religion. With beliefs and speculations concerning the origin of the
universe it has nothing to do. It has nothing to do with speculations
concerning the existence of man after physical death, with belief in
the immortality of the soul. These are for the individual. Socialism
concerns itself with man's material life and his relation to his
fellow man. And there is nothing in the philosophy of Socialism, or
the platform of the political Socialist movement, antagonistic to the
social aspects of any religion.
(5) I have already had a good deal to say in the course of this
discussion concerning the subject of personal freedom. The common idea
of Socialism as a great bureaucratic government owning and controlling
everything, deciding what every man and woman must do, is wholly
wrong. The aim and purpose of the Socialist movement is to make life
more free for the individual, and not to make it less free. Socialism
means equality of opportunity for every child born into the world; it
means doing away with class privilege; it means doing away with the
ownership by the few of the things upon which the lives of the many
depend, through which the many are exploited by the few. Do you see
how individuals are to be enslaved through the destruction of the
power of a few over many, Jonathan? Think it out!
It is in the private ownership of social resources, and the private
control of social opportunities, that the essence of tyranny lies. Let
me ask you, my friend, whether you feel yourself robbed of any part of
your personal liberty when you go to a public library and take out a
book to read, or into one of our public art galleries to look upon
great pictures which you could never otherwise see? Is it not rather a
fact that your life is thereby enriched and broadened; that instead of
taking anything from you these things add to your enjoyment and to
your power? Do you feel that you are robbed of any element of your
personal freedom through the action of the city government in making
parks for your recreation, providing hospitals to care for you in case
of accident or illness, maintaining a fire department to protect you
against the ravages of fire? Do you feel that in maintaining schools,
baths, hospitals, parks, museums, public lighting service, water,
streets and street cleaning service, the city government is taking
away your personal liberties? I ask these questions, Jonathan, for the
reason that all these things contain the elements of Socialism.
When you go into a government post-office and pay two cents for the
service of having a letter carried right across the country, knowing
that every person must pay the same as you and can enjoy the same
right as you, do you feel that you are less free than when you go into
an express company's office and pay the price they demand for taking
your package? Does it really help you to enjoy yourself, to feel
yourself more free, to know that in the case of the express company's
service only part of your money will be used to pay the cost of
carrying the package; that the larger part will go to bribe
legislators, to corrupt public officials and to build up huge fortunes
for a few investors? The post-office is not a perfect example of
Socialism: there are too many private grafters battening upon the
postal system, the railway companies plunder it and the great mass of
the clerks and carriers are underpaid. But so far as the principles of
social organization and equal charges for everybody go they are
socialistic. The government does not try to compel you to write
letters any more than the private company tries to compel you to send
packages. If you said that, rather than use the postal system, you
would carry your own letter across the continent, even if you decided
to walk all the way, the government would not try to stop you, any
more than the express company would try to stop you from carrying your
trunk on your shoulder across the country. But in the case of the
express company you must pay tribute to men who have been shrewd
enough to exploit a social necessity for their private gain.
Do you really imagine, Jonathan, that in those cities where the street
railways, for example, are in the hands of the people there is a loss
of personal liberty as a result; that because the people who use the
street railways do not have to pay tribute to a corporation they are
less free than they would otherwise be? So far as these things are
owned by the people and democratically managed in the interests of
all, they are socialistic and an appeal to such concrete facts as
these is far better than any amount of abstract reasoning. You are not
a closet philosopher, interested in fine-spun theories, but a
practical man, graduated from the great school of hard experience. For
you, if I am not mistaken, Garfield's aphorism, that "An ounce of
fact is worth many tons of theory," is true.
So I want to ask you finally concerning this question of personal
liberty whether you think you would be less free than you are to-day
if your Pittsburg foundries and mills, instead of belonging to
corporations organized for the purpose of making profit, belonged to
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and if they were operated for the
common good instead of as now to serve the interests of a few. Would
you be less free if, instead of a corporation trying to make the
workers toil as many hours as possible for as little pay as possible,
naturally and consistently avoiding as far as possible the expenditure
of time and money upon safety appliances and other means of protecting
the health and lives of the workers, the mills were operated upon the
principle of guarding the health and lives of the workers as much as
possible, reducing the hours of labor to a minimum and paying them for
their work as much as possible? Is it a sensible fear, my friend, that
the people of any country will be less free as they acquire more power
over their own lives? You see, Jonathan, I want you to take a
practical view of the matter.
(6) The cry that Socialism would reduce all men and women to one dull
level is another bogey which frightens a great many good and wise
people. It has been answered thousands of times by Socialist writers
and you will find it discussed in most of the popular books and
pamphlets published in the interest of the Socialist propaganda. I
shall therefore dismiss it very briefly.
