The larger aspects of socialism

Preface

Socialism can be approached equally well from two opposite directions. It may be treated either as a social movement that aims to build up a new civilization, or as a new civilization that is gradually being embodied in a social movement. In my ''Socialism As It Is" I followed the first method and discussed the economic and political features of Socialism exclusively; in the present volume I shall proceed in the reverse direction and deal exclusively with its larger aspects, its intellectual and spiritual side.

As the two books were conceived and written together, they are parts of a single whole; but they are built on entirely independent foundations. In dealing with the economic and political movement I followed the inductive method; taking the activities of the movement itself as my point of departure, I concluded with its generalizations. In discussing the cultural movement I have followed the deductive method. Taking as my point of departure the philosophy of modern science, which I show to be wholly Socialistic in its bearings, and wholly dependent upon Socialism for its practical applications, I have first shown what results are reached by approaching each of the subjects I have discussed from this new standpoint, and I have then pointed out how the Socialist movement is, as a matter of fact, moving along the same line. This philosophy I have called pragmatism, because I believe pragmatism is Socialism, if taken in what seems

iii

IV PREFACE

to me to be its most able and consistent interpretation, that of Professor John Dewey.

From the point of view of its basic assumptions, then, I might have called the present volume "The Philosophy of Socialism" ; from the point of view of its conclusions it might be entitled "The Sociology of Socialism." I conceive of all the intermediate subjects covered as being related equally to these two poles of my problem. But as many readers have not been in the habit of considering all these subjects in connection either with philosophy or with sociology, either one of the above titles or even a combination of the two would have appeared to such readers as too narrow.

In view of the variety of the matters discussed, it is scarcely necessary to call the reader's attention to the fact that the work consists of Socialist criticism and not of my individual views. I have used every effort to find a pragmatic or Socialist writer at every point, and offer my individual opinions only where such writers are either lacking or do not exist to my knowledge. Such instances are, however, relatively few, and I hope to convince my readers that the general standpoint I have presented is that of the philosophy of modern science and of the Socialist movement.

Cedarhnrst, Long Island, March 15, 1913.

Introduction

SOCIALISM A NEW CIVILIZATION

"Socialism is not only a doctrine, a system, a method. It is all this and more; it is a civilization."

— Canalejas, late Premier of Spain.

Wilhelm Liebknecht held that Socialism includes "all the life, all the feelings and thoughts of man"; the eminent Austrian publicist, Anton Menger, says that the Socialist movement does not consist merely in a propagation of an economic doctrine, but that "the whole domain of mental life must be filled with the Socialist spirit : philosophy, law, morals, art and literature" j 1 while in the opinion of Jaures "all the great human forces, labor, thought, science, art, even religion and humanity's conquest of the universe, await on Socialism for regeneration and further development." 2

"Socialism," writes H. G. Wells, "is a great initiation of construction, organization, science and education," which contains an "immense creative element." In the final chapter of his "New Worlds for Old," Wells points out that the advance of Socialism must take three forms. The first of these in point of time is the propaganda, but the first in importance is the development of Socialism itself:

"First logically, and most important, is the primary intellectual process, the elaboration, criticism, discussion, enrichment and enlargement of the project of Socialism.

VI INTRODUCTION

This includes all sorts of sociological and economic research, the critical literature of Socialism, and every possible way — the drama, poetry, painting, music — of expressing and refining its spirits, its attitude and conceptions. It includes, too, all sorts of experiments in living and association. In its widest sense it includes all science, literature and invention." 3

Third in point of time, and as yet least important, comes that phase of Socialism which the general public, unfortunately, often supposes/ to be the whole, namely the political side, "the actual changing of practical things in the direction of the coming Socialized State, the actual Socialization." Wells is at great pains to make his readers seize the fact that this is the least pressing part of the Socialist activities: "Socialism is a moral and intellectual process, let me in conclusion reiterate that. Only secondarily and incidentally does it sway the world of politics."

Another Englishman, the economist and publicist John A. Hobson, though a collectivist and opposed to Socialism, has stated in a few words just what those conditions are that force all the more far-sighted and representative Socialists to the broader conception of the task that lies before them:

"The history, the political economy, the literature and the biology taught in schools and colleges under the control of persons whose training and character are molded by 'class' influences will inevitably be anti-democratic. They will continue to construct and propagate, as they have always done, a politics and an economics designed to ward off assaults upon the vested interests of which they are the intellectual mercenaries. Since the real power of the people rests not in the possession of votes, but in the capacity to use them, the real struggle for democracy centers around the struggle for free education,

INTRODUCTION Vll

free alike from the financial, political, and moral control of the classes. Educational democracy is an essential condition of political and industrial democracy."

