called "society" is only a lot of individuals. Therefore the
individual is the only real being and society a mere abstraction, a
name. As an individual I know myself, but I know nothing of society; I
know my own interests, but I know nothing of what you call the
interests of society." On the other hand, the Socialist says that "no
man liveth unto himself," to use a biblical phrase. He points out that
in modern society no individual life, apart from the social life, is
possible.
If this seems a somewhat abstract way of putting it, Jonathan, just
try to put it in a concrete form yourself by means of a simple
experiment. When you sit down to your breakfast to-morrow morning take
time to think where your breakfast came from and how it was produced.
Think of the coffee plantations in far-off countries drawn on for your
breakfast; of the farms, perhaps thousands of miles away, from which
came your bacon and your bread; of the coal miners toiling that your
breakfast might be cooked; of the men in the engine-rooms of great
ships and on the tenders of mighty locomotives, bringing your
breakfast supplies across sea and land. Then think of your clothing in
the same way, article by article, trying to realize how much you are
dependent upon others than yourself. Throughout the day apply the same
principle as you move about. Apply it to the streets as you go to
work; to the street cars as you ride; apply it to the provisions which
are made to safeguard your health against devastating plague, the
elaborate system of drainage, the carefully guarded water-supply, and
so on. Then, when you have done that for a day as far as possible, ask
yourself whether the Anarchist idea that every individual is a
distinct and separate whole, an independent being, unrelated to the
other individuals who make up society, is a true one; or whether the
Socialist idea that all individuals are inter-dependent upon each
other, bound to each other by so many ties that they cannot be
considered apart, is the true idea. Judge by your experience,
Jonathan!
So the Socialist says that "we are all members one of another," to use
another familiar biblical phrase. He is not less interested in
personal freedom than the Anarchist, not less desirous of giving to
each individual unit in society the largest possible freedom
compatible with the like freedom of all the other units. But, while
the Anarchist says that the best judge of that is the individual, the
Socialist says that society is the best judge. The Anarchist position
is that, in the event of a conflict of interests, the will of the
individual must rule at all costs; the Socialist says that, in the
event of such a conflict of interests, the will of the individual must
give way. That is the real philosophical difference between the two.
Anarchism is not important enough in America, friend Jonathan, to
justify our devoting so much time and space to the discussion of its
philosophy as opposed to the philosophy of Socialism, except for the
bearing it has upon the political movement of the working class. I
want you to see just how Anarchism works out when the test of
practical application is resorted to.
Just as the Anarchist sets up an abstract idea of individual liberty
as his ideal, so he sets up an abstract idea of tyranny. To him Law,
the will of society, is the essence of tyranny. Laws are limitations
of individual liberty set by society and therefore they are
tyrannical. No matter what the law may be, all laws are wrong. There
cannot be such a thing as a good law, according to this view. To
illustrate just where this leads us, let me tell of a recent
experience: I was lecturing in a New England town, and after the
lecture an Anarchist rose to ask some questions. He wanted to know if
it was not a fact that all laws were oppressive and bad, to which, of
course, I replied that I thought not.
I asked him whether the law forbidding murder and providing for its
punishment, oppressed _him_; whether _he_ felt it a hardship not to be
allowed to murder at will, and he replied that he did not. I cited
many other laws, such as the laws relating to arson, burglary,
criminal assault, and so on, with the same result. His outcry about
the oppression of law, as such, proved to be just an empty cry about
an abstraction; a bogey of his imagination. Of course, he could cite
bad laws, unjust laws, as I could have done; but that would simply
show that some laws are not right--a proposition upon which most
people will agree. My Anarchist friend quoted Herbert Spencer in
support of his contention. He referred to Spencer's well-known summary
of the social legislation of England. So I asked my friend if he
thought the Factory Acts were oppressive and tyrannical, and he
replied that, from an Anarchist viewpoint, they were.
Think of that, Jonathan! Little boys and girls, five and six years
old, were taken out of their beds crying and begging to be allowed to
sleep, and carried to the factory gates. Then they were driven to work
by brutal overseers armed with leather whips. Sometimes they fell
asleep at their tasks and then they were beaten and kicked and cursed
at like dogs. Little boys and girls from orphan asylums were sent to
work thus, and died like flies in summer--their bodies being secretly
buried at night for fear of an outcry. You can find the terrible story
told in _The Industrial History of England_, by H. de B. Gibbins,
which ought to be in your public library.
Humane men set up a protest at last and there was a movement through
the country demanding protection for the children. Once a member of
parliament held up in the House of Commons a whip of leather thongs
attached to an oak handle, telling his colleagues that a few days
before it had been used to flog little children who were mere babies.
