Socialism in America

Front matter

SOCIALISM

AMERICA

LIBRARY Brigham Young University

Preface

This book is an informal sketch of the Socialistjmavement intended for readers who know little about the subject. It is not a come-to- Socialism tract designed to convert non-Socialists. Most of the arguments are inter-Socialist, that is, they are on one side or another of questions, oil which Socialists disagree among themselves., The outsider may step in, see what the row is about, and then step out again. I am a member of the Socialist party and of the Industrial Workers of the World, but I have no official position in either. I express only my own opinions or the opinions of others which happen to appeal to me. Since I did not invent Socialism, I have drawn most of my ideas from other people, but I have not thought it necessary in a short essay to make specific acknowledgments. I take this occasion, however, to praise and recommend to the general reader "Socialism As It Is," by William English Walling, and x Preface

"American Labor Unions," by Helen Marot. They contain everything that is worth while in this book — and much more — except what has developed since they were published.

J. M.

Contents

Preface

I. Socialists and the War II. The Origin* of Socialism III. Economic Classes . ' IV. Some American History V. The Socialist Party .

VI. Program of the Socialist Party VII. Program of the Socialist Party

Chapter I

In October, 1914, after three months of war in Europe, there appeared in the New York Call a political advertisement signed by the Socialist candidate for governor in which the voter was instructed that a vote for Socialism was a vote against war. In the same paper and in other Socialist publications were printed bitter attacks on the European Socialists for their surrender of principle to the dominant nationalism, equally fierce defences of their course as wise or necessary in the circumstances, and predictions as to the probable effect of international disaster on international Socialism. Through all the turmoil of opinions persisted a single idea about which the disputants seemed to show anything like unanimity: the idea that despite failure, backsliding, or treachery, a greater war, the class war, must be prosecuted to its triumphant conclusion. Socialists, like other human beings, were stunned by the murderous explosion, and for some weeks one knew not whether to admire the promptness with which they recovered their wits and began to put forth explanations of immediate facts and restatements of ultimate theory, or to distrust, along with all other journalism, expressions of beliefs so suddenly rushed into verbal form. Some knew too much; everybody knew too little. American Socialists, who through no virtue of their own were not in international conflict, and Italian Socialists, who, partly thanks to their vigorous influence on their government, lived in a country nominally at peace, were able to maintain the attitude of critical onlookers. In the belligerent countries most of the Socialists and labor organizations abandoned important principles and went with their governments. Only a minority held fast, saw clearly through the smoke, and spoke amid the noise of war the message of true Socialism. In the prevalent madness Socialist reason, whether or not it is conspicuously steady in time of peace, shook in its seat.

Before the beginning of hostilities Socialists in all nations protested against the threatening war. They had subscribed to the general anti-war resolution of the International Socialist

Congress of 1907 and to the resolution of the special International Congress convoked during the first Balkan War in 191 2. These resolutions emphatically commit the Socialists to use every means possible to prevent war and to try by the menace of revolution to compel the governments to keep the peace. The following significant sentences occur:

"By simultaneously rising in revolt against imperialism and every section of the international movement offering resistance to the government, the workers of all countries are bringing public opinion to bear against all warlike desire. Thus a splendid cooperation of the workers has been brought about which has already contributed much to maintain the peace of the world. The fear of the ruling classes that a revolution of the workers would follow the declaration of a European war has proved an essential guarantee of peace." This represents the belief and the intention of a majority of the Socialists of the world before the war, and many still hold at least in theory to the resolutions of the International Congresses.

After the war broke out many Socialists receded from the international position in the direction of nationalism, and the rest were impotent against the storm. In England the Independent Labor Party, which is a revolutionary minority, opposed the war, continued to attack Sir Edward Grey, and refused to take part in the recruiting campaign. The Italian Socialists seem to have played their part well. They had much to do with keeping Italy neutral for eight months. They almost unanimously opposed the Triple Alliance and backed with the threat of revolution their determination that Italy should not support the Germans against France. When it became evident that if Italy went into the war she would be on the side of the Allies, some of the Socialists favored war against Austria, but most of them held out for neutrality until the last. In Russia the Socialist deputies refused to approve the war appropriations and left the chamber when the budget came to a vote. In Russia it takes courage to be a Socialist. Five of the deputies who persisted in their anti-war propaganda have been charged with treason and exiled for life. Liberty-loving France and democratic England should be proud of their ally.