The American who has come nearest, perhaps, to an adequate expression of the larger Socialism is Walt Whitman. For Whitman realized that his ideals were not to be reached by a struggle against nature alone, or against social inertia and disorganization, ignorance and poverty, but declared war also against social forces and classes hostile to democratic progress. He says, almost in so many words, that political democracy can become social democracy and build up a new society only through an actual conflict of the new civilization with the old:

"For feudalism, caste, the ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from political institutions,- still hold essentially, by their spirit, even in this country, entire possession of the more important fields, indeed the very sub-soil, of education, and of social standards and literature.

"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences." (Italics mine.) 4

Fundamentally Socialism means, not merely a political and economic revolution, nor even a revolution in history, science, literature and art, but both of these together. The conflict is between two classes and the whole of the two civilizations they represent.

The present-day culture, like that of every period of the past, is the culture of the ruling class. Representing the interests and views of a class which is still maintained in power largely by coercive means, it is necessarily based in large part on the military concep-

Vlll INTRODUCTION

tion of command and obedience, in other words on the idea of authority. Then it is a leisure class culture, for the ruling classes have always enough surplus power to support a certain amount of inert parasitism in their midst as well as the active parasitism of the beast-ofprey variety. This aspect of our culture is very near to what is commonly called aristocracy, when the word is used in the social rather than in the political sense. And finally, our culture has been competitive, not only in commerce, but throughout. Indeed it has been competitive almost as long and continuously as it has been a ruling class or a leisure class culture ; for the periods since the beginning of written history when the merchants and capitalists were not a dominating factor in society have been relatively few. And, finally, another system of class rule, the regime of status and hereditary caste of which Spencer speaks, however contradictory it may seem to the competitive system, has often existed alongside of it or in combination with it. Competition for property and power among the members of the governing classes, under the limitations the welfare of these classes suggests, has co-existed with status and caste since the days when Hammurabi ruled Babylon some 2,100 years B. C. Every element of culture is shaped by the social system or civilization of which it is a part; this applies alike to philosophy, to science, to history, to sociology, to psychology, to morality, to religion, to literature, and to art. The Socialist who appeals to a cultured audience in the name of the new civilization which is struggling against the old is forced in some measure to touch upon all these subjects. But it is only figurative to say that two civilizations, two social systems, or two cultural systems are struggling against one another. As a matter of fact it is two bodies of men that are in conflict. And the fact that it is a class struggle (to employ a

INTRODUCTION IX

much abused phrase) means that the whole personality of the members of each class is involved and that every feature of present-day life is affected. Whatever the ruling classes as a whole stand for may rightly be called a part of present civilization, and whatever a sufficient majority of representative Socialists stand for, whether in philosophy, science, or literature, is an indication of what the Socialist civlization will probably be.

It is in vain that, for the purpose of immediate political gains, Socialist parties sometimes pass "self-denying ordinances," like the Parliament of the British Commonwealth under Cromwell, pledging themselves to abstain from exerting any special influence on these larger aspects of life or from taking into consideration their effect on practical political and economic activities. Such an effort is not only vain but mistaken, as the movement can lose nothing in the long run by building on the broadest possible foundations. Marx and the other most representative Socialists, therefore, never described Socialism as a purely political and economic doctrine and never failed to point out its larger relations.

The principle that asserts the absolute interdependence of the cultural and the economic and political sides of civilization and human progress is the most basic of the whole Socialist philosophy and policy. It is the essence of what is called "the materialist interpretation of history." Unfortunately, in the discussion of this principle attention has been centered almost entirely on the adjective "materialist" and it has been repeatedly explained by eminent Socialists that this word is not used in the ordinary sense. What is more important is to understand that the word "history" refers not to the past so much as to present-day society and civilization.

I have pointed out in a previous volume that the only

X INTRODUCTION

definition of Socialism is the Socialist movement. But when we come to deal with the larger aspects of Socialism this definition is no longer sufficient. Organized Socialism often attempts to confine itself to political and economic activities; when we get beyond this sphere we no longer have the movement as a whole to guide us, and we come against the difficulty that the Socialist Congresses have decided that Socialism can have no official position on questions outside the political and economic struggle. When, however, the overwhelming majority of Socialists do have ascertainable and common opinions on some of these broader issues, and these opinions are clearly outlined in the official party press and literature, we can still direct ourselves by the movement — though we can no longer say that it has fought out such opinions or that it has tested them in practical life or that it is ready to stake its existence upon them, as we can of its political and economic principles.

