000, have indorsed collective

ownership of industry, but without saying anything about the Socialist

Party. Besides these, the Socialist Party, of course, has numerous

individual adherents in every union. On the whole the Socialists are

very much outnumbered in the unions, and as long as this condition

remains, the majority of Socialists do not desire anything approaching

fusion between the two movements.

Half a century ago, it is true, Marx himself favored the Socialists

entering into a labor union party in England. He assumed that English

unions would soon go into politics, whereas they took half a century to

do it; he assumed, also, that when they entered politics they would be

more or less militant and independent, and he never imagined that during

fifteen years of "independent action" they would oppose revolutionary

and militant ideas more than ever, and would even go so far in support

of the Liberal Party as almost to bring about a split within their own

anti-revolutionary ranks. Certainly Marx expected that they would accept

his leading principles, whereas only the smallest minority of the

present Labor Party has done so, while the majority has not yet

consented to make Socialism an element of the Party's constitution,

confining themselves to a broad general declaration in favor of "State

Socialism"--and even this not to be binding on its members.

Marx's standard for a workingmen's party was Socialism and nothing less

than Socialism. In his famous letter on the Gotha program addressed in

1875 to Bebel, Liebknecht, and others, at the time of the formation of

the Socialist Party and perhaps the greatest practical crisis in Marx's

lifetime, he said, it will be recalled, that "every step of real

movement is more important than a dozen programs," but he was even then

against any sacrifice of essential principle. He saw that the workingmen

themselves might be satisfied by "the mere fact of the union" of his

followers with those of LaSalle, but he said that it was an error to

believe that this momentous result could not be bought too dearly, and

if any principle was to be sacrificed, he preferred, instead of fusion,

"a simple agreement against the common enemy."

While Socialist workingmen, then, are inclined to attach more importance

to the Socialist Party than to conservative unionism, they expect the

new aggressive, democratic, and revolutionary unionism to do even more

for Socialism, at least in the expected crisis of the future, than the

Party itself. The tendency of the unions towards politics is merely an

automatic result of the tendency of governments and capitalists towards

a certain form of collectivism. Far more significant is their tendency

towards Socialism whether through politics or through the strike, the

boycott, and other means.

Trade unionism, transferred to the field of politics, is not Socialism.

The struggles against employers for more wages, less hours, and better

conditions has no necessary relation to the struggle against capitalism

for the control of industry and government. The former struggle may

evolve into the latter, and usually does so, but long periods may also

intervene when it takes no step in that direction. Moreover, a trade

union party of the British type, whether it takes the name Socialist or

not, if it acts as rival to a genuine Socialist Party, checks the

latter's growth.

When revolutionary labor organizations composed largely of genuine

Socialists enter into politics, the situation is completely

reversed--even when such organizations take the step primarily for the

sake of their unions rather than to aid the Socialist Party. This

situation I shall consider in the following chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[240] Eugene V. Debs, "His Life and Writings," p. 140.

[241] John Mitchell, "Organized Labor," p. 208.

[242] Miss Hughan in her "American Socialism," p. 220, quotes an

expression of mine (see the _New York Call_, March 22, 1910) in which I

said that "petty reforms never have aroused and never will arouse the

enthusiasm of the working class and do not permit of its coöperation,

but leave everything in the hands of a few self-appointed leaders."

Miss Hughan herself points out that I have never considered all

so-called reforms as petty (see "American Socialism of the Present Day,"

p. 216) and quotes (on p. 199) an expression from the very article above

mentioned in which I define what reforms I consider are of special

importance to the wage earners, namely, those protecting the strike, the

boycott, free speech, and civil government. I even mentioned labor

legislation on a national scale. The petty reforms I referred to were

State labor laws. These will not only be carried out by non-Socialists,

but receive very little attention from active labor bodies such as the

city and State federations, which are almost wholly absorbed in the

greater and more difficult task of defending the strike, boycott, free

speech, and sometimes civil government. Labor will do everything in its

power to promote child labor laws, workingmen's compensation etc.,

except to give them its chief attention instead of the struggle for

higher wages and the rights needed to carry it on effectively. As a

consequence these matters are left to a few selfish or unselfish

persons, who are "self-appointed leaders," even when the unions consent

to leave these particular matters in their hands. For active coöperation

of the masses in the legal, economic, and political intricacies of such

legislation is not only undesirable, but impossible under the present

system of society and government. Labor must govern itself through

instructed _delegates_, while such work can be done only by

_representatives_, who must often have the power to act without further

consultation with those who elected them.

[243] George H. Shibley in the _American Federationist_, June, 1910.

[244] Samuel Gompers in the _American Federationist_, 1910.

[245] John Mitchell, "Organized Labor" (Preface).

[246] Eugene V. Debs, _op. cit._

[247] Karl Kautsky in _Die Neue Zeit_, 1909, p. 679.

[248] Karl Kautsky in _Die Neue Zeit_, 1909, p. 680.

[249] Winston Churchill, _op. cit._, pp. 77, 336, 337.

