The morality of modern socialism

Front matter

Class 2dt

Book. .

Copyright If

Preface

Important as is the attitude which socialism has assumed toward religion, its moral teachings are certainly of no less, perhaps even of greater consequence. Morality, as we understand it, bears both on personal and common welfare. By subjecting passion to reason and directing reason to the supreme good and ultimate end, it at once elevates man to the highest rank in the visible creation and ensures his perfect happiness. So, too, by establishing the right relations among men and by enjoining on them the duties of justice and charity, it unites them into social bodies for the promotion of public security and prosperity. This is so true that wherever morality is declining, the degradation of manhood, the decay of society, the destruction of peace and order must follow as unavoidable consequences.

Socialism, which nowadays is spreading in ever widening circles, is inseparably connected with ethics and morality. As a social movement it aims at the overthrow of our present civilization and the reconstruction of the social order on a new, nonreligious basis. As a philosophical theory it likewise adopts a new conception of the world, essentially materialistic, embraces new views of human life, cutting it off from existence beyond the

Preface grave, proposes new laws for individual and social development, which it regards as not distinct from cosmic evolution, and so sets up a new code of ethical precepts. All this it begins to explain in the press and in frequent addresses to the masses at large and especially to the working population.

The general public can not be indifferent to this most recent phase of morality. For the sake of society, its welfare and existence, it is bound to inquire into the laws and tenets of socialist ethics and to weigh their bearings on State, Family, and Church.

The following chapters have been written with the purpose of throwing some light on so vitally important a subject. To achieve this end critically and systematically, the authentic sources of socialist ethics have been searched into, the most renowned and reliable of its expounders consulted, and their views reproduced in their own words, while the first and fundamental principles, the basis of all conclusions, have been accurately set forth and carefully elucidated. The materialistic theory underlying socialist philosophy, however, does not require investigation, as this has been made at full length in another work lately edited.*

In conclusion the author wishes to acknowledge his special indebtedness to the Rev. John MacHale of Cleveland. The Author.

*The Characteristics and the Religion of Modern Socialism. By the Author. New York, Benziger Bros., 1908.

Contents

PAGE

Preface ...... 5

Introduction . . . . .11

Section I. — In the Lower Stages of Evolution 36 Section II. — In Final Society . . 66 CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

8 Contents PART II

PAGE

Individual Conduct Outside the Sphere of Morality i i 4 CHAPTER II

Evils from which Individual Life Must be Free 120 CHAPTER III

Normal Development of Individual Life . .124 CHAPTER IV

The Final Outcome of Socialism .

Introduction

Modern socialism, both as a philosophical system and as a social movement, not only pronouncedly disavows but also combats religion. Its very founders, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, disdainfully look upon religious belief as an absurd popular superstition, nay, as a fantastic degradation of human nature. Subsequent leaders and authors go farther still in their hostility to religion. To their mind it is not merely an erroneous superstition, but a bane to human society, an instrument of oppression in the hands of the ruling class, the extinction of social interest in the hearts of the oppressed. So pronounced is their opposition to it, that they anxiously look forward to its extermination, in part by the spreading of atheistical teachings, in part by the abolition of the abnormal economic conditions which, in their opinion, gave it existence. The religious attitude of socialism, therefore, is utterly destructive.

Is such also its attitude toward morality? It might scarcely seem so. In whatever sense we take it, morality can not, like religion, be altogether set aside. In its primary signification it means not only the freedom of our actions but also their dependence on reason apprehended as their law. Now reason is necessarily a law for

ii

Introduction man. When it manifests what is right or wrong, well-ordered or ill-ordered, its dictates should be inviolable. Were he at liberty to trample them under foot, he would cease to be a rational agent; he would become a monster, a living contradiction. He would know by nature the right order of conduct, and yet not be bound to observe it, understand right and justice, and yet be permitted to disregard them as if ignorant of them, like the brute animal. If reason is not an inviolable law for man, it follows that what is highest in him must be enslaved to the lower appetite, whose impulses and emotions are but too often stronger in him than the longing of the rational will for the future goods of a spiritual nature. By this total inversion of all right order, man would be lowered from his high pre-eminence in nature even to the very level of brute creation.

Much less could human society subsist and achieve its end, if its members were not subject to a common law proclaimed by reason, by which they are laid under strict obligation to be truthful in their speech, to observe justice and charity, to respect the life, property, and reputation of others, and to co-operate harmoniously with one another for the common good.

