Socialism As It Is

W >> William English Walling >> Socialism As It Is

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45

"In the new order [syndicalism] there is no room for any
capitalistic attribute, even reduced to its most simple expression.
There is no longer room for a political system for safeguarding
privileges and conquering rebels. If our definition of the State is
accepted, that it is an organ of defense, always more and more
exacting because it is in a society always more and more menaced,
it will be understood that such a State is condemned to disappear
with that society....

"The State crushes the individual, and syndicalism appeals to all
the latent energies of that individual, the State suspects and
throttles organizations, and syndicalism multiplies them against
it.... All institutions created by the State for the defense of the
capitalist system are assailed, undermined by syndicalism."[176]

Here is a view of the State as far opposed as possible to that of
Kautsky, who says truly that it is "a monster economic establishment,
and its influence on the whole economic life of a nation to-day is
already beyond the power of measurement."[177] For Kautsky, the State is
primarily economic and constructive; for Louis it is purely political
and repressive. Yet Kautsky, like Louis, seems to feel that if the State
were capable of carrying out reforms of any importance to the wage
earners, or if it were admitted that it could do so, it would be
impossible to persuade the workers that a revolution is necessary and
feasible. And so both deny that "State Socialism," which they recognize
as an _intervening stage_ between the capitalism of to-day and
Socialism, is destined to give better material conditions, if less
liberty, than the present society. Both the economic and political
revolutionists are, on such grounds, often tempted to agree with the
reformists of the party and of the labor unions, in leveling their guns
exclusively against the private capitalism of to-day--I might almost say
the capitalism of the past--instead of concentrating their attack on the
evils that will remain undiminished under the State capitalism of the
future. The reformists do this consistently, for they see in the
constructive side of "State Socialism," not a mere continuation of
capitalism, but a large installment of Socialism itself, and have
nothing more to ask for beyond a continuation of such reforms.
Revolutionary Socialists are inconsistent, because they may admit that
the conditions of the working people under "State Socialism" may be far
better than they are to-day, without invalidating their central position
that the greater evils of to-day will remain, and that there will be no
progress towards Socialism, no matter what reforms are enacted, until
the Socialists are either actually or practically in power.

When the Socialists have become so numerous as to be on the verge of
securing control of the government (by whatever means), it is unlikely
that the privileged classes will permit peaceful political or
constitutional procedures to continue and put them completely at the
mercy of the non-privileged. In all probability they will then resort to
military violence under pretext of military necessity (see Part III,
Chapter VIII). _If when this time arrives, the Socialists have not only
a large political majority, but also the physical power to back it up_,
or seem about to secure this majority and this power, then indeed,
though not before that time, the capitalists may, possibly, begin to
make concessions which involve a weakening of their position in society,
_i.e._ which necessitate more and more concessions until their power is
destroyed. The revolutionary reformers, if we may apply this term to
Kautsky and his associates, are then only somewhat premature in their
belief that the Socialist Party is _now_, or will _very shortly_ become,
a real menace to capitalism; whereas the political reformers are under
the permanent illusion that capitalism will retreat before paper
ballots.

Moreover, Kautsky and the revolutionary reformers, in order to make
_their_ (physical) menace effective, must continually teach the people
to look forward and prepare to use all the means in their power for
their advance. They are thus thoroughly in accord with the non-reformist
revolutionists who, however much they may welcome certain capitalist
reforms, do not agree that they will be very materially hastened by
anything the Socialists can do. The non-reformist revolutionists assume
that Socialists will vote for every form of progress, including the most
thoroughly capitalistic, and acknowledge that _if they fail in their
duty in this respect, these reforms might be materially retarded_. But
they are willing to let the capitalists take the lead in such reform
work, giving them the whole credit for what benefits it brings, and
placing on their shoulders the whole responsibility for its
limitations. Their criticism of capitalist reform is leveled not against
what it does, but against what it leaves undone.

Revolutions in machinery and business organization under capitalism,
with which Socialists certainly have nothing to do, they regard also as
not only important, but of vast significance, since it is by their aid
alone that Socialism is becoming a possibility. And now a new period is
coming in, during which the capitalists, on grounds that have no
connection whatever with Socialism or the Socialist movement, will
effect another equally indispensable revolution, in the organization of
labor and business by _governmental means_. Revolutionary Socialists are
ready to give the fullest credit to capitalism for what it has done,
what it is doing, and what it is about to do--for, however vast the
changes now in process of execution, they feel that the task that lies
before the Socialists is vaster still. The capitalists, to take one
point by way of illustration, develop such individuals and such latent
powers in every individual, as they can utilize for increasing the
private income of the capitalists as a class, or of governments which
are wholly or very largely in their control. _The Socialists propose to
develop the latent abilities of all individuals in proportion to their
power to serve the community._ The collectivist capitalists will
continue to extend opportunity to more and more members of the
community, but always leaving the numbers of the privileged undiminished
and always providing for all their children first--admitting only the
cream of the masses to the better positions, and this after all of the
ruling classes, including the most worthless, have been provided for.
The Socialists propose, the moment they secure a majority, to make
opportunity, not more equal, but equal.