[250] _Die Neue Zeit_, June 11, 1911.

[251] The Weekly Bulletin of the Garment Trades (New York), 1910.

[252] The _Mine Workers' Journal_ (Indianapolis), Aug. 26, 1909, and

April 21, 1910.

CHAPTER V

SYNDICALISM; SOCIALISM THROUGH DIRECT ACTION OF LABOR UNIONS

In America, France, Italy, and England, as well as in Germany (in a

modified form) a new and more radical labor-union policy has been

rapidly gaining the upper hand. This new movement--in its purely

economic, as well as its political, bearings--is of far greater moment

to Socialists than the political tendencies of those unions that

continue to follow the old tactics in their direct relations with

employers.

In America and in England, unfortunately, the name given to this new

movement, "industrial unionism," is somewhat ambiguous. A more correct

term would be "labor" unionism as distinct from "trade" unionism, or

"class unionism" against "sectional unionism." By "industrial unionism"

the promoters of the new movement means that all the employees of a

given industry are to be solidly bound together in a single union

instead of being divided into many separate organizations as so often

happens to-day, and so as to act as a unit against the employer, as, for

example, the steel workers, machinists, longshoremen, structural iron

workers, etc., are all to be united against the Steel Trust. The

essential idea is not any particular form of united action, but united

action. Certainly the united action of all the trades at work under a

single employer or employers' association is of the first importance,

but it is equally important that "industrial" unions so composed should

aid one another, that the united railway organizations, for example,

should be ready to strike with seamen, dockers, etc., as was done in the

recent British strike. An interview with Mr. Vernon Hartshorn, who

recently headed the poll in the election for the executive committee of

the important South Wales Mining Federation, indicates the tendency in

Great Britain at the present moment--when both coal and railway strikes

are threatened on a national scale--not merely towards industrial

unionism, but towards the far more important _union of industrial

unions_, which is really the underlying idea in the minds of most,

though not all, of the propagandists of "industrial unionism."

"I think it a very silly business," exclaimed Mr. Hartshorn

emphatically, "for the workers in different industries to be

proceeding with national movements independently of each other. A

short time ago we had a national stoppage on the railways; that, as

a matter of course, rendered the miners idle. Before that we had

something in the nature of a national stoppage in the case of the

seamen's dispute; that, also, in many districts paralysed the

mining industry and rendered idle the workmen. Now it appears

likely that the miners will be taking part in a national stoppage

which, in turn, will render the railway men and seamen idle.

"The idea is gradually dawning upon all sections of organized labor

that the right thing to do would be for these three unions, through

their executives, to establish a working alliance by means of which

united action should be taken to secure reforms which would result

in the raising of the standard of living of the whole of the

workmen employed in these undertakings. Of course the grievances in

different trades differ considerably in points of detail, but they

all have a common basis in that they relate to wages and conditions

of work. If the three organizations could be got to act together

with a view of establishing a guaranteed minimum wage for all

workmen employed, then not all the forces of the Crown, nor all the

powers of government, could prevent them from emancipating

themselves from their present deplorable position."[253]

It is equally necessary for the unions in order to obtain maximum

results that a special relation should be established between the

members of such trades as are to be found in more than one industry.

Teamsters, stationary engineers, machinists, and blacksmiths, for

example, whether employed by mines, railways, or otherwise, can aid one

another in obvious ways--as by securing positions for blacklisted men

and preventing non-unionists from obtaining employment--by means of a

special "trade" organization or federation that cuts across the various

"industrial" unions or federations. All this, indeed, is provided for in

the plans of the "industrial unionists," in the idea of gradually

reorganizing the present loose Federation of Labor into "a union of

unions," or, as they express it, "One Big Union." This last term also is

not very fortunate, for it is by no means proposed to form one

absolutely centralized organization, like the former Knights of Labor,

but to preserve a considerable measure of autonomy for the constituent

industrial unions. Neither does the new unionism require, as some of its

exponents allege, the abolition of the older _trade_ unions, either

local or national, but only that all unions shall be democratically

organized and open to unskilled labor, and that the general

organization, of which they are all a part, shall be the first

consideration, and the local groupings whether by trade or industry only

secondary.

The principle of the new union policy is exactly the same translated

into terms of economic action, as the principle of revolutionary

Socialism as conceived by Marx, and hitherto applied by Socialists

chiefly on the political field. In the Communist Manifesto Marx says

that the chief thing that distinguishes the Socialists from the other

working-class parties is that the former "always and everywhere

represent the interests of the movement as a whole." So while the older

unions represented the economic struggle of certain more or less

extensive parts of the working class, the industrial unionists aim at a

unionism that represents the whole of the working class, and, since the

ranks of labor are always open, all non-capitalist humanity. A closely

organized federation of all the unions will rely very strongly upon

numbers and embrace a large proportion of unskilled workers. It will,

therefore, be forced to fight the cause of the common man. But this can

only be done by fighting against every form of oppression and

privilege--all of which bear on the men at the bottom.