Socialism As It Is

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Mr. Roosevelt, for example, gives the common impression when he accuses
the Socialists of using the term "working class" in the narrow sense and
of taking the position that "all wealth is produced by manual workers,
that the entire product of labor should be handed over to the
laborer."[215] I shall show that Socialist writers and speakers, even
when they use the expression "working class," almost universally include
others than the manual laborers among those they expect to make up the
anti-capitalistic movement.

Kautsky's definition of the working class, for example, is: "Workers
who are divorced from their power of production to the extent that they
can produce nothing by their own efforts, and are therefore compelled in
order to escape starvation to sell the only commodity they
possess--their labor power." In present-day society, especially in a
rich country like America, it is as a rule not sheer "starvation" that
drives, but needs of other kinds that are almost as compelling. But the
point I am concerned with now is that this definition, widely accepted
by Socialists, draws no line whatever between manual and intellectual
workers. In another place Kautsky refers to the industrial working class
as being the recruiting ground for Socialism, which might seem to be
giving a preferred position to manual workers; but a few paragraphs
below he again qualifies his statement by adding that "to the working
class there belong, just as much as the wage earners, the members of the
new middle class," which I shall describe below.[216]

In other statements of their position, it is the context which makes the
Socialist meaning clear. The party Platform of Canada, for instance,
uses throughout the simple term "working class," without any
explanation, but it speaks of the struggle as taking place against the
"capitalists," and as it mentions no other classes, the reader is left
to divide all society between these two, which would evidently make it
necessary to classify many besides mere manual wage earners rather among
the anti-capitalist than among the capitalist forces.

The platform of the American Socialist Party in 1904 divided the
population between the "capitalists," and the "working or _producing
class_." "Between these two classes," says this platform, "there can be
no possible compromise ... except in the conscious and complete triumph
of the working class as the only class that has the right or _power_ to
be."

"By working people," said Liebknecht, "we do not understand merely the
manual workers, but _every one who does not live on the labor of
another_." His words should be memorized by all those who wish to
understand the first principles of Socialism:--

"Some maintain, it is true, that the wage-earning proletariat is
the only really revolutionary class, that it alone forms the
Socialist army, and that we ought to regard with suspicion all
adherents belonging to other classes or other conditions of life.
Fortunately these senseless ideas have never taken hold of the
German Social Democracy.

"The wage-earning class is most directly affected by capitalist
exploitation; it stands face to face with those who exploit it, and
it has the especial advantage of being concentrated in the
factories and yards, so that it is naturally led to think things
out more energetically and finds itself automatically organized
into 'battalions of workers.' This state of things gives it a
revolutionary character which no other part of society has to the
same degree. We must recognize this frankly.

"Every wage earner is either a Socialist already, or he is on the
high road to becoming one.

"We must not limit our conception of the term 'working class' too
narrowly. As we have explained in speeches, tracts, and articles,
we include in the working class all those who live exclusively _or
principally_ by means of their own labor, and who do not grow rich
from the work of others.

"Thus, besides the wage earners, we should include in the working
class the small farmers and small shop keepers, who tend more and
more to drop to the level of the proletariat--in other words, all
those who suffer from our present system of production on a large
scale." (My italics.)

The chief questions now confronting the Socialists are all connected,
directly or indirectly, with these producing middle classes, who, on the
whole, do not live on the labor of others and suffer from the present
system, yet often enjoy some modest social privilege.

While Liebknecht considered that the wage-earning class was more
revolutionary and Socialistic than any other, he did not allow this for
one moment to persuade him to give a subordinate position to other
classes in the movement, as he says:--

"The unhappy situation of the small farmers almost all over Germany
is as well known as that of the artisan movement. It is true that
both small farmers and small shopkeepers are still in the camp of
our adversaries, but only because they do not understand the
profound causes that underlie their deplorable condition; it is of
prime importance for our party to enlighten them and bring them
over to our side. _This is the vital question for our party,
because these two classes form the majority of the nation._... We
ought not to ask, 'Are you a wage earner?' but, 'Are you a
Socialist?'