A law for human conduct, dictated by right reason, is, therefore, of absolute necessity. Of its existence every individual man is directly conscious as soon as he has acquired sufficient mental devel-

Introduction opment to act with full deliberation. Its reflex and reasoned knowledge, too, is so general, that from Grecian antiquity down to our own day it forms an integral part of every philosophical system. For, the inquiry into the ultimate causes of all things would be considered incomplete, did it not descend to the law itself, upon which the order of human life, both individual and social, is ultimately based.

Hence conduct is never morally indifferent, nor is man, as long as he is free and has the power of deliberation. For free or human acts, which make up conduct, are either conformable to the law of reason or not; if conformable, they are necessarily good and worthy of praise and reward: if not, they must be morally bad and deserving of blame and punishment. And so man himself is virtuous or wicked, of good or bad moral character, according as he complies or not with the law of conduct dictated by reason.

Morality, therefore, in whatever sense it be taken, whether we consider it as conscious dependence on reason as a law, or as the knowledge of the law of conduct, direct or reflex, or as conformity of action with law, can not disappear among men, neither by the change of time and circumstances, nor by the advance of philosophy and the progress of human culture.

Socialist philosophers, too, acknowledge a law to which human conduct is subject, a moral law.

Introduction

What they object to, is, as they aver, the interpretation put on it during the capitalistic ages. Nor do they in any way, as they assure us, intend to relax morals. On the contrary, they promise to purify and elevate them, both by teaching a truer law of conduct and by promoting conformity with it more effectively than has ever been done in the course of history. Hence they do not hesitate to claim that socialism is the consummation of morality corresponding to the last stage of human evolution.

But here the question presents itself: Is socialism, after it has utterly destroyed religion, able to construct a new morality? Is a right and elevated order of human conduct still possible, when man's ultimate end is no longer thought to consist in his union with the Supreme Good, but is placed in earthly happiness based on economic conditions? Can law retain any binding force when it ceases to emanate from the Supreme Ruler, the source of all authority; and can it still uphold virtue in individual life, peace and harmony in society, in State and family, when it is no more than an animal instinct evolving with organic nature?

These are the questions we are to solve in the following chapters.

Part I The Theistic Basis Of Morality

To construct a system of morality, a basis is first of all required on which all its tenets may rise with logical consistency as one solid superstructure. Such a basis is the conception of moral goodness, man's ultimate end, the moral law and its sanction. Without an idea of moral goodness we could not take the first step in building up an ethical system. Furthermore, as the goodness of the human action consists in its relation to man's ultimate end, the knowledge of the latter is indispensably necessary for the complete conception of the former. This end must, therefore, be clearly defined and thoroughly comprehended. But that we may know what actions are rightly conformed to the ultimate end, we need a norm which can guide us in our judgments; and that we may act accordingly, we require an obligation which lays our will under the necessity of doing what we know to be right and of abstaining from what we know to be wrong. The norm of right and wrong, ati6 tended by the obligation which binds our will, constitutes the moral law. Again, to restrict our freedom and efficiently sustain the right order, law needs a sanction consisting in a just retribution for its observance or violation.

On this basis all moral systems have been built, by the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome as well as by modern thinkers, by Christian theologians and by pagan moralists. But though generally admitted, these basic principles have found diverse interpretations which make it possible to construct on them different and even opposite ethical theories. For our purpose it is necessary briefly to set forth here the interpretation given them by theistic philosophers. For it is only by comparison with the Christian teaching that socialist ethics can be thoroughly understood and correctly valued.

Theistic philosophy acknowledges the existence of a personal God who, self-existent and infinitely perfect in Himself, is the Supreme Cause of all that exists beside Himself, the Creator and Ruler of the universe. Hence it regards Him as the Supreme Good and the ultimate end of all creation. To glorify Him by the acknowledgment of His infinite perfection and the love of His infinite goodness is in particular the ultimate destiny of all rational creatures. In proportion as they pursue and achieve this end they will attain in God their own perfection also, and their ultimate bliss and happiness. Since God is man's ultimate end, the

The Theistic Basis of Morality

I?

moral goodness of human actions ultimately consists in their direction and subordination to Him.

Theistic philosophy, furthermore, teaches the spirituality and immortality of the soul and consequently the freedom of the will. Accordingly, it regards human conduct, not as necessary after the manner of organic activity, but as free and selfdetermined, and, therefore, as imputable to man with all its moral attributes, both its goodness or its badness.

Man, possessed of freedom, needs a law which constrains his will to do good and to abstain from evil, yet so as not to destroy his freedom; a law, therefore, of a peculiar kind, not found in any other realm of nature; a law, not consisting in force or physical necessity 7 , but in moral obligation. This is the moral law.