This does not necessarily mean that the movement considers these larger aspects of Socialism less fundamental, but that it regards it as less necessary to concentrate immediate attention on them. Indeed Socialist writers and thinkers are expected by the movement to confront and handle every issue and to discuss every subject from the Socialist standpoint, though each Socialist writer is forced, in the lack of any official formulation on these broader questions, to restate the Socialist philosophy as he sees it. And he always begins, naturally, with those Socialist principles that are most accepted, that is its economic and political philosophy, which is the method I have pursued. What, then, is this economic and political philosophy — very briefly, since this is not the main subject of the present volume?

In my "Socialism As It Is," I dealt with Socialism purely as an economic and political movement. I

INTRODUCTION XI

showed that this movement was not a struggle for anyfixed program of reforms but a struggle for the control of industry and government by the non-privileged. As an effort to increase the relative power of the masses at the expense of the ruling classes until the latter are abolished, this movement can have a fixed program only for the time after class rule will have been overthrown.

It is customary for Socialist writers, in spite of these admitted facts, to define the Socialist movement as being mainly a class-struggle of working people against capitalists and then to proceed to qualify this definition. This procedure is not in accord with the present methods of science, which demand, instead of a rigid definition with an unlimited number of qualifications, a definition broad and loose enough so that it does not need to be qualified. From this standpoint perhaps the nearest we can come to a definition is to say that Socialism is a movement of the non-privileged to overthrow the rule of the privileged in industry and government. It is true that this definition draws no sharp line between the classes in conflict, but no sharp line exists. It may be admitted even that it is no real definition at all. But some such tentative statement or working hypothesis, then, is a better way to approach the subject, more accurate and less misleading than any dogmatic definition could be. In other words, Socialism is a struggle of those who have less, against those who have more, than equal opportunity would afford. .

Many of the non-privileged who are not workingmen are by no means nearer to privilege than the workingmen are. Privilege is a matter of income, hours, leisure, place of living, associations and opportunity, rather than of mere occupation. The phrase, "class-struggle," is a survival from the middle ages. Class division by occupation was a medieval condition, when the

Xll INTRODUCTION

son followed in the father's footsteps ; now the worker in each class can put his children in a thousand occupations — the only limitation is the social level on which he lives. Before the period of large scale industry, corporations, and trusts, the lower level was chiefly filled with employees of private industry; later, numerous official and professional elements were gradually added to it; and now, as the government takes on more and more industrial functions, government employees promise within a few years to become the most numerous of all. To classify an individual economically, especially in modern society, we must then consider not only his occupation, as some Marxists seem to imply, but we must attach an equal weight to his income level. The question is not only how an individual makes his living, but how much of a living he makes.

The conflict of Socialism with present society is not in reality a class-struggle. It is not a struggle between two social classes or even two groups of social classes. It is a class struggle only on one side. The ruling class or ruling classes are more or less unified; Socialism represents the opposition of all the rest of the population, but not of a class. It is not a struggle between classes; it is a struggle of the ruling class against the rest of the human race.

To describe this great conflict of civilizations as a struggle between classes is to place the most useful of phrases in the hands of the enemy. Anti-Socialists can and do say: On both sides is a class, each is selfish, each wishes to rule, and in either case one class or the other will be conquered. Then the only way to end the struggle is for both the classes to stop struggling and cultivate mutual understanding. The easiest way to put an end to this talk is to drop the old misleading phrase, and to reply: There is only one class, the class that

INTRODUCTION Xlll

wants to rule humanity and must be conquered by humanity, and the only way to do this is to fight relentlessly to deprive that class, and each and every member of that class, of their privileges and power. Both the phrases, "class struggle" and "class-consciousness," may legitimately be used, then, to mean exactly the opposite of what the majority of Socialists intend them to mean. When a Socialist says that the exploited should be "class-conscious" he means, strange to say, that there must be no exploited class. It is answered most plausibly, that to be class-conscious can only mean to want to advance the interests of one class as a class. On the contrary, true Socialists must be ready, within reasonable limits, to give up an opportunity of advancing either themselves or their class every time they believe such a sacrifice brings nearer the abolition of their class and of all other classes.