"If it is limited to the wage earners, Socialism cannot conquer. If
it included all the workers and the moral and intellectual elite of
the nation, its victory is certain.... Not to contract, but to
expand, ought to be our motto. The circle of Socialism should
widen more and more, _until we have converted most of our
adversaries to being our friends_, or at least disarm their
opposition.

"And the indifferent mass, that in peaceful days has no weight in
the political balance, but becomes the decisive force in times of
agitation, ought to be so fully enlightened as to the aims and the
essential ideas of our party, that it would cease to fear us and
can be no longer used as a weapon against us."[217] (My italics.)

Karl Kautsky, though he takes a less broad view, also says that the
Socialist Party is "the only anti-capitalist party,"[218] and contends
in his recent pamphlet, "The Road to Power," that its recruiting ground
in Germany includes three fourths of the nation, and probably even more,
which (even in Germany) would include a considerable part of those
ordinarily listed with the middle class.

Kautsky's is probably the prevailing opinion among German Socialists.
Let us see how he proposes to compose a Socialist majority. Of course
his first reliance is on the manual laborers, skilled and unskilled.
Next come the professional classes, the salaried corporation employees,
and a large part of the office workers, which together constitute what
Kautsky and the other Continental Socialists call the _new_ middle
class. "Among these," Kautsky says, "a continually increasing sympathy
for the proletariat is evident, because they have no special class
interest, and owing to their professional, scientific point of view, are
easiest won for our party through scientific considerations. The
theoretical bankruptcy of bourgeois economics, and the theoretical
superiority of Socialism, must become clear to them. Through their
training, also, they must discover that the other social classes
continuously strive to debase art and science. Many others are impressed
by the fact of the irresistible advance of the Social Democracy. So it
is that friendship for labor becomes popular among the cultured classes,
until there is scarcely a parlor in which one does not stumble over one
or more 'Socialists.'"

It is difficult to understand how it can be said that these classes have
no special "class interest," unless it is meant that their interest is
neither that of the capitalists nor precisely that of the industrial
wage-earning class. And this, indeed, is Kautsky's meaning, for he seems
to minimize their value to the Socialists, because _as a class_ they
cannot be relied upon.

"Heretofore, as long as Socialism was branded among all cultured
classes as criminal or insane, capitalist elements could be brought
into the Socialist movement only by a complete break with the
whole capitalist world. Whoever came into the Socialist movement at
that time from the capitalist element had need of great energy,
revolutionary passion, and strong proletarian convictions. It was
just this element which ordinarily constituted the most radical and
revolutionary wing of the Socialist movement.

"It is wholly different to-day, since Socialism has become a fad.
It no longer demands any special energy, or any break with
capitalist society to assume the name of Socialist. It is no
wonder, then, that more and more these new Socialists remain
entangled in their previous manner of thought and feeling.

"The fighting tactics of the intellectuals are at any rate wholly
different from those of the proletariat. To wealth and power of
arms the latter opposes its overwhelming numbers and its thorough
organization. The intellectuals are an ever diminishing minority,
with no class organization whatever. Their only weapon is
persuasion through speaking and writing, the battle with
'intellectual weapons' and 'moral superiority,' and these 'parlor
Socialists' would settle the proletarian class struggle also with
these weapons. They declare themselves ready to grant the party
their moral support, but only on condition that it renounces the
idea of the application of force, and this not simply where force
is hopeless,--there the proletariat has already renounced it,--but
also in those places where it is still full of possibilities.
Accordingly they seek to throw discredit on the idea of revolution,
and to represent it as a useless means. They seek to separate off a
social reform wing from the revolutionary proletariat, and they
thereby divide and weaken the proletariat."[219]