Like many other objections, this rests upon an entire misapprehension
of what Socialism really means. The people who make it have got firmly
into their minds the idea that Socialism aims to make all men equal;
to devise some plan for removing the inequalities with which they are
endowed by nature. They fear that, in order to realize this ideal of
equality, the strong will be held down to the level of the weak, the
daring to the level of the timid, the wisest to the level of the least
wise. That is their conception of the equality of which Socialists
talk. And I am free to say, Jonathan, that I do not wonder that
sensible men should oppose such equality as that.
Even if it were possible, through the adoption of some system of
stirpiculture, to breed all human beings to a common type, so that
they would all be tall or short, fat or thin, light or dark, according
to choice, it would not be a very desirable ideal, would it? And if we
could get everybody to think exactly the same thoughts, to admire
exactly the same things, to have exactly the same mental powers and
exactly the same measure of moral strength and weakness, I do not
think _that_ would be a very desirable ideal. The world of human
beings would then be just as dull and uninspiring as a waxwork show.
Imagine yourself in a city where every house was exactly like every
other house in all particulars, even to its furnishings; imagine all
the people being exactly the same height and weight, looking exactly
alike, dressed exactly alike, eating exactly alike, going to bed and
rising at the same time, thinking exactly alike and feeling exactly
alike--how would you like to live in such a city, Jonathan? The city
or state of Absolute Equality is only a fool's dream.
No sane man or woman wants absolute equality, friend Jonathan, for it
is as undesirable as it is unimaginable. What Socialism wants is
equality of opportunity merely. No Socialist wants to pull down the
strong to the level of the weak, the wise to the level of the less
wise. Socialism does not imply pulling anybody down. It does not
imply a great plain of humanity with no mountain peaks of genius or
character. It is not opposed to natural inequalities, but only to
man-made inequalities. Its only protest is against these artificial
inequalities, products of man's ignorance and greed. It does not aim
to pull down the highest, but to lift up the lowest; it does not want
to put a load of disadvantage upon the strong and gifted, but it wants
to take off the heavy burdens of disadvantage which keep others from
rising. In a word, Socialism implies nothing more than giving every
child born into the world equal opportunities, so that only the
inequalities of Nature remain. Don't you believe in _that_, my friend?
Here are two babies, just born into the world. Wee, helpless seedlings
of humanity, they are wonderfully alike in their helplessness. One
lies in a tenement upon a mean bed, the other in a mansion upon a bed
of wonderful richness. But if they were both removed to the same
surroundings it would be impossible to tell one from the other. It has
happened, you know, that babies have been mixed up in this way, the
child of a poor servant girl taking the place of the child of a
countess. Scientists tell us that Nature is wonderfully democratic,
and that, at the moment of birth, there is no physical difference
between the babies of the richest and the babies of the poorest. It is
only afterward that man-made inequalities of conditions and
opportunities make such a wide difference between them.
Look at our two babies a moment: no man can tell what infinite
possibilities lie behind those mystery-laden eyes. It may be that we
are looking upon a future Newton and another Savonarola, or upon a
greater than Edison and a greater than Lincoln. No man knows what
infinitude of good or ill is germinating back of those little puckered
brows, nor which of the cries may develop into a voice that will set
the hearts of men aflame and stir them to glorious deeds. Or it may be
that both are of the common clay, that neither will be more than an
average man, representing the common level in physical and mental
equipment.
But I ask you, friend Jonathan, is it less than justice to demand
equal opportunities for both? Is it fair that one child shall be
carefully nurtured amid healthful surroundings, and given a chance to
develop all that is in him, and that the other shall be cradled in
poverty, neglected, poorly nurtured in a poor hovel where pestilence
lingers, and denied an opportunity to develop physically, mentally and
morally? Is it right to watch and tend one of the human seedlings and
to neglect the other? If, by chance of Nature's inscrutable working,
the babe of the tenement came into the world endowed with the greater
possibilities of the two, if the tenement mother upon her mean bed
bore into the world in her agony a spark of divine fire of genius, the
soul of an artist like Leonardo da Vinci, or of a poet like Keats, is
it less than a calamity that it should die--choked by conditions which
only ignorance and greed have produced?
Give all the children of men equal opportunities, leaving only the
inequalities of Nature to manifest themselves, and there will be no
need to fear a dull level of humanity. There will be hewers of wood
and drawers of water content to do the work they can; there will be
scientists and inventors, forever enlarging man's kingdom in the
universe; there will be makers of songs and dreamers of dreams, to
inspire the world. Socialism wants to unbind the souls of men, setting
them free for the highest and best that is in them.
Do you know the story of Prometheus, friend Jonathan? It is, of
course, a myth, but it serves as an illustration of my present point.