A "class-conscious" worker engaged in a u class struggle" to advance the- interests of his class, without any further aim, is exactly the opposite to a Socialist; he is a reactionary doing all in his power to restore the regime of status or class. History is full of the struggles of one class to conquer another class. The present conflict, being the first effort of the whole population outside of the ruling class not only to conquer that class but to put an end to all classes, is not a class struggle like its predecessors, but an anti-class struggle. But the phrase has served a useful purpose in the past, and we must remember what it has come to mean to those who use it most, as well as what it actually says. Only it must always be remembered also that it is used by Socialists in a special and technical sense and does not mean exactly what it says.

What part then of the theoretical formulations of the Socialism of the past remains wholly unobjection-

XIV INTRODUCTION

able from the modern pragmatic standpoint? Only this, that all truth must come from social activity, that not only sociology but all the culture and civilization of the future must come from the actual struggles of that social movement which represents the future as against the past, the movement which is preparing the new society. The magnitude of this truth is so great that even the leading Socialist writers have barely touched upon it from time to time, only to step down again to the semidogmatic and partial truths of "the materialist conception of history" and "the class-struggle." The larger and deeper truth is so generally accepted, so fundamental and so pervasive within the Socialist movement that it is taken as a matter of course, has become sub-conscious and is rarely discussed or formulated.

All the leading Socialist writers have seen this truth and stated it; for example, take a recent article by the ultra-revolutionary Marxist Anton Pannekoek:

"Scientific Socialism, as established by Marx and Engels, combined into a harmonious unity two things, which from the bourgeois point of view, appeared to be irreconcilable opposites : on the one hand dispassionate objectivity, science indifferent to ideals, and on the other hand the passionately sought subjective ideal of a better society. Those who do not take the point of view of scientific Socialism believe that an ideal, that is to say, something which we desire, can never be a subject matter of science, and that, conversely, passionate desire must be a hindrance to objective truth. To the alleged objective science of society they give the name of sociology; and the sterility, the lack of results which is everywhere in evidence in the countless books of these 'sociologists,' furnishes the best refutation of their contention that social truth is born of dry book-learning, rather than of participation in the social struggles." 5

INTRODUCTION XV

"Social truth is born in social struggles." What a pity that this momentous revolutionary concept should lie buried among so many lesser and more partial truths ! This truth and this alone is the essence of all Socialism from Marx to modern pragmatism. And this truth in itself is a sufficient basis for a complete revolution in every phase of our present class culture.

All other Socialist teachings serve to tie the movement down almost as much as they serve it. Only the truth, that this is the only movement that challenges the old society to mortal combat, and that it is recognized by all in authority as being the one movement they have to fear, opens out ever new horizons and possibilities. Only the struggle of the new society against the old guides us either as to our ultimate aims or our tactics. Where we meet the most resistance, there we know our efforts promise to bring the greatest fruits.

Up to this point I have spoken only of what the larger Socialism is; far more important is the inquiry as to what it is becoming, what it is going to be. If Socialism is the philosophy and policy of the Socialist movement it must evidently be in a state of constant evolution, for it would be difficult for the most belated Socialist to deny that fundamental changes are occurring in the movement. Not only is it growing in mere size, but it is evolving in the fullest sense of the word; that is, like every living thing, it is taking on characters that could not have been predicted even by omniscience, to say nothing of the merely human powers of foresight of its early formulators. Indeed the evolution of the Socialist movement and of the policies and philosophy that grow out of it is becoming so rapid to-day that it amounts practically to a revolution. The revolution in policy involved in the turning about of the movement to face "State Socialism" instead of private capitalism, I have

XVI INTRODUCTION

dealt with in a previous volume. The change that is taking place in the philosophy and the other larger aspects of the movement, which is no less revolutionary, is the subject of the present work.

As Socialism first appeared at a time when even the most radical ideas were formulated in a dogmatic manner, it could be no exception to the rule, however advanced its early thinkers may have been. As a consequence, all their successors who took their point of departure, not from the living and growing reality, namely the movement itself, but from those older theories were also more or less dogmatic, whether their dogmatism consisted in trying to reverse the spirit of Marx's teachings, or in attempting the impossible task of making them more revolutionary. Bernstein and the Revisionists in Germany, Jaures and the Reformists in France, the Fabian Society and the Independent Labor Party in Great Britain, attempted to tone Marxism down by a counter dogmatism which they usually regarded as "criticism" either of Marx's data, or of his political economy. The Syndicalists in France and Italy, while declaring themselves Marxists (as did the French and Germans just mentioned, though not the English), endeavored to make their Marxism more revolutionary, either by incorporating some points of the Anarchist philosophers or through attempting to apply some new metaphysics, as that of Bergson.