In the last words Kautsky refers to the fact that although a large
number of "intellectuals" (meaning the educated classes) have come into
the Socialist Party and remain there, they constitute a separate wing of
the movement. We must remember, however, that this same wing embraces,
besides these "parlor Socialists," a great many trade unionists, and
that it has composed a very considerable portion of the German Party,
and a majority in some other countries of the Continent; and as Kautsky
himself admits that they succeed in "dividing the proletariat," they
cannot be very far removed politically from at least one of the
divisions they are said to have created. It is impossible to attribute
the kind of Socialism to which Kautsky objects to the adhesion of
certain educated classes to the movement (for reasons indicated in Part
II).

While many of the present spokesmen of Socialism are, like Kautsky,
somewhat skeptical as to the necessity of an alliance between the
working class and this section of the middle class, others accept it
without qualification. If, then, we consider at once the middle ground
taken by the former group of Socialists, and the very positive and
friendly attitude of the latter, it must be concluded that the Socialist
movement _as a whole_ is convinced that its success depends upon a
fusion of at least these two elements, the wage earners and "the new
middle class."

A few quotations from the well-known revolutionary Socialist, Anton
Pannekoek, will show the contrast between the narrower kind of
Socialism, which still survives in many quarters, and that of the
majority of the movement. He discriminates even against "the new middle
class," leaving nobody but the manual laborers as a fruitful soil for
real Socialism.

"To be sure, in the economic sense of the term, then, the new
middle class are proletarians; but they form a very special group
of wage workers, a group that is so sharply divided from the _real_
proletarians that they form a special class with a special position
in the class struggle.... Immediate need does not _compel_ them as
it does the real proletarians to attack the capitalist system.
Their position may arouse discontent, but that of the workers is
unendurable. For them Socialism has many advantages, for the
workers it is an _absolute_ necessity." (My italics.)[220]

The phrase "absolute necessity" is unintelligible. It is
comparatively rarely that need arises to the height of actual
compulsion, and when it does instances are certainly just as common
among clerks as they are among bricklayers.

Pannekoek introduces a variety of arguments to sustain his
position. For instance, that "the higher strata among the new
middle class have a definitely capitalistic character. The lower
ones are more proletarian, but there is no sharp dividing line."
This is true--but the high strata in every class are capitalistic.
The statement applies equally well to railway conductors, to
foremen, and to many classes of manual workers.

"And then, too," Pannekoek continues, "they, the new middle class,
have more to fear from the displeasure of their masters, and
dismissal for them is a much more serious matter. The worker stands
always on the verge of starvation, and so unemployment has few
terrors for him. The high-class employee, on the contrary, has
comparatively an easy life, and a new position is difficult to
find."

Now it is precisely the manual laborer who is most often
blacklisted by the large corporations and trusts; and the
brain-working employee is better able to adapt himself to some
slightly different employment than is the skilled worker in any of
the highly specialized trades.

"For the cause of Socialism we can count on this new middle
class," says Pannekoek, "even less than on the labor unions. For
one thing, they have been set over the workers, as superintendents,
overseers, bosses, etc. In these capacities they are supposed to
speed up the workers to get the utmost out of them."

Is it not even more common, we may ask, that one manual worker is
set over another than that a brain worker is set over a manual
laborer?

"They [the new middle class] are divided," writes Pannekoek, "into
numberless grades and ranks arranged one above the other; they do
not meet as comrades, and so cannot develop the spirit of
solidarity. Each individual does not make it a matter of personal
pride to improve the condition of his entire class; the important
thing is rather that he personally struggles up into the next
higher rank."

If we remember the more favorable hours and conditions under which
the brain workers are employed, the fact that they are not so
exhausted physically and that they have education, we may see that
they have perhaps even greater chances "to develop their
solidarity" and to understand their class interests than have the
manual workers. It is true that they are more divided at the
present time, but there is a tendency throughout all the highly
organized industries to divide the manual laborers in the same way
and to secure more work from them by a similar system of
promotions.