American Socialists, though relieved from the responsibility of action and privileged to stand in a neutral and critical position, are, like other

Americans, not free from racial and national prejudices. They belong to many races, and for good or for evil they have carried into American Socialism interests sympathetic with European localisms. Those of German stock approve or but moderately disapprove the action of the German Socialist politicians who voted for the war appropriations in the Reichstag. Added to these are many American Socialists, of whatever origin or racial allegiance, who have learned their Socialism from German sources and have been taught to regard German Socialism as the great exemplar of revolutionist theory and practice. The profoundest philosophers and most stalwart men of action in Socialist history were Germans or born to the German language; German immigrants were the first teachers of Socialism in America; and the German Socialist party receives the largest vote of all the Socialist parties of the world. Therefore the German brand of Socialism is the original, pure article; all other kinds are imitations and owe their virtue to their success in imitation. And although German Socialists may make mistakes, what the party as a whole votes to do is right, and what the representatives, elected by a majority of Socialist voters, decide to do is right. If Marx is to be revised the German comrades alone are qualified for the task, and any Irishman, American, Italian, or Russian who pretends to pull German Socialist theory to pieces and reconstruct it is an undisciplined upstart. The German deputies as a whole voted public money into the Kaiser's war chest. To accuse them of the crime of being accessory to murder before the fact is a stupid piece of bourgeois moralism. It is perfectly proper to praise the valiant minority of the German Socialist deputies who protested in vain against the action of their comrades, for they, even the minority, were duly elected German Socialist deputies and therefore right. But the actions of the Socialist group, dominated according to true German democratic principles by the majority of duly elected German Socialists, were more right. At worst they were guilty of nothing but a momentary recadency due to great pressure of circumstance and the need of saving the German party intact.

Opposed to the apologists for the German politicians is a group of American Socialists who are sympathetic with the national aspirations of the Allies and whose opinions are therefore colored by the same prejudices that corrupt Socialist thought in the nations that are fighting against Germany. As individuals these Americans are anti-German; as Socialists they argue that the triumph of German militarism will result in the retardation of all that is valuable in German Socialism, and they are able to cite in support of this idea the retort of the Italian Socialists to the German Socialists who went to enlist the aid of Italian Socialists in the German national cause against Russian barbarism. The Italians said in effect, "A plague on both your houses! But of the two evils, backward and unwieldy Russian militarism is less of a menace than a victorious, well-organized German militarism. " To such American Socialists it seems that the failure of the German Social Democracy is final proof, if finality were needed, of the power of the German Government, and that the chief duty of the revolutionist in every country is to assist in the overthrow of that government, even though the debacle carry with it a large numerical section of the German Social Democracy and a large part of its influence and ideas.

Complicated with the motives of the anti- German American Socialists is a belief held beio Socialism in America

fore the war that German Socialism, as it has developed in practice, is not a pure and exemplary product, but spurious and adulterated. The German Socialists have not backslid on an avalanche of world war; they had little worthy to backslide from; their decadence began and reached low depths long ago. They have not suddenly become bankrupt; political Socialism in Germany has been bankrupt for years; it needed only the shock of a great crisis to throw it into the hands of a receiver. If that kind of Socialism is done for, all the better for real Socialism. Bury the corpse on the battlefield, no matter whether the grave is dug by French or German soldiers. Recover from the ruin the true body and spirit of the German revolution of older days, and start again. Authority is dead, long live reality!

At this point the argument is taken up by nonpolitical and anti-political Socialists, and concurred in by other Revolutionists, Anarchists, Syndicalists, Industrial Unionists, who are with the Socialists as against militarism, royalism, capitalism, imperialism, but are opposed to Socialists in so far forth as Socialists ally themselves with governments, reformers, liberals, and bourgeois institutions. This is the most

Socialists and the War n

difficult confusion of bedfellows to disentangle limb from limb, smooth out and lay on their pillows so that one can see them. We shall perhaps understand their alliances and hostilities a little later. For the moment consider them in relation to this war. They say (one can lump them and disregard their differences) that the failure of the German Socialists and also of the French, British, and Belgian Socialists is not a local and momentary phenomenon. All political Socialism has gone to the devil, returned to the bosom of the father that begot it. What, they say, did you expect of the German Socialists? Did you not know that they had most of them ceased to be Socialists in any real sense of the word ? We told you long ago that they had the insidious disease, reformism, opportunism, which had undermined their system. Because great numbers got the disease and because those great numbers were recruited from the working class, the little farmer, the little trader, the best people on earth, you saw strength; but we saw weakness in your very numbers, weakness and death. The lesson to be drawn from the Suedekums and Guesdes, and the thousands for whom their names happen to stand, is that all political action is a delusion, a swindle, a snare, a corrupter. The Germans put time, money, heart, and brains into building up the greatest so-called Socialist party that the world has seen. In the crisis that party is worthless; in the long run it is worthless; in all other countries similar parties are worthless. We welcome the war if only because it will teach you well-meaning but misguided Socialists that politics is a disease.