The demand was made for legislation to stop this barbarous treatment
of children, to protect their childhood. The factory owners opposed
the passing of such laws on the ground that it would be an
interference with their individual liberties, their right to do as
they pleased. _And the Anarchist comes always and inevitably to the
same conclusion._ Factory laws, public health laws, education
laws--all denounced as "interferences with individual liberty."
Extremes meet: the Anarchist in the name of individual liberty, like
the capitalist, would prevent society from putting a stop to the
exploitation of its little ones.
The real danger in Anarchism is not that _some_ Anarchists believe in
violence, and that from time to time there are cowardly assassinations
which are as futile as they are cowardly. The real danger lies first
in the reactionary principle that the interests of society must be
subordinated to the interests of the individual, and, second, in
holding out a hope to the working class that its freedom from
oppression and exploitation may be brought about by other than
political, legislative means. And it is this second objection which is
of extreme importance to the working class of America at this time.
From time to time, in all working class movements, there is an outcry
against political action, an outcry raised by impetuous men-in-a-hurry
who want twelve o'clock at eleven. They cry out that the ballot is too
slow; they want some more "direct" action than the ballot-box allows.
But you will find, Jonathan, that the men who raise this cry have
nothing to propose except riot to take the place of political action.
Either they would have the workers give up all struggle and depend
upon moral suasion, or they would have them riot. And we Socialists
say that ballots are better weapons than bullets for the workers. You
may depend upon it that any agitation among the workers against the
use of political weapons leads to Anarchism--and to riot. I hope you
will find time to read Plechanoff's _Anarchism and Socialism_,
Jonathan. It will well repay your careful study.
No, Socialism is not related to Anarchism, but it is, on the contrary,
the one great active force in the world to-day that is combating
Anarchism. There is a close affinity between Anarchism and the idea of
capitalism, for both place the individual above society. The Socialist
believes that the highest good of the individual will be realized
through the highest good of society.
(3) Socialism involves no attack upon the family and the home. Those
who raise this objection against Socialism charge that it is one of
the aims of the Socialist movement to do away with the monogamic
marriage and to replace it with what is called "Free Love." By this
term they do not really mean free _love_ at all. For love is always
_free_, Jonathan. Not all the wealth of a Rockefeller could buy one
single touch of love. Love is always free; it cannot be bought and it
cannot be bound. No one can love for a price, or in obedience to laws
or threats. The term "Free Love" is therefore a misnomer.
What the opponents of Socialism have in mind when they use the term is
rather lust than love. They charge us Socialists with trying to do
away with the monogamic marriage relation--the marriage of one man to
one woman--and the family life resulting therefrom. They say that we
want promiscuous sex relations, communal life instead of family life
and the turning over of all parental functions to the community, the
State. And to charge that these things are involved in Socialism is at
once absurd and untrue. I venture to say, Jonathan, that the
percentage of Socialists who believe in such things is not greater
than the percentage of Christians believing in them, or the percentage
of Republicans or Democrats. They have nothing to do with Socialism.
Let us see upon what sort of evidence the charge is based: On the one
hand, finding nothing in the programmes of the Socialist parties of
the world to support the charge, we find them going back to the
utopian schemes with communistic features. They go back to Plato,
even! Because Plato in his _Republic_, which was a wholly imaginary
description of the ideal society he conceived in his mind, advocated
community of sex relations as well as community of goods, therefore
the Socialists, who do not advocate community of goods or community of
wives, must be charged with Plato's principles! In like manner, the
fact that many other communistic experiments included either communism
of sex relations, as, for example, the Adamites, during the Hussite
wars, in Germany, and the Perfectionists, of Oneida, with their
"community marriage," all the male members of a community being
married to all the female members; or enforced celibacy, as did the
Shakers and the Harmonists, among many other similar groups, is urged
against Socialism.
I need not argue the injustice and the stupidity of this sort of
criticism, Jonathan. What have the Socialists of twentieth century
America to do with Plato? His utopian ideal is not their ideal; they
are neither aiming at community of goods nor at community of wives.
And when we put aside Plato and the Platonic communities, the first
fact to challenge attention is that the communities which established
laws relating to sex relations which were opposed to the monogamic
family, whether promiscuity, so-called free love; plural marriage, as
in Mormonism, or celibacy, as in Harmonism and Shakerism, were all
_religious_ communities. In a word, all these experiments which
antagonized the monogamic family relation were the result of various
interpretations of the Bible and the efforts of those who accepted
those interpretations to rule their lives in accordance therewith. In
every case communism was only a means to an end, a way of realizing
what they considered to be the true religious life. In other words, my
friend, most of the so-called free love experiments made in these
communities have been offshoots of Christianity rather than of
Socialism.
_And I ask you, Jonathan Edwards, as a fair-minded American, what you
would think of it if the Socialists charged Christianity with being
opposed to the family and the home? It would not be true of
Christianity and it is not true of Socialism._
But there is another form of argument which is sometimes resorted to.