Those Socialists, then, who expect that reforms of importance to wage
earners are to be secured to-day exclusively by the menace either of a
political overturn or of a Socialist revolution, and those who imagine
that the Socialist hosts are going to be strengthened by recruits
attracted by the role Socialists are playing in obtaining such immediate
reforms, make a triple error. They credit Socialism with a power it has
nowhere yet achieved and cannot expect until a revolutionary period is
immediately at hand; that is, they grossly exaggerate the present powers
of the Socialist movement and grossly underestimate the task that lies
before it. They are seemingly blind to the possibilities of
transformation and progress that still inhere in capitalism--the
increased unity and power it will gain through "State capitalism," and
the increased wealth that will come through a beneficent and scientific
policy of producing, through wholesale reforms and improvements, more
efficient and profitable laborers. They fail to see that the strength of
the enemy will lie henceforth more frequently in deception than in
repression. But even this is not their most fatal blunder. In attacking
individualistic and reactionary rather than collectivistic and
progressive capitalism, these Socialists are not only wasting their
energies by assaulting a moribund power, but are training their forces
to use weapons and to practice evolutions that will soon be obsolete and
useless. They are doing the work and filling the function of the small
capitalists. The large capitalists organized industry; the small
capitalists will nationalize it; in so far at least as it has been or
will have been organized. Socialists gain from both processes, approve
of both, and aid them in every way within their power. But their chief
function is to overthrow capitalism. And as the larger part of this task
lies off some distance in the future, it is the capitalism of the future
and not that of the past with which Socialists are primarily concerned.
Evidently but a few years will elapse before State capitalism will
everywhere dominate. In the meanwhile, to attribute its progress to the
_menace_ of the advance of Socialism, is to abandon the Socialist
standpoint just as completely as do the reformist Socialists in
regarding capitalist-collectivist reforms as installments of Socialism,
to be achieved only with Socialist _aid_.

For Socialists will be judged by what they are doing rather than by what
they promise to do. If political reformists and revolutionary reformists
are both directing their chief attention to promoting the reforms of
"State Socialism," it will make little difference whether the first
argue that these beneficial measures are a part of Socialism and a
guarantee of the whole; or the second claim that, though such reforms
are no part of Socialism, the superiority of the movement is shown
chiefly by the fact that they could not have been brought about except
through its efforts. Mankind will rightly conclude that the things that
absorb the chief Socialist activities are those that are also forming
the character of the movement. In direct proportion as reforming
Socialists spend their energies in doing the same things as reforming
capitalists do, they tend inevitably to become more and more alike. Only
in proportion as Socialists can differentiate themselves from
non-Socialists _in their present activities_ will the movement have any
distinctive meaning of its own.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] W. J. Ghent, "Socialism and Success," p. 47.

[170] Rappaport, "Der Kongress von Nimes," _Die Neue Zeit_, 1910, p.
821.

[171] _Die Neue Zeit_, Oct. 27, 1911.

[172] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, p. 121.

[173] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 132-133.

[174] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 131-134.

[175] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," edition of 1911, pp. 131-134.

[176] "Le Syndicalisme contre L'Etat," pp. 223-235, 239-242.

[177] "Parlamentarismus und Demokratie," p. 114.

CHAPTER VI

REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS

In the most famous document of international Socialism, the "Communist
Manifesto" (published by Marx and Engels in 1847), there is a
fulmination against "reactionary Socialism," which it will be seen is
approximately what we now call "State Socialism." After describing the
Utopian Socialism of Fourier, of Saint-Simon and of Owen, the
"Manifesto" says:--

"A second form of Socialism, less systematic but more practical,
tried to disgust the working people with every revolutionary
movement, by demonstrating to them that it is not such and such a
political advantage, but only a transformation of the relations of
material life and of economic conditions that could profit them.
Let it be noted that by transformation of the material relations of
society this Socialism does not mean the abolition of capitalist
relations of production, but only administrative reforms brought
out precisely on the basis of capitalist production, and which
consequently do not affect the relation of capital and wage labor,
but in the best case only diminish the expenses and simplify the
administrative labor of a capitalist government.... In the
promotion of their plans they act always with the consciousness of
defending first of all the interest of the working class. The
working class only exists for them under this aspect of the
suffering class.