Thus the failure of the European Socialists, not only in Germany but in other belligerent countries, is used as an argument to prove that political Socialism is and must always be a failure. The logic of this is not quite perfect. Moreover, the political Socialists are not the only revolutionists who have been swamped. Many skeptics as to the value of political action and preachers of "direct action" have shouldered the gun or refilled the fountain pen in defence of their country. French syndicalists, notably, have become the staunchest of patriots and have exchanged the sword of revolution for the sword of France.

The shock of war has shattered some Socialist hopes, strained the fabric of Socialist theory, and subjected to fiery test the metal of the men and women who call themselves Socialists.

Workmen who have affirmed that the exploited of all lands have common interests and that the exploiters of all lands are their common enemies are on the battlefields shooting each other. Each national group excuses its murderous denial of oft-repeated professions on the ground that it is engaged in a holy defensive war. The German Socialist is fighting to save his home and wife and children from the barbaric hordes of Russia. The French Socialist is defending his home and wife and children against the barbaric Prussianism of Germany. The Belgian Socialist, with whom everybody, including the German, has at least a sportsman's sympathy, is obviously in arms against the invader. Even the English Socialist makes a case for England as a defendant nation. "We regard this war as a war of self-defence. If England or Belgium had stood on one side now, no one would have cared if a victorious Germany had swallowed us up later. Only those extreme internationalists who think it a matter of no importance if one nation tries to tear the very tongue from the mouth of another nation and blot out all that is distinctive in its habits of life could refuse to fight against the German aggressor." That might have been uttered by a member of the British Cabinet. It was written by a British revolutionist, Mr. Arthur D. Lewis. I do not know how he stands with his fellow Socialists in England, but he is a competent student of revolutionary unionism and politics. In times like these the only smile that is seemly upon the human countenance is the smile of irony.

The apostasy of the majority of Socialists in the murdering nations has given great satisfaction to the political masters and their literary apologists. And when your enemy praises your conduct you can be dead sure that you have done wrong. Every German professor, psychologist, journalist, military expert, and clergyman who argues for the Fatherland points with pride to the magnificent unity of Germany, to the laying aside of party differences, yea, even to the loyalty of the Social Democrats. The entire empire marches to one tune and therefore its cause is just and holy. If a minority of unreconciled Socialists tried to pipe a different tune, the censor has taken care of them. France, too, is united as never before. Herve, who served a term in prison for treasonous anti-militarism, is now as patriotic a warrior as the rest. And Great Britain is united (excepting some of the pesky Irish) in a coagulated mass of anti-Germanism. Mr. Lewis, whose views happen to be nearest at hand for purposes of quotation, says that the anti-war manifesto of the Independent Labor party was the work of the National Council and does not express the views of the bulk of the members. "No section of anti-war opinion has had confidence enough in its cause to call any public meeting to explain its views. . . . The sentiment of the people is always divided in England. In our lifetime it was never so unitedly in favor of any war as it is in favor of the present war." So we have splendid national units fighting with an annihilating determination, and in unity lies not only strength but right. Every nation is right because of its homogeneity of purpose. Kaiser and proletarian embrace fraternally and train their guns upon Guesde, the uncompromising French Marxian, his arms linked in the dance of death with Winston Churchill and the Russian Czar.

Each member of each group of national Socialists is justified in sticking a bayonet into a Socialist of another national group on the simple ground that he is defending his home. (His home probably belongs to the landlord.) He is justified on much higher grounds, on impersonal idealistic grounds, grounds that are the cloudy floor of heaven. He is fighting for the liberty of mankind. German freedom means the freedom of the world. In Germany the Social Democratic idea has developed more highly than in any other country. Therefore it would be good for mankind if Germany prevailed. But in France and England liberal institutions flourish beyond anything known in military semi-feudal Germany. Therefore disaster to France and England entails disaster to liberalism, to democracy, to all that the world has won and must maintain if we are to advance to genuine democracy, to Socialism. Each group of Socialist murderers is killing the other group for the good of the slain, certainly for the ultimate triumph of the most advanced Socialist ideas. Compared with the state-mad Socialists, Dr. Eliot and Dr. Miinsterberg are feeble champions of political liberty and culture. Each group is sure that the enemy is reactionary and backward. The German Socialists, it is true, do not pretend that England and France and Belgium are less democratic than Germany, but look at their ally, Russia the unspeakable! The Russian Socialists, consistent enemies of the Russian Government and free from palaver, make no claims to superior culture and political liberty on behalf of their Fatherland. Plechanoff, a Russian Socialist, a profound Germantaught Marxist, holds that the "victory of Germany means the setback of progress in Western Europe and the definite, or almost indefinite, triumph of Russian despotism." But this is not because Russian democracy is superior to German; it is because the German autocracy is, in times of international peace, allied with the Czar to keep the people down, and the Russian despotism is easier to beat than such despotism as a victorious German Government would impose on the Russian people. Dr. Steinmetz, the distinguished German-American engineer, maintains that a victory of Russia and consequent dominion over Germany "threatens destruction to all that Socialism has accomplished by submergency under an autocracy based on the illiterate masses."