The history of the movement is searched for examples of what is called
free love. That is to say that because from time to time there have
been individual Socialists who have refused to recognize the
ceremonial and legal aspects of marriage, believing love to be the
only real marriage bond, notwithstanding that the vast majority of
Socialists have recognized the legal and ceremonial aspects of
marriage, they have been accused of trying to do away with marriage.
Our opponents have even stooped so low as to seize upon every case
where Socialists have sought divorce as a means of undoing terrible
wrong, and then married other husbands and wives, and proclaimed it as
a fresh proof that Socialism is opposed to marriage and the family.
When I have read some of these cruel and dishonest attacks, often
written by men who know better, my soul has been sickened at the
thought of the cowardice and dishonesty to which the opponents of
Socialism resort.
Suppose that every time a prominent Christian becomes divorced, and
then remarries, the Socialists of the country were to attack the
Christian religion and the Christian churches, upon the ground that
they are opposed to marriage and the family, does anybody think that
_that_ would be fair and just? But it is the very thing which happens
whenever Socialists are divorced. It happened, not so very long ago,
that a case of the kind was made the occasion of hundreds of
editorials against Socialism and hundreds of sermons. The facts were
these: A man and his wife, both Socialists, had for a long time
realized that their marriage was an unhappy one. Failing to realize
the happiness they sought, it was mutually agreed that the wife should
apply for a divorce. They had been legally married and desired to be
legally separated. Meantime the man had come to believe that his
happiness depended upon his wedding another woman. The divorce was to
be procured as speedily as possible to enable the legal marriage of
the man and the woman he had grown to love.
Those were the facts as they appeared in the press, the facts upon
which so many hundreds of attacks were made upon Socialism and the
Socialist movement. Two or three weeks later, an Episcopal clergyman,
not a Socialist, left the wife he had ceased to love and with whom he
had presumably not been happy. He had legally married his wife, but
he did not bother about getting a legal separation. He just left his
wife; just ran away. He not only did not bother about getting a legal
separation, but he ran away with a young girl, whom he had grown to
love. They lived together as man and wife, without legal marriage, for
if they went through any marriage form at all it was not a legal
marriage and the man was guilty of bigamy. Was there any attack upon
the Episcopal Church in consequence? Were hundreds of sermons preached
and editorials written to denounce the church to which he belonged,
accusing it of aiming to do away with the monogamic marriage relation,
to break up the family and the home?
Not a bit of it, Jonathan. There were some criticisms of the man, but
there were more attempts to find excuses for him. There were thousands
of expressions of sympathy with his church. But there were no attacks
such as were aimed at Socialism in the other case, notwithstanding
that the Socialist strictly obeyed the law whereas the clergyman broke
the law and defied it. I think that was a fair way to treat the case,
but I ask the same fair treatment of Socialism.
So far, Jonathan, I have been taking a defensive attitude, just
replying to the charge that Socialism is an attack upon the family and
the home. Now, I want to go a step further: I want to take an
affirmative position and to say that Socialism comes as the defender
of the home and the family; that capitalism from the very first has
been attacking the home. I am going to turn the tables, Jonathan.
When capitalism began, when it came with its steam engine and its
power-loom, what was the first thing it did? Why, it entered the home
and took the child from the mother and made it a part of a great
system of wheels and levers and springs, all driven for one end--the
grinding of profit. It began its career by breaking down the bonds
between mother and child. Then it took another step. It took the
mother away from the baby in the cradle in order that she too might
become part of the great profit-grinding system. Her breasts might be
full to overflowing with the food wonderfully provided for the child
by Nature; the baby in the cradle might cry for the very food that was
bursting from its mother's breasts, but Capital did not care. The
mother was taken away from the child and the child was left to get on
as best it might upon a miserable substitute for its mother's milk.
Hundreds of thousands of babies die each year for no other reason than
this.
There will never be safety for the home and the family so long as
babies are robbed of their mothers' care; so long as little children
are made to do the work of men; so long as the girls who are to be the
wives and mothers are sent into wifehood and motherhood unprepared,
simply because the years of maidenhood are spent in factories that
ought to be spent in preparation for wifehood and motherhood. Here is
capitalism cutting at the very heart of the home, with Socialism as
the only defender of the home it is charged with attacking. For
Socialism would give the child its right to childhood; it would give
the mother her freedom to nourish her babe; it would give to the
fathers and mothers of the future the opportunities for preparation
they cannot now enjoy.