"But in accordance with the undeveloped state of the class struggle
and their social position, they consider themselves quite above
antagonism. They desire to ameliorate the material condition of
life for all the members of society, even the most privileged. As a
consequence, they do not cease to appeal to all society without
distinction, or rather they address themselves by preference to the
reigning class."[178]

Marx points out that the chief aim of these "reactionary Socialists" was
the transformation of the State into a mere organ for the administration
of industry in their interest, which is precisely what we mean to-day by
"State Socialism."

In contrast with this "reactionary Socialism," now prevalent in Great
Britain and Australia, the Socialist parties of every country of the
European Continent (where such parties are most developed), without
exception are striving for a social democracy and a government of the
non-privileged and not for a scheme of material benefits bestowed by an
all-powerful capitalist State. Professor Anton Menger, of the University
of Vienna, one of the most acute and sympathetic observers of the
movement, remarks correctly that--"in all countries, at all times, the
proletariat [working class] has rightly thought that the continuous
development of its _power_ is worth more than any _economic advantage_
that can be granted it."[179]

The late Paul Lafargue, perhaps the leading thinker of the French
Socialist movement, a son-in-law of Karl Marx, made a declaration at a
recent Party Congress which brings out still more clearly the prevailing
Socialist attitude. Denying that the Socialists are opposed to reforms,
he said: "On the contrary, we demand all reforms, even the most
bourgeois [capitalist] reforms like the income tax and the purchase of
the West [the Western railroad, lately purchased by the government]. It
matters little to us who proposes reforms, and I may add that the most
important of them all for the working class have not been presented by
Socialist deputies, but by the bourgeois [capitalists]. Free and
compulsory education was not proposed by Socialists." That is to say,
Lafargue believed that reforms extremely beneficial to the working class
might be enacted without any union of Socialists with non-Socialists,
without the Socialists gaining political power and without their even
constituting a menace to the rule of the anti-Socialist classes.
Capitalism of itself, in its own interest and without any reference to
Socialism or the Socialists, may go very far towards developing a
society which in turn develops an ever growing and developing working
class, though without increasing the actual political or economic powers
of this class when compared with its own.

In Germany especially, Marx's co-workers and successors developed marked
hostility to "State Socialism" from the moment when it was taken up by
Bismarck nearly a generation ago (1883). August Bebel's hostility to the
existing State goes so far that he predicts that it will expire "with
the expiration of the ruling class,"[180] while Engels contended that
the very phrase "the Socialist State" was valueless as a slogan in the
present propaganda of Socialism, and scientifically ineffective.[181]

Engels had even predicted, as long ago as 1880, that the coming of
monopolies would bring it about that the State, being "the official
representative of capitalistic society," would ultimately have to
undertake "the protection of production," and that this necessity would
first be felt in the case of the railways and the telegraphs. Later
events have shown that his prediction was so correct that even America
and England are approaching the nationalization of their railways, while
the proposal to nationalize monopolies is rapidly growing in popularity
in every country in the world, and among nearly all social classes.

Engels did not consider that such developments were necessarily in the
direction of Socialism any more than the nationalization of the railways
by the Czar or the Prussian government. On the contrary, he suggested
that it meant the strengthening of the capitalism.

"The modern State," he wrote in 1880, "no matter what its form, is
essentially a capitalistic machine, the State of the capitalists, the
ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it
proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more it actually
becomes the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The
workers remain wageworkers--proletarians. The capitalist relation is not
done away with. It is rather brought to a head."[182] Engels did not
think that State ownership necessarily meant Socialism; but he thought
that it might be utilized for the purposes of Socialism if the working
class was sufficiently numerous, organized, and educated to take charge
of the situation. "State ownership of the productive forces is not the
solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical
conditions that give the elements of the solution."

As early as 1892 Karl Kautsky, at the present moment perhaps the
greatest living Socialist editor and economist, wrote that the system of
laissez-faire, for which "State Socialism" offers itself as a remedy,
had long ago lost whatever influence it once had on the capitalist
class--which was never very great. If, then, the theory that "that
government is best which governs least" had been abandoned by the
capitalists themselves, there was no ground why Socialists should devote
their time to the advocacy of a view ("State Socialism") that was merely
a reaction against an outworn standpoint. The theory of collectivism,
that the functions of the State ought to be widely extended, had long
been popular among the capitalists themselves.

"It has already been seen," wrote Kautsky, "that economic and political
development has made necessary and inevitable the taking over of certain
economic functions by the State.... It can by no means be said that
every nationalization of an economic function or of an economic
enterprise is a step towards Socialistic cooeperation and that the latter
would grow out of the general nationalization of all economic
enterprises without making a fundamental change in the nature of the
State."[183] In other words, Kautsky denies that partial nationalization
or collectivism is necessarily even a step towards Socialism, and
asserts that it may be a step in the other direction. The German
Socialists acted on this principle when they opposed the nationalization
of the Reichsbank, and it has often guided other Socialist parties.