Prometheus, for ridiculing the gods, was bound to a rock upon Mount
Caucasus, by order of Jupiter, where daily for thirty years a vulture
came and tore at his liver, feeding upon it. Then there came to his
aid Hercules, who unbound the tortured victim and set him free. Like
another Prometheus, the soul of man to-day is bound to a rock--the
rock of capitalism. The vulture of Greed tears the victim,
remorselessly and unceasingly. And now, to break the chains, to set
the soul of man free, Hercules comes in the form of the Socialist
movement. It is nothing less than this; my friend. In the last
analysis, it is the bondage of the soul which counts for most in our
indictment of capitalism and the liberation of the soul is the goal
toward which we are striving.
It is to-day, under capitalism, that men are reduced to a dull level.
The great mass of the people live dull, sordid lives, their
individuality relentlessly crushed out. The modern workman has no
chance to express any individuality in his work, for he is part of a
great machine, as much so as any one of the many levers and cogs.
Capitalism makes humanity appear as a great plain with a few peaks
immense distances apart--a dull level of mental and moral attainment
with a few giants. I say to you in all seriousness, Jonathan, that if
nothing better were possible I should want to pray with the poet
Browning,--
Make no more giants, God--
But elevate the race at once!
But I don't believe that. I am satisfied that when we destroy man-made
inequalities, leaving only the inequalities of Nature's making, there
will be no need to fear the dull level of life. When all the chains of
ignorance and greed have been struck from the Prometheus-like human
soul, then, and not till then, will the soul of man be free to soar
upward.
(7) For the reasons already indicated, Socialism would not destroy the
incentive to progress. It is possible that a stagnation would result
from any attempt to establish absolute equality such as I have already
described. If it were the aim of Socialism to stamp out all
individuality, this objection would be well founded, it seems to me.
But that is not the aim of Socialism.
The people who make this objection seem to think that the only
incentive to progress comes from a few men and their hope and desire
to be masters of the lives of others, but that is not true. Greed is
certainly a powerful incentive to some kinds of progress, but the
history of the world shows that there are other and nobler incentives.
The hope of getting somebody else's property is a powerful incentive
to the burglar and has led to the invention of all kinds of tools and
ingenious methods, but we do not hesitate to take away that incentive
to that kind of "progress." The hope of getting power to exploit the
people acts as a powerful incentive to great corporations to devise
schemes to defeat the laws of the nation, to corrupt legislators and
judges, and otherwise assail the liberties of the people. That, also,
is "progress" of a kind, but we do not hesitate to try to take away
that incentive.
Even to-day, Jonathan, Greed is not the most powerful incentive in the
world. The greatest statesmanship in the world is not inspired by
greed, but by love of country, the desire for the approbation and
confidence of others, and numerous other motives. Greed never inspired
a great teacher, a great artist, a great scientist, a great inventor,
a great soldier, a great writer, a great poet, a great physician, a
great scholar or a great statesman. Love of country, love of fame,
love of beauty, love of doing, love of humanity--all these have meant
infinitely more than greed in the progress of the world.
(8) Finally, Jonathan, I want to consider your objection that
Socialism is impossible until human nature is changed. It is an old
objection which crops up in every discussion of Socialism. People talk
about "human nature" as though it were something fixed and definite;
as if there were certain quantities of various qualities and instincts
in every human being, and that these never changed from age to age.
The primitive savage in many lands went out to seek a wife armed with
a club. He hunted the woman of his choice as he would hunt a beast,
capturing and clubbing her into submission. _That_ was human nature,
Jonathan. The modern man in civilized countries, when he goes seeking
a wife, hunts the woman of his choice with flattery, bon-bons,
flowers, opera tickets and honeyed words. Instead of a brute clubbing
a woman almost to death, we see the pleading lover, cautiously and
earnestly wooing his bride. And that, too, is human nature. The
African savages suffering from the dread "Sleeping Sickness" and the
poor Indian ryots suffering from Bubonic Plague see their fellows
dying by thousands and think angry gods are punishing them. All they
can hope to do is to appease the gods by gifts or by mutilating their
own poor bodies. That is human nature, my friend. But a great
scientist like Dr. Koch, of Berlin, goes into the African centres of
pestilence and death, seeks the germ of the disease, drains swamps,
purifies water, isolates the infected cases and proves himself more
powerful than the poor natives' gods. And that is human nature.
Outside the gates of the Chicago stockyards, I have seen crowds of men
fighting for work as hungry dogs fight over a bone. That was human
nature. I have seen a man run down in the streets and at once there
was a crowd ready to lift him up and to do anything for him that they
could. It was the very opposite spirit to that shown by the brutish,
snarling, cursing, fighting men at the stockyards, but it was just as
much human nature.