God Himself enacted the moral law and deeply implanted it in human nature itself, when He created man. As such the moral law consists in the self-evident principles of practical reason and the legitimate conclusions drawn from them, because in their light we not only discern what is right and wrong, but also know what we are bound to do or to avoid. These moral principles, while necessarily manifest to us, are also necessarily true in themselves. For they are based on the essential relations that exist between God and rational creatures, between man and man as endowed with personal freedom and dignity, and between the i8 lower or sensuous faculties and reason in man himself. They are, therefore, a priori truths, prior to all experience, absolutely necessary, unchangeable, universal, and identically the same among all nations and in all times. The obligation inherent in this moral law descends from God's infinite, supreme authority. For, as the order of conduct contained in the principles of practical reason must be conceived as essentially good and absolutely necessary, He, because of His essential holiness, can not but enjoin on rational creation its strict observance, forbid its transgression and give to such command and prohibition a weight which lays free man under a strict necessity of obedience. Furthermore, on account of His infinite holiness and justice, He can not but effectively uphold and enforce the moral law He enacted in creating man. He does so by just retribution, that is, by just rewards for its observance and by just punishments for its transgression. The reward consists in the attainment, the punishment, in the loss of the ultimate end or supreme good to which the moral law directs human conduct. Retribution, therefore, constitutes a sanction, which effectively upholds the order established by the moral law, both by avenging it when violated, and by affording to the free will of man a powerful motive for its faithful observance.

The moral law, as defined by theistic philosophy, establishes the most perfect order in creation.

The Theistic Basis of Morality 19

It subordinates the lower faculties of man to reason, and harmoniously regulates all his actions; it marks out the right relations between man and man, and, while it guarantees freedom to each individually, unites all into one large family or society; and finally it refers each and all, singly and conjointly, to God as their ultimate and supreme good, securing to them in everlasting union with Him perfect bliss and happiness.

Christianity still further elevates the morals taught by unaided reason. It affords us a fuller and more certain knowledge of God, leads us to a closer union with Him, by the love of intimate friendship, binds us by a holier law, enforced by a more effective sanction, enjoins on us purer motives of action, greater sacrifices and more complete self-renunciation, ministers to us ampler means for subduing our passions to reason and thus for acquiring virtue, unites mankind more closely by the oneness of faith and the universality of one Church, which embraces not only all individual men but also all nations.

Unquestionably this is a broad and deep basis of morality. Still socialist philosophy attempts to overthrow it thoroughly. It denies God, the Supreme Being and Supreme Good, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, and the Lawgiver for mankind; it denies the spirituality and immortality of the soul, the possibility of attaining happiness in another than this earthly existence, retribution af-

The Bash of Morality ter death, the freedom of the will, the necessary and unchangeable principles constituting the moral law implanted in man's rational nature. After such a radical denial of all theistic positions, there is not a trace left of the old Christian basis of morality. Of what kind, then, is the new basis which is to be substituted for the old so utterly demolished ?.

Socialist philosophers, when about to build up a new theory of morality, begin by setting forth a new conception of moral goodness and badness. According to the theistic view the morally good is a universal and unchangeable concept. For the moral goodness of human acts consists in their right direction to God, the ultimate end of man, and the norm by which this direction is discerned are the principles of practical reason. But God is eternal and unchangeable; and such, too, are rational principles. They are necessary, universal, the same at all times, in all countries, and among all nations, because they are not based on experience, but on the unalterable nature of things.

Socialist philosophy, on the contrary, being a system of evolutionary materialism, does not know of anything that is not subject to continual changes; it knows, in particular, of no unchangeable end set for man, and of no unchangeable moral laws and principles. According to the materialistic conception of history, morality, like religion, is ultimately the outcome of the economic conditions under which men live and pursue their temporal well-being. But these conditions change in the course of time so as never to remain the same in any two periods of history; consequently morality, also, is subject to ever-succeeding changes. Every particular period in history has its own moral code, which is expressed in the customs, social institutions, and public opinion that prevail in it; for these mirror the ethical views and convictions forced on the people by the peculiar economic conditions under which they live. Hence one and the self-same action may be good in one age, but may become bad in the succeeding one; and what was wrong in the past may be right in the future, the conception of moral goodness changing with the phenomena in the economic world.

Socialist writers set forth these views in the most explicit terms. Concerning the changeableness of the moral code Bebel says :

u As each social stage of human development has its own conditions of production, so likewise has each its code of morals, which is but the reflection of the social condition. That is moral which is usage; and that in turn is usage which corresponds with the innermost being, i.e., the needs of a given period."*

He advances this variability of the moral code as a reason why we should not condemn the promiscuity of sexes among the savages as immoral.

