When I was a youngster I was looked upon as a weird sort of creature,
because, forsooth, I was a socialist. Reporters from local papers
interviewed me, and the interviews, when published, were pathological
studies of a strange and abnormal specimen of man. At that time (nine or
ten years ago), because I made a stand in my native town for municipal
ownership of public utilities, I was branded a "red-shirt," a
"dynamiter," and an "anarchist"; and really decent fellows, who liked me
very well, drew the line at my appearing in public with their sisters.
But the times changed. There came a day when I heard, in my native town,
a Republican mayor publicly proclaim that "municipal ownership was a
fixed American policy." And in that day I found myself picking up in the
world. No longer did the pathologist study me, while the really decent
fellows did not mind in the least the propinquity of myself and their
sisters in the public eye. My political and sociological ideas were
ascribed to the vagaries of youth, and good-natured elderly men
patronized me and told me that I would grow up some day and become an
unusually intelligent member of the community. Also they told me that my
views were biassed by my empty pockets, and that some day, when I had
gathered to me a few dollars, my views would be wholly different,--in
short, that my views would be their views.
And then came the day when my socialism grew respectable,--still a vagary
of youth, it was held, but romantically respectable. Romance, to the
bourgeois mind, was respectable because it was not dangerous. As a
"red-shirt," with bombs in all his pockets, I was dangerous. As a youth
with nothing more menacing than a few philosophical ideas, Germanic in
their origin, I was an interesting and pleasing personality.
Through all this experience I noted one thing. It was not I that
changed, but the community. In fact, my socialistic views grew solider
and more pronounced. I repeat, it was the community that changed, and to
my chagrin I discovered that the community changed to such purpose that
it was not above stealing my thunder. The community branded me a
"red-shirt" because I stood for municipal ownership; a little later it
applauded its mayor when he proclaimed municipal ownership to be a fixed
American policy. He stole my thunder, and the community applauded the
theft. And today the community is able to come around and give me points
on municipal ownership.
What happened to me has been in no wise different from what has happened
to the socialist movement as a whole in the United States. In the
bourgeois mind socialism has changed from a terrible disease to a
youthful vagary, and later on had its thunder stolen by the two old
parties,--socialism, like a meek and thrifty workingman, being exploited
became respectable.
Only dangerous things are abhorrent. The thing that is not dangerous is
always respectable. And so with socialism in the United States. For
several years it has been very respectable,--a sweet and beautiful
Utopian dream, in the bourgeois mind, yet a dream, only a dream. During
this period, which has just ended, socialism was tolerated because it was
impossible and non-menacing. Much of its thunder had been stolen, and
the workingmen had been made happy with full dinner-pails. There was
nothing to fear. The kind old world spun on, coupons were clipped, and
larger profits than ever were extracted from the toilers.
Coupon-clipping and profit-extracting would continue to the end of time.
These were functions divine in origin and held by divine right. The
newspapers, the preachers, and the college presidents said so, and what
they say, of course, is so--to the bourgeois mind.
Then came the presidential election of 1904. Like a bolt out of a clear
sky was the socialist vote of 435,000,--an increase of nearly 400 per
cent in four years, the largest third-party vote, with one exception,
since the Civil War. Socialism had shown that it was a very live and
growing revolutionary force, and all its old menace revived. I am afraid
that neither it nor I are any longer respectable. The capitalist press
of the country confirms me in my opinion, and herewith I give a few
post-election utterances of the capitalist press:--
"The Democratic party of the constitution is dead. The
Social-Democratic party of continental Europe, preaching discontent
and class hatred, assailing law, property, and personal rights, and
insinuating confiscation and plunder, is here."--Chicago Chronicle.
"That over forty thousand votes should have been cast in this city to
make such a person as Eugene V. Debs the President of the United
States is about the worst kind of advertising that Chicago could
receive."--Chicago Inter-Ocean.
"We cannot blink the fact that socialism is making rapid growth in
this country, where, of all others, there would seem to be less
inspiration for it."--Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
"Upon the hands of the Republican party an awful responsibility was
placed last Tuesday. . . It knows that reforms--great, far-sweeping
reforms--are necessary, and it has the power to make them. God help
our civilization if it does not! . . . It must repress the trusts or
stand before the world responsible for our system of government being
changed into a social republic. The arbitrary cutting down of wages
must cease, or socialism will seize another lever to lift itself into
power."--The Chicago New World.
"Scarcely any phase of the election is more sinisterly interesting
than the increase in the socialist vote. Before election we said
that we could not afford to give aid and comfort to the socialists in
any manner. . . It (socialism) must be fought in all its phases, in
its every manifestation."--San Francisco Argonaut.
And far be it from me to deny that socialism is a menace. It is its
purpose to wipe out, root and branch, all capitalistic institutions of
present-day society. It is distinctly revolutionary, and in scope and
depth is vastly more tremendous than any revolution that has ever
occurred in the history of the world. It presents a new spectacle to the
astonished world,--that of an _organized_, _international_,
_revolutionary movement_. In the bourgeois mind a class struggle is a
terrible and hateful thing, and yet that is precisely what socialism
is,--a world-wide class struggle between the propertyless workers and the
propertied masters of workers. It is the prime preachment of socialism
that the struggle is a class struggle. The working class, in the process
of social evolution, (in the very nature of things), is bound to revolt
from the sway of the capitalist class and to overthrow the capitalist
class. This is the menace of socialism, and in affirming it and in
tallying myself an adherent of it, I accept my own consequent
unrespectability.
As yet, to the average bourgeois mind, socialism is merely a menace,
vague and formless. The average member of the capitalist class, when he
discusses socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He
does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its
politics. He wags his head sagely and rattles the dry bones of dead and
buried ideas. His lips mumble mouldy phrases, such as, "Men are not born
equal and never can be;" "It is Utopian and impossible;" "Abstinence
should be rewarded;" "Man will first have to be born again;" "Cooperative
colonies have always failed;" and "What if we do divide up? in ten years
there would be rich and poor men such as there are today."
It surely is time that the capitalists knew something about this
socialism that they feel menaces them. And it is the hope of the writer
that the socialistic studies in this volume may in some slight degree
enlighten a few capitalistic minds. The capitalist must learn, first and
for always, that socialism is based, not upon the equality, but upon the
inequality, of men. Next, he must learn that no new birth into spiritual
purity is necessary before socialism becomes possible. He must learn
that socialism deals with what is, not with what ought to be; and that
the material with which it deals is the "clay of the common road," the
warm human, fallible and frail, sordid and petty, absurd and
contradictory, even grotesque, and yet, withal, shot through with flashes
and glimmerings of something finer and God-like, with here and there
sweetnesses of service and unselfishness, desires for goodness, for
renunciation and sacrifice, and with conscience, stern and awful, at
times blazingly imperious, demanding the right,--the right, nothing more
nor less than the right.