So though the Socialist behind the machine guns, like other good people, deplores the necessity of war and does not believe in war as a method of propagating his ideas, he can nevertheless wipe his bloody hands with a clear conscience and bind up his wounds with the salving thought that he is serving humanity: for the triumph of his nation will bring to the other nation wider liberty and more and better Socialism than his unfortunate alien comrade has ever known before.

When a movement is in a state of confusion, obscured and torn by the madness of the larger world that surrounds it, one does not expect it to give expression to its clearest and best ideas. Yet it is just when a movement is caught unawares, shaken, and driven to action stripped of non-essentials, that we can best estimate its strength and weakness. The war will have a profound influence on Socialism; it may even revolutionize the revolutionists. Socialism may have some influence on the immediate course of the nations after peace is reestablished, and it will certainly influence their course in a more or less distant future. What Socialist ideas promise to emerge integral from this conflict? What other conflicts do they lead to? What did the political candidate mean by asserting that a vote for Socialism is a vote against war? What is meant by international Socialism? Does capitalism cause war? If Socialists are against war, what do they mean by the class war? Are they mere humanitarian pacifists with an afternoon-tea ideal of society? Where did they get their ideas? What, in particular, do they amount to in America and what are they likely to amount to? To answer these questions let us take a look at them as they were or seemed to be before the war.

Chapter II

Socialism has its origin in the revolt of the working classes against the exploiting classes. That revolt is a fact, not a theory, and the measure of the extent and intensity of that fact is the measure of the extent and intensity of the Socialist force. The living force was begotten by the practical needs of multitudes of people; it does not owe its existence to economists, philosophers, prophets. Philosophers, economists, prophets, poets, exhorters, have been its school teachers and biographers; they have given it method of thought and manner of speech; they have put into communicable literary form the aspirations of its obscure will, armed it with argument, and helped it to self-conscious organization. The recorders of its life have not been uniformly concurrent in their testimony; the schoolmasters have been of many minds and have fought each other with every weapon known to human controversy.

The resultant multiplicity of ideas has been an excellent thing for the movement, for it has given to Socialism an unlimited variety of interpretations and tactics to choose from and test; it has made alliances between one or another aspect of Socialist thought and almost every science, every art, every branch of human activity; and it has ensured the freedom of Socialism as a whole from subservience to any one thinker.

From the multitude of ideas embodied in Socialist history, literature, and practical tactics, emerge only two or three that are essential. The most important idea is the Class Struggle.

Throughout history economic classes have fought with each other by force of arms and force of mind for mastery of the world or share in the mastery of the world. All the wars of history are of two kinds: (a) contests between members of the same class and their followers, between duke and duke, king and king, state and state, government and government; and (b) contests between classes within the same state, territory, or jurisdiction. The second type of war is known as a revolution if the revolting class succeeds; it is a "rebellion" if the revolting class fails. Revolution may be implicated in wars of the first type, may cause them or grow out of them. But revolution always has a special object, the oversetting of one economic class by another. The triumphant class may be apparently larger or smaller than the vanquished. When imperial Rome succeeded republican Rome there was a shift of power from a more numerous to a less numerous master class. When the barons beat King John into subjection there was a shift of power from a less numerous to a more numerous master class. The Cromwellian war was the attempt of the country squire and farmer to wrest power from the aristocratic landlord and his allies, the city merchant and the monarchy. Its immediate result was the substitution of a new dynasty for the old. Its revolutionary result was realized later, in 1689, when with the Declaration of Rights the modern Parliament, representing all the owning and business classes, was more or less definitely established.

