If capitalism had offered the working class nothing but the crumbs of
middle class liberty, the diatribes of the revolutionaries would be
not without justification. For admittedly, liberty has been gained in
far greater measure by the capitalist employer than by the workman.
But capitalism has done vastly more for labor than this. It has given
rise to that most interesting and important of all modern social
phenomena, the solidarity of labor. As an active, working concept, the
fraternity of labor is just as certainly a product of capitalism as is
social toleration. The latter is the soul of capitalism, as it
manifests itself in the class of employers, the former, as it
manifests itself in the class of employees.
To this statement a Socialist will at once take exception. The
sentiment of brotherhood, the Socialists claim, originates in the
common experiences of poverty and hard labor. But the men at the
passages of the Jordan who slew one another over the pronunciation of
Shibboleth were doubtless manual workers, and were certainly poor. The
merciless strife between Saxon and Celt in England was primarily
between men who were all poor and workers. The participants in the
Sicilian vendettas, in the Scottish clan struggles, in the Kentucky
feuds, might well be honored with the title proletariat, by virtue of
poverty and laboriousness of life. Fraternity is too luxurious a plant
to bloom upon a barren soil of universal labor and poverty. Every one
who reads the documents of middle nineteenth century America is aware
of the uncompromising hostility of the American workingman toward the
distressed Irish seeking an escape from famine. Later, there is
abundant evidence of working class contempt and hostility directed
toward the immigrating workmen from Germany and Scandinavia. Twenty
years ago it was the Dago that experienced the inhospitality of the
workingmen toward their alien brothers; today it is the Wapp--the
collectivity of unfortunates of uncouth ways and unimaginable speech
that seek refuge here from the poverty and oppression of southeastern
Europe. No middle class worshipper of a family tree rooted in the old
colonies can hold the Wapp in more profound detestation than do many
of our recent arrivals. "Zese tam fools [the Wapps], zey ruins zis tam
counthry."
It is the attitude of the unions, we are told, that in the North
represents the chief obstacle to the progress of the negro away from
the menial services and the unskilled employments. It was the working
class that forced, first Chinese, and later Japanese exclusion. It is
working class politics that demands a white Australia, and vexes the
British Empire over the question of emigration from India. "Workingmen
are brothers," say the Socialists. Not by birth and native instincts.
Not by virtue of community in labor and poverty. If there is such a
thing as a fraternity of labor, it is begotten of capitalism.
An active sentiment of brotherhood, does, unquestionably, spring up
under capitalism. Differences of race and religion dwindled to
insignificance among the coal miners in the great strike of 1904. The
Lawrence and Paterson strikes, and the strike in the copper country,
have offered abundant evidence of the growing strength of the feeling
of working class solidarity. It would be difficult to cite a single
recent strike in which men and women of traditionally hostile races
and creeds have not coöperated with the utmost harmony and good will.
No one will deny that the more conscious the workers are of the
pressure of capitalism, the more rapidly does the feeling of
solidarity develop. This is the moral gain that is afforded by labor
disputes. It is a gain which is not to be had without its cost, in the
disorganization of industry, the impoverishment of multitudes of
working families, the destruction of life and property, and the
loosing upon society of evil passions. Is the gain worth its cost? In
the opinion of many observers of our social movement, the cost is
tremendous, but few of these observers attempt to strike a balance
between cost and gain. This is because they have failed to recognize
working class solidarity as a significant step in moral progress.
The development of solidarity among American workingmen is proceeding
rapidly; in other countries its progress is not less manifest. This is
true despite the fact that the problem of creating harmony between
hostile races and religions is more serious where uninterrupted
continuity on the same soil renders easy the survival of ancient
prejudices. The hostility between Czech and German, between Magyar and
Slav, is mitigated when the representatives of these warring races
work side by side in the same factory, oppressed by the same factory
regulations, impoverished by the same crises. Evidence is
accumulating, to prove that the internationalism of labor is becoming
a reality. It may not be true that French workingmen are already so
utterly averse to the idea of shooting down their German brethren as
the Socialistic literature and the spokesmen of Socialist and Labor
parties would have us believe. But there is very much more than a
fervent hope in working class anti-militarism. If French and German
workmen might at present fail to refuse to kill one another in war,
the time is perhaps not far distant when the outcome of an
international war may be rendered problematical through the extension
of working class solidarity.
For the working class, solidarity is producing results quite analogous
to those produced in the class of capitalistic employers by the
pursuit of profit. Solidarity is unthinkable without a measure of
toleration. The American trade unionist learns to tolerate the alien
origin, the broken speech and uncouth manner, the strange religion,
and the unexpected outlook upon life, of the foreign workman who must
either become a brother unionist and faithful ally, or a scab and an
enemy. And out of this toleration is created a sphere of personal
freedom from social encroachment such as no workman of an earlier
epoch ever enjoyed. Fraternity and liberty, these are the positive
acquisitions won by labor out of the very oppression of capitalism. Of
the revolutionary trinity only equality remains beyond the visible
horizon. And even equality may be brought nearer, if not realized,
through the further perfecting of working class liberty and
fraternity.
V
Capitalism is material, gross, ugly. Yes, but it has a
soul--toleration, liberty, fraternity. And this, like most souls, is
not so much in being as in becoming. It is only in the most highly
capitalistic centers that even business has partly freed itself from
elements of personal oppression. There is no state nor city in which
the fraternity of labor is more than an emerging fact. Under
capitalism, workingmen are brothers, but there is still a vast deal of
the Cain and Abel in their feelings toward one another. Remove the
pressure of capitalism at this instant, and the lessons of fraternity
would quickly be forgotten. Relax the profit motive, and mankind would
again stand forth in its pristine narrowness and bigotry and cruelty.
Conceive for a moment that the United States were now under
Socialistic management. With what spirit should we greet the oppressed
of other lands, fleeing to us for refuge? We should probably judge of
the problem in terms of dividend and divisor: so much food, so many
mouths; let not the number of mouths be increased. To be sure, there
is an economic fallacy lurking in this syllogism; but when has an
economic fallacy ever been crushed except by weight of a brute class
interest? Our workingmen are brothers of those of England and France
and Germany, under the pressure of cosmopolitan capitalism. But the
natural attitude of a group of Socialistic nations toward one another
will be a coveting of one another's rich mines and fertile provinces.
At least such will be the natural attitude until fraternity, imposed
by capitalism, has descended from men's lips and entered into their
blood.
There is a wise saying in Karl Marx's _Critique of Political Economy_
(Preface): "No social order ever disappears before all the productive
forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new
higher relations of production never appear before the material
conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old
society." What Marx said of the material embodiment of capitalism, we
can apply to its soul. Capitalism is growing toward liberty and
fraternity. But the immense distance we must traverse before this goal
can be attained is evidence of the vitality that remains in the
system. Were capitalism to be abolished today, the hard-won gains of
the last two centuries would vanish. But by this very fact it is
proved that capitalism cannot be abolished today.