Kautsky feels that it is often a mistake to transfer the power over
industry, _e.g._ the ownership of the land, into the hands of the State
as now constituted, since this puts a tremendous part of the national
wealth at the disposal of capitalist governments, one of whose prime
functions is to prevent the increase of the political and economic power
of the working people. And, although the State employees would probably
receive a somewhat better treatment than they had while the industry was
privately owned, they would simply form a sort of aristocracy of labor
opposed in general to the interests of the working people.

"Like every State," says Kautsky, "the modern State is in the first
place a tool for the protection of the general interests of the
ruling classes. It changes its nature in no way if it takes over
functions of general utility which aim at advancing the interests
not only of the ruling classes, but also of those of society as a
whole _and_ of the ruling classes, and on no condition does it take
care of these functions in a way which might threaten the general
interests of the ruling classes or their domination.... If the
present-day State nationalizes certain industries and functions, it
does this, not to put limitations on capitalistic exploitation, but
to protect and to strengthen the capitalistic mode of production,
or in order itself to take a share in this exploitation, to
increase its income in this way, and to lessen the payments that
the capitalist class must obtain for its own support in the way of
taxes. And as an exploiter, the State has this advantage over
private capitalists: that it has at its disposal to be used against
the exploited not only the economic powers of the capitalists, but
the political force of the State." (My italics.)

As an illustration of Kautsky's reference to the lessening of taxes
through the profits of government ownership, it may be pointed out that
the German Socialists fear the further nationalization of industries in
Germany on account of the danger that with this increased income the
State would no longer depend on the annual grants of the Reichstag and
would then be in a position to govern without that body. The king of
Prussia and the Emperor of Germany could in that event rule the country
much as the present Czar rules Russia.

As a rule, outside of Great Britain, the advocates of the collectivist
program are also aware that their "Socialism" is not that of the
Socialist movement. In an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Mr. John
Martin, for example, indicates the "State Socialist" tendency of
present-day reform measures in America, and at the same time shows that
they are removed as far as possible from that anti-capitalist trend
which is held by most Socialist Party leaders to be the essence of their
movement. Mr. Martin points to the irrigation projects, the conservation
of national resources, the railway policy of the national
administration, the expansion of the Federal government, and the
tendency towards compulsory arbitration since the interference of
President Roosevelt in the coal strike of 1902, as being "Socialistic"
and yet in no sense class movements. They tend towards social
reconstruction and to greater social organization and order; and there
are no "logical halting places," says Mr. Martin, "on the road to
Collectivism." But so far is this movement from a class movement in Mr.
Martin's opinion that its advance guard consists in part of millionaires
like Mr. Carnegie and Mrs. Sage, "who aim at a social betterment of both
getting and spending of fortunes," while "behind them, uncommitted to
any far-reaching theory, but patriotic and zealous for an improved
society, there are marching philanthropists, doctors, lawyers, business
men, and legislators, people of distinction." And finally the army is
completed by millions of common privates "_for_ whose children the
better order will be the greatest boon." (The italicizing is mine.) The
privates apparently figure rather as mere recipients of public and
private benefactions than as active citizens.[184]

Some of the reformers openly advise joining the Socialist movement with
the hope of using it for the purpose of reform and without aiding it in
any way to reach a goal of its own. Professor John Bates Clark, one of
America's most prominent economists, says of the Socialist Party that it
is legitimate because "it represents the aspirations of a large number
of workingmen" and because "its immediate purposes are good."

"It has changed the uncompromising policy of opposing all halfway
measures," continues Professor Clark. "It welcomes reforms and
tries to enroll in its membership as many as possible of the
reformers.... In short, the Socialist and the reformer may walk
side by side for a considerable distance without troubling
themselves about the unlike goals which they hope in the end to
reach.... What the reformers will have to do is to take the
Socialistic name, walk behind a somewhat red banner, and be ready
to break ranks and leave the army when it reaches the dividing of
the ways."[185]

Professor Clark, it will be seen, has no difficulty in suggesting a
"logical halting place on the road to collectivism"; namely, when the
Socialists turn from collectivist reforms and start out towards
Socialism.

Anti-Socialists may share the Socialist _ideal_ and even favor all the
reforms that the capitalists can permit to be put into practice without
resigning their power and allowing the overthrow of capitalism. But
Socialists have long since seen a way to mark off all such idealists and
reformers--by presenting Socialism for what it really is, not as an
ideal, nor a program of reform under capitalist direction, but as a
method, and the only practical method, of ending capitalist rule in
industry and government.

When Liebknecht insists on "the extreme importance of tactics and the
necessity of maintaining the party's class struggle character," he makes
"tactics," or the practical methods of the movement, _identical_ with
its basic principle, "the class struggle." Kautsky does the same thing
when he says that Socialism is, _both in theory and practice_, a
revolution against capitalism.