I ask you, friend Jonathan, to think of the tens and thousands of
women who marry to-day, not because they love and are loved in return,
but for the sake of getting a home. Socialism would put an end to that
condition by making woman economically and politically free. Think of
the tens of thousands of young men in our land who do not, dare not,
marry because they have no certainty of earning a living adequate to
the maintenance of wives and families; of the hundreds of thousands of
prostitutes in our country, the vast majority of whom have been driven
to that terrible fate by economic causes outside of their control.
Socialism would at least remove the economic pressure which forces so
many of these women down into the terrible hell of prostitution. I ask
you, Jonathan, to think also of the thousands of wives who are
deserted every year. So far as the investigations of the charity
organizations into this serious matter have gone, it has been shown
that poverty is responsible for by far the greatest number of these
desertions. Socialism would not only destroy the poverty, but it would
set woman economically free, thus removing the main causes of the
evil.
Oh, Jonathan Edwards, hard-headed, practical Jonathan, do you think
that the existence of the family depends upon keeping women in the
position of an inferior class, politically and economically? Do you
think that when women are politically and economically the equals of
men, so that they no longer have to marry for homes, or to stand
brutal treatment because they have no other homes than the men afford;
so that no woman is forced to sell her body--I ask you, when women are
thus free do you believe that the marriage system will be endangered
thereby? For that is what the contention of the opponents of Socialism
comes to in the last analysis, my friend. Socialism will only affect
the marriage system in so far as it raises the standards of society as
a whole and makes woman man's political and economic equal. Are you
afraid of _that_, Jonathan?
(4) Socialism is not opposed to religion. It is perfectly true that
some Socialists oppose religion, but Socialism itself has nothing to
do with matters of religion. In the Socialist movement to-day there
are men and women of all creeds and all shades of religious belief. By
all the Socialist parties of the world religion is declared to be a
private matter--and the declaration is honestly meant; it is not a
tactical utterance, used as bait to the unwary, which the Socialists
secretly repudiate. In the Socialist movement of America to-day there
are Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants, Spiritualists and
Christian Scientists, Unitarians and Trinitarians, Methodists and
Baptists, Atheists and Agnostics, all united in one great comradeship.
This was not always the case. When the scientific Socialist movement
began in the second half of the last century, Science was engaged in a
great intellectual encounter with Dogma. All the younger men were
drawn into the scientific current of the time. It was natural, then,
that the most radical movement of the time should partake of the
universal scientific spirit and temper. The Christians of that day
thought that the work of Darwin and his school would destroy religion.
They made the very natural mistake of supposing that dogma and
religion were the same thing, a mistake which their critics fully
shared.
You know what happened, Jonathan. The Christians gradually came to
realize that no religion could oppose the truth and continue to be a
power. Gradually they accepted the position of the Darwinian critics,
until to-day there is no longer the great vital controversy upon
matters of theology which our fathers knew. In a very similar manner,
the present generation of Socialists have nothing to do with the
attacks upon religion which the Socialists of fifty years ago indulged
in. The position of all the Socialist parties of the world to-day is
that they have nothing to do with matters of religious belief; that
these belong to the individual alone.
There is a sense in which Socialism becomes the handmaiden of
religion: not of creeds and theological beliefs, but of religion in
its broadest sense. When you examine the great religions of the world,
Jonathan, you will find that in addition to certain supernatural
beliefs there are always great ethical principles which constitute the
most vital elements in religion. Putting aside the theological beliefs
about God and the immortality of the soul, what was it that gave
Judaism its power? Was it not the ethical teaching of its great
prophets, such as Isaiah, Joel, Amos and Ezekiel--the stern rebuke of
the oppressors of the poor and downtrodden, the scathing denunciation
of the despoilers of the people, the great vision of a unified world
in which there should be peace, when war should no more blight the
world and when the weapons of war should be forged into plowshares and
pruning hooks? Leaving matters of theology aside, are not these the
principles which make Judaism a living religion to-day for so many?
And I say to you, Jonathan, that Socialism is not only not opposed to
these things, but they can only be realized under Socialism.
So with Christianity. In its broadest sense, leaving aside all matters
of a supernatural character, concerning ourselves only with the
relation of the religion to life, to its material problems, we find in
Christianity the same great faith in the coming of universal peace and
brotherhood, the same defense of the poor and the oppressed, the same
scathing rebuke of the oppressor, that we find in Judaism. There is
the same relentless scourge of the despoilers, of those who devour
widows houses. And again I say that Socialism is not only not opposed
to the great social ideals of Christianity, but it is the only means
whereby they may be realized. And the same thing is true of the
teachings of Confucius; Buddha and Mahomet. The great social ideals
common to all the world's religions can never be attained under
capitalism. Not till the Socialist state is reached will the Golden
Rule, common to all the great religions, be possible as a rule of
life. No ethical life is possible except as the outgrowing of just and
harmonic economic relations; until it is rooted in proper economic
soil.