The French Revolution is a bewildering tangle of interstate and interclass conflicts. The middle class (the Third Estate) forced the king, the clergy, and the nobility to yield some of their privileges and set up an insecure republicanism. In this they were helped by the peasants and the mob. (In history, including the contemporaneous history recorded in to-day's newspaper, "mob" almost always means working people.) The middle-class parties fought it out, leading the mob to revolution within revolution. Directory followed Committee of Public Safety; every provisional government was striking its rivals with one hand and conducting foreign wars with the other hand; until finally Napoleon with the army behind him swept republicanism out of the council chambers and established a military dictatorship. After his fall the middle classes, which he had the wit to foster and make use of, were the dominant power. The peasants merely changed masters; the middle-class business landlord succeeded the feudal landlord. And the city workers had found a master stronger than king or emperor; for meanwhile a greater revolution than any suggested by the name of Robespierre or Napoleon had taken place. Invention and commerce had brought the industrial era of the nineteenth century.

Recall another revolution which is nearer to us, the American Revolution. American merchants, landowners, and other patriots felt that they could do business better without the interference of the British Government. So they led the tax-ridden and mismanaged colonies against their British owners. The revolt of a dependent territory is rather like an international war than a civil war and shows fewer of the motives of a class war. This is true of the successful American Revolution, of the unsuccessful rebellion of the Southern Confederacy, of most insurrections of subject states against imperial states; class interests are present but they are merged in the national interests. In the American Revolution it was the landlord and trading classes who were most interested in flinging off the British yoke. The condition of the non-owning classes in America was little changed. They lived as before, working, paying taxes and rent. The state governments remained. For four years after the war there was no organized national government. Then the national government was formed by a committee of the well-to-do; the mass of the people took little interest in it and had little to say about it. The founders of our republic contrived a modified form of the British Government, and it has been working badly ever since. For the moment, however, we are not judging the value of governments, certainly not attempting to write their intricate history. We wish simply to remind ourselves that there have been wars between states and within states in which the contestants belonged to the same economic class — king, duke, lawyer, merchant, artisan, laborer of one country or province pitted against king, duke, lawyer, merchant, artisan, laborer, of another country or province. The greatest of such wars blackens the earth to-day. There have also been wars in which dissimilar, unequal classes fought with each other for dominion of the soil on which they both stood.

The two kinds of war often go together; the demarcations of the nations involved or of the classes involved are not always sharp. But the two types of war are clearly discernible in history. It is invariably true that whenever a nation changes radically its form of government, not its size, its several statutes, its personalities, but its essential form, what has happened is that an economic revolution has taken place; a class, defined by its relations to property, has won a dominant or partial control of national affairs such as it has not hitherto enjoyed. The most deep-reaching revolution that the world has ever known occupied more than a hundred years and made itself felt in every corner of the civilized world. It was the industrial revolution which brought in, not suddenly but gradually, the age in which we now live, the age of the bourgeois. The business man succeeded the feudal lord. The capitalist became king. And the king is still in the counting-room counting other people's money. Property is empire, and the man of property sways nations. The propertied classes are actually and potentially numerous; the members must share their power with each other. The political expression of their divided, share-holding power is the modern republic, the constitutional monarchy.

If it is true that the modern world is a business world, that the class that rules is the class that owns, then, as it seems to backward-looking lovers of the old times, mankind must have become sordidly materialistic; our attitude toward the things of the world must have suffered an evil change; human nature must have degenerated and enslaved itself to " commercialism. " In point of fact there has been no such change in the nature of the animal, for the simple reason that the human being has always been "commercial" and "materialistic"; that is, he has always been impelled and controlled by his need to get a living and his desire to make a better living. He has got his living by using natural resources or by taking something away from somebody else. All human history is the history of man the worker and man the owner, and ownership howsoever acquired has been the basis of all political power, the determinant of laws, customs, tribal migrations, national contests, religious rivalries, class hostilities, military and political campaigns. Every war is an economic war; every political revolution is an economic revolution. The possessors of things have always been the monarchs, no matter how they came to be possessors, no matter what form their possessions took, cattle, slaves, land, ships, shoes, or dollars.

This is called the Economic or Materialistic Interpretation of history, and its synthesis is a philosophic abstraction made in Germany and known as Economic Determinism. The plain English of the idea is that the bread-and-butter needs of man have shaped his history; if you want to know the explanation of any historical event, find out who wanted to get something, what he wanted to get, and whether he was strong enough to get it. Like all philosophic abstractions, Economic Determinism is merely a formula by which the imagination can assemble and understand a multiplicity of facts; it is a crucial generalization like Darwin's theory of natural selection. It does not embrace and account for all facts, and it is threatened by the danger which menaces all principles, the danger of becoming inflexibly phrase-hard.