Herron speaks in similar terms of the changes which the standard of morality undergoes.

*Woman under Socialism. Translated by Daniel de Leon. New York 1904. p. 16.

"Standards of moral value which served very well in the past, during the centuries when society was slowly emerging from slavery, are valueless and vicious now. Moralities of yesterday are immoral to-day and destructive of the liberty and integrity of the soul. Some of the sternest virtues of the past are to-day prostituting and disintegrating human life. We forget that there is no such thing as a fixed ethic, but that human society must constantly enlarge its experience and thought of the good, constantly transvalue its spiritual values, constantly widen the sphere of individual choice. We see the economic crisis of society, but we do not so clearly see its nearing religious and ethical crisis — a crisis which will take the word of custom for nothing, but will examine clean to the roots every received notion of right and wrong."* May Wood Simons writes in the same strain : "All such systems of morals, as pointed out by Spencer, Loria, and others, are changing both in time and place. There has never yet been a permanent or a universal code of ethics. Like every other social institution, they have been a product of the changes in material surroundings, geographical locations, and different methods of gaining a livelihood that have marked different ages and peoples. That any system of ethics prevailed at a certain period argued that it was produced by an underlying economic development *Int. Soc. Rev. Jan. 1901. p. 434.

The Bash of Morality which at that time was making for human advance. In the earlier stages of barbarism, community of goods was in general accordance with social progress and ordinarily prevailed. Gradually the institution of private property displaced this, and with it came a code of ethics that was suitable in every way to further and support the rights of individual owners of property. The societies first making this change were better able to compete, that is, more fitted to survive, in the new economic environment, than those retaining the communal organization belonging to an earlier environment.

"Further, as has been frequently pointed out, the practice of killing those captured in battle was regarded as right at a time, when tribes which conquered, if they were to retain their conquests, had no other way of disposing of their enemies. But as soon as these nomads settled to agricultural pursuits they found it profitable to utilize their prisoners for cultivating the land, and an ethical system arose under which slaver} 7 was 'right' In States where the slave passed directly into a wageearner, the institution of slavery was viewed as 'wrong' by public opinion only when modern industry found it more profitable to hire men and women by the day and leave them to shift for themselves at times when a profit could not be made off their labor, than to house and clothe the slave through the year. Again, as shown by

Wundt, the Reformation, which was an outgrowth of the great economic transformation of the time, found the ethics of Christianity of the day unable to meet the needs of the new conditions, and a fundamental change took place."*

On account of the continual changes of the moral code, James Oneal justifies private ownership of land, slavery, and murder as they were in use in former ages. He says :

"There can be no eternal ethical or moral code to whose court can be brought every institution of the past and present. Such a code would be compelled to outlaw some and acquit others, when the fact is that every institution, custom, and belief, has been in the line of advance in some stage of history. To pass judgment on slavery or land ownership of centuries ago, because it does not harmonize with moral standards based on twentieth century culture and philosophy, is to ignore the law of adaptation to environment, which calls into existence serviceable institutions as well as destroys them when they become outgrown.

"It may be said that in the case of land ownership and slavery, which we admit as based on force, it is evident they can at least be universally condemned because of the means employed. The answer is that this blood and conquest was merely the rude form in which the struggle for supremacy, still being waged, was carried on, and was as much *Int. Soc. Rev. Dec. 1900. p. 337.

a necessary factor in the evolution from the nomadic to the industrial type as modern battleships are to the development of world capitalism preparatory to its conquest by the politically organized working class.

"The material interests of the ruling class of every age are reflected in the moral code of their time, and this code will be changed, modified, and adapted to suit the changing character of production, even though the change be so rapid as to reverse in a single year the code of the previous year."*

Robert Rives La Monte in his latest work sets forth similar views. To quote his own words:

"The ruling ideas of every age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class." This applies to ideas of right and wrong — of what is commonly known as morality — as fully as to the ideas of any other kind.

"Conduct that has tended to perpetuate the power of the economically dominant class — since the increase of wealth has divided society into classes — has ever been accounted moral conduct; conduct that has tended to weaken or subvert the power of the ruling class has always been branded as immoral. There you have the key of the varying codes of ethics the world has seen. For it must never be forgotten that ideas of right and wrong are not absolute, but relative, not fixed, but fluid,

*The Worker. Dec. 2, 1905.

changing with the changes in our modes of producing food, clothes, and shelter. Morality varies not only with time but with social attitude."

"Ethics simply register the decrees by which the ruling class stamps with approval or brands with censure human conduct solely with reference to the effect of that conduct upon the welfare of that class."