The great law of human development, that which expresses itself in
what is so vaguely termed human nature, is that man is a creature of
his environment, that self-preservation is a fundamental instinct in
human beings. Socialism is not an idealistic attempt to substitute
some other law of life for that of self-preservation. On the contrary,
it rests entirely upon that instinct of self-preservation. Here are
two classes opposed to each other in modern society. One class is
small but exceedingly powerful, so that, despite its disadvantage in
size, it is the ruling class, controlling the larger class and
exploiting it. When we ask ourselves how that is possible, how it
happens that the smaller class rules the larger, we soon find that the
members of the smaller class have become conscious of their interests
and the fact that these can be best promoted through organization and
association. Thus conscious of their class interests, and acting
together by a class instinct, they have been able to rule the world.
But the workers, the class that is much stronger numerically, have
been slower to recognize their class interests. Inevitably, however,
they are developing a similar class sense, or instinct. Uniting in the
economic struggle at first, and then, in the political struggle in
order that they may further their economic interests through the
channels of government, it is easy to see that only one outcome of
the struggle is possible. By sheer force of numbers, the workers must
win, Jonathan.
The Socialist movement, then, is not something foreign to human
nature, but it is an inevitable part of the development of human
society. The fundamental instinct of the human species makes the
Socialist movement inevitable and irresistible. Socialism does not
require a change in human nature, but human nature does require a
change in society. And that change is Socialism. It is perhaps the
deepest and profoundest instinct in human beings that they are forever
striving to secure the largest possible material comfort, forever
striving to secure more of good in return for less of ill. And in that
lies the great hope of the future, Jonathan. The great Demos is
learning that poverty is unnecessary, that there is plenty for all;
that none need suffer want; that it is possible to suffer less and to
live more; to have more of good while suffering less of ill. The face
of Demos is turned toward the future, toward the dawning of
Socialism.
XI
WHAT TO DO
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute.
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it!
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Only engage and then the mind grows heated;
Begin, and then the work will be completed.--_Goethe._
Apart from those convulsive upheavals that escape all forecast
and are sometimes the final supreme resource of history
brought to bay, there is only one sovereign method for
Socialism--the conquest of a legal majority.--_Jean Jaurès._
When one is convinced of the justice and wisdom of the Socialist idea,
when its inspiration has begun to quicken the pulse and to stir the
soul, it is natural that one should desire to do something to express
one's convictions and to add something, however little, to the
movement. Not only that, but the first impulse is to seek the
comradeship of other Socialists and to work with them for the
realization of the Socialist ideal.
Of course, the first duty of every sincere believer in Socialism is to
vote for it. No matter how hopeless the contest may seem, nor how far
distant the electoral triumph, the first duty is to vote for
Socialism. If you believe in Socialism, my friend, even though your
vote should be the only Socialist vote in your city, you could not be
true to yourself and to your faith and vote any other ticket. I know
that it requires courage to do this sometimes. I know that there are
many who will deride the action and say that you are "wasting your
vote," but no vote is ever wasted when it is cast for a principle,
Jonathan. For, after all, what is a vote? Is it not an expression of
the citizen's conviction concerning the sort of government he desires?
How, then can his vote be thrown away if it really expresses his
conviction? He is entitled to a single voice, and provided that he
avails himself of his right to declare through the ballot box his
conviction, no matter whether he stands alone or with ten thousand,
his vote is not thrown away.
The only vote that is wasted is the vote that is cast for something
other than the voter's earnest conviction, the vote of cowardice and
compromise. The man who votes for what he fully believes in, even if
he is the only one so voting, does not lose his vote, waste it or use
it unwisely. The only use of a vote is to declare the kind of
government the voter believes in. But the man who votes for something
he does not want, for something less than his convictions, that man
loses his vote or throws it away, even though he votes on the winning
side. Get this well into your mind, friend Jonathan, for there are
cities in which the Socialists would sweep everything before them and
be elected to power if all the people who believe in Socialism, but
refuse to vote for it on the ground that they would be throwing away
their votes, would be true to themselves and vote according to their
inmost convictions.
I say that we must vote for Socialism, Jonathan, because I believe
that, in this country at least, the change from capitalism must be
brought about through patient and wise political action. I have no
doubt that the economic organizations, the trade unions, will help,
and I can even conceive the possibility of their being the chief
agencies in the transformation in society. That possibility, however,
seems exceedingly remote, while the possibility of effecting the
change through the ballot box is undeniable. Once let the
working-class of America make up its mind to vote for Socialism,
nothing can prevent its coming. And unless the workers are wise enough
and united enough to vote together for Socialism, Jonathan, it is
scarcely likely that they will be able to adopt other methods with
success.