The revisionists of Marxism, whether right revisionists or left revisionists (to employ the Continental terms), that is whether their purpose was to make the movement less revolutionary or more revolutionary, based their reasoning not upon the movement itself but mainly on its early theories. What is actually happening, then, as a result of all these tendencies, or rather in spite of them, is that the older theory is neither being

INTRODUCTION XV11

merely revised nor wholly repudiated but that it is being completely revolutionized. Without endeavoring to settle any of the older questions put by the revisionists, revolutionary Socialists are beginning to formulate their opposition to present society in the terms of a philosophy and science which have grown up altogether since the time of Marx and Darwin (the patron saint of the English Fabians).

The tendency of the newer Socialist thought is not to struggle against the old, nor to turn the movement to the right or to the left, but to enable it to go more rapidly ahead — in the same revolutionary direction in which it originally started and, on the whole, has been traveling ever since. And in order to go more rapidly ahead the great need is not to patch up theories of 1850 for the purpose, but to employ such new principles and methods as most adequately express the present day movement and the present period generally. The older theories, as I have said, may be taken not only as having been satisfactory for the time in which they were formulated, but as still having, beyond doubt, a very considerable value to-day. But it is not necessary, in order to save what is of value, to try to adapt these older theories to present need, for whatever was vital and of lasting worth has long ago been embodied in the movement itself, at least wherever it has reached an advanced state, as for example in Germany. By basing our theory henceforth on the movement (where it is mature), instead of following the opposite method of trying to base the movement on a theory, we not only have the best possible form of Marxism and a policy in accord with modern thought, but we are gaining from the movement something which is vastly more important than all its theories, namely its actual experience — in which is incorporated not only a whole phase of modern

XV111 INTRODUCTION

civilization and a large part of the history of our generation but some of the deepest subconscious strivings, which are as yet not capable even of the most tentative formulation. If we study the Socialist press and periodicals, the tactics of the leading Socialist Congresses and the writings of the most representative Socialist writers (when they are not dealing with theoretical questions), we not only gain a more profound insight into Socialism than by any other method, but we are laying the only possible authentic foundation for Socialist political and economic policy as well as Socialist culture and civilization.

Nearly all the difficulties of Socialism in the past have come from the efforts of this or that theorist or faction to narrow it to suit their purpose. But there is now an opposite and equally dangerous tendency, since the movement has begun to grow so rapidly, to make Socialism too broad. I have given many reasons why we should take the broader view of Socialism, but we cannot identify it with the universe or with all progress, for it would then have no definite meaning at all. We cannot agree with H. G. Wells, for example, that "scientific progress, medical organization, the advancement of educational method, artistic production and literature are all aspects of Socialism.''* c This, 'to use a phrase employed by Wells himself in another connection (only a few lines below), is to do "sheer violence to language." And what is worse, it confuses Socialism with the stage of society which is preceding it, and against which Socialism is undoubtedly chiefly to be directed, namely "State Socialism." As we are now in a transition period between private or individualist capitalism and the so-called "State Socialism," much of the progress of the present must still be accredited to the first mentioned form of capitalism, while another part of present prog-

INTRODUCTION XIX

ress, and undoubtedly the larger part of the progress of the immediate future, will have to be accredited to "State Socialism," which is clearly what Wells means by Socialism in this passage.

Because of this confusion with collectivism or "State Socialism," many of the efforts to define Socialism, though of a purely practical character, and intended to be based on the movement, are as misleading as any dogma. The best known example is the statement that Socialism means democratic collectivism or industrial democracy, a formula? that can easily be limited to the progressive reforms of individualist capitalism and of "State Socialism." The practical or political and economic problem of Socialism is neither how much of industry the government controls (the problem of collectivism), nor the form of government (the problem of democracy), nor even how much of industry a democratic form of government controls (the problem of democratic collectivism), but this — Does a class, or group of classes, control the government?

It is evident that collectivism, government ownership of monopolies, the appropriation of the land rent by the state, and the placing of labor on the level of maximum efficiency, are not Socialism.

"State Socialism" seeks merely to rearrange institutions; Socialism seeks to bring new social forces into a position of power, which is the same as to create new forces as far as practical results are concerned. One of the chief spokesmen of British "State Socialism" (J. R. MacDonald) says that "Socialism is not a tour de force of the creative intelligence." This holds true only of that "State Socialism," for which this writer speaks. Nor is genuine Socialism the product of the creative intelligence of a single person or of any limited number of persons, but it certainly is the product of creative in-