"Morality is, in its very essence, a class institution — a set of rules of conduct enforced or inculcated for the benefit of a class."*

According to J. Dietzgen there is no intrinsic or essential distinction between good and bad; they differ only relatively and in degree.

"There is no fixed gulf in science between worthy and unworthy objects, and none in scientific ethics between good and evil. All things are useful and suitable; clean and unclean, love and hate, enjoyment and renunciation — all is relative, more or less, according to time and conditions."!

"Different stages of human evolution have different moral laws and even so contradictory ones that virtue is in one place what is vice in another.":):

The same relativity is asserted by Kautsky : "What is specifically human in morality, the

*Socialism: Positive and Negative. Chicago 1907. pp. 59-63.

tSome of the Philosophical Essays. Translated by M. Beer and Th. Rothstein. Chicago 1906. p. 128.

t Ibid. p. 165. See also p. 170.

moral codes, is subject to continual change. This does not prove, all the same, that a class or a social group can not be immoral; it proves simply that so far at least as the moral standards are concerned, there is just as little an absolute morality as an absolute immorality. Even the immorality is in this respect a relative idea. Only the lack of more social impulses and virtues, which man has inherited from the social animals, is to be regarded as absolute immorality.

"If we look, on the other hand, on immorality as an offense against the laws of morality, then it implies no longer the divergence from a distinct standard, holding for all times and places, but the contradiction of the moral practice to its own moral principles; it implies the transgression against moral laws which people themselves recognize and put forward as necessary. It is thus nonsense to declare particular moral principles of any people or class, which are recognized as such, to be immoral simply because they contradict our moral code. Immorality can never be more than a deviation from our own moral code, never from a strange one."*

As hinted at in the preceding quotations, socialist writers distinguish in the past changes of the moral code four different stages, which correspond to the primitive, slave, feudal, and capitalistic society.

*Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History. Translated by John B. Askew. Chicago 1907. pp. 192, 193.

The last stage, however, in which morality will attain its ultimate perfection, has not yet been reached, but is to come in final society, the socialist commonwealth. Bebel characterizes the moral code of these different stages briefly in the following words:

"Just as with religion, moral conceptions are also born of existing social conditions at given times. Cannibals regard the eating of human beings as highly moral; Greeks and Romans regarded slavery as moral; the feudal lord of the Middle Ages regarded serfdom as moral; and to-day the modern capitalist considers highly moral the institution of wage-slavery, the flaying of women with night work and the demoralization of children by factory labor. Here we have four different moral social stages, and as many different conceptions of morality, and yet in none does the highest moral sense prevail. Undoubtedly the highest moral stage is that in which men stand to one another free and equal; that in which the principle : 'what you do not wish to be done unto you, do not unto others' is observed inviolate throughout the relations of man to man. In the Middle Ages, the genealogical tree was the standard; to-day it is property; in future society, the standard of man is man. And the future is Socialism in practice."*

Changeableness is not the only feature, however,

*Woman. p. 322. See also Int. Soc. Rev. Dec. 1900. p. 337.

3° by which the socialist conception of moral goodness differs from the Christian. There are still other and even wider differences. The human act, which is morally good or bad, according to theistic philosophy, is free and peculiar to man as a rational agent. But against such an admission evolutionary materialism, as taught by socialists, raises a solemn protest. The materialist absolutely denies free will, and the evolutionist regards man with all his higher faculties, rational and moral, as a descendant of brute ancestors.

True, sometimes materialists speak of freedom. But when they proceed to a fuller explanation, it becomes evident at once that they do not mean by it self-determination or the capability of acting or not acting, of putting forth or withholding an action when under given circumstances all the prerequisites for it are present. Karl Kautsky, for instance, quite positively asserts the necessity of freedom.

"Of it (the future) I have not the smallest experience. Apparently free, it lies before me, as the world which I do not explore as one knowing it, but in which I have to assert myself as an active agent. Certainly I can extend the experience of the past into the future, certainly I can conclude that these will be even so necessarily determined as those; but even if I can only recognize the world on the assumption of necessity, yet I shall only be able to act on it on the assumption of a certain freedom. Even if compulsion is exercised over my action, there remains to me the choice, whether I shall yield to it or not, there remains to me as last resort the possibility of withdrawing myself by a voluntary death. Action implies continual choice between various possibilities, and be it alone that of doing or not doing, it means accepting or rejecting, it means defending or opposing. Choice, however, assumes in advance the possibility of choice just as much as the distinction between the acceptable and the inacceptable, the good and the bad. The moral judgment, which is an absurdity in the world of the past, the world of experience, in which there is nothing to choose, where iron necessity rules, is unavoidable in the world of the unknown future — of freedom.