Pannekoek accuses the brain workers of having something to lose,
again forgetting that there are innumerable groups of more or less
privileged manual laborers who are in the same position. And
finally, he contends that their superior schooling and education is
a disadvantage when compared to the lack of education of the manual
laborers:--

"They have great notions of their own education and refinement,
feel themselves above the masses; it naturally never occurs to them
that the ideals of these masses may be scientifically correct and
that the 'science' of their professors may be false. As theorizers
seeing the world always with their minds, knowing little or nothing
of material activities, they are fairly convinced that mind
controls the world."

On the contrary, nearly all influential Socialist thinkers agree
that present-day science, _poorly as it is taught_, is not only an
aid to Socialism, but the very best basis for it.

Pannekoek is right, for instance, when he says that most of the
brain workers in the Socialist movement come from the circles of
the small capitalists and bring an anti-Socialist prejudice with
them, but he forgets that, on the other side, the overwhelming
majority of the world's working people are the children of farmers,
peasants, or of absolutely unskilled and illiterate workers, whose
views of life were even more prejudiced and whose minds were
perhaps even more filled up with the ideas that the ruling classes
have placed there.

The arguments of the American Socialist, Thomas Sladden, representing
as they do the views of _many thousands of revolutionary workingmen in
this country_, are also worthy of note. His bitterness, it will be seen,
is leveled less against capitalism itself than against what he considers
to be intrusion of certain middle-class elements into Socialist ranks.

"We find in the United States to-day," writes Sladden, "that we
have created several new religions, one of the most interesting of
which is called Socialism, and is the religion of a decadent middle
class. This fake Socialism or middle-class religion can readily be
distinguished from the real Socialist movement, which is simply the
wage working class in revolt on both the industrial and political
fields against present conditions.... Yesterday I was a bad
capitalist--to-day I am a good Socialist, but I pay my wage slaves
the same wages to-day as I did yesterday.... They never take the
answer of Bernard Shaw, who, when asked by a capitalist what he
could do, saying that he could not help being a capitalist, was
answered in this manner: You can go and crack rock if you want to;
no one forces you to be a capitalist, but you are a capitalist
because you want to be. No one forces Hillquit to be a lawyer; he
could get a job in a lumber yard. There is no more excuse for a man
being a capitalist or a lawyer than there is for him being a
Pinkerton detective. He is either by his own free will and accord.
The system,--they acclaim in one breath,--the system makes us do
what we do not wish to do. The system does nothing of the kind; the
system gives a man the choice between honest labor and dishonest
labor skinning, and a labor skinner is a labor skinner because he
wishes to be, just the same as some men are pickpockets because
they wish to be."

It can readily be realized that such arguments will always have great
weight with the embittered elements of the working class. Nor do the
most representative Socialists altogether disagree with Sladden. They,
too, feel that if the war is not levied against individuals, neither is
it levied against a mere abstract system, but against a ruling class.
However, they make exceptions for such capitalists as the late Paul
Singer, who definitely abandon their class and throw in their lot with
the Socialist movement, while Sladden would admit neither Singer, nor
those other millions mentioned by Liebknecht (see above), for he demands
that the Socialist Party must declare that "no one not eligible to the
labor unions of the United States is eligible to the Socialist Party."

The high-water mark of this brand of revolutionism was reached in the
State of Washington, when these revolutionary elements in the Socialist
Party withdrew to form a new workingmen's party, the chief novelty of
which was a plank dividing the organization into "an active list and an
assistant list, only wage workers being admitted to the active list."
The wage workers were defined as the class of modern wage laborers who,
having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their
labor power in order to live. These are the active list, and they alone
hold office and vote. "The assistant list cannot hold office and cannot
vote," and the Party will "do active organizing work among wage earners
alone." This reminds one very much of the notorious division into active
and passive citizens at the early stages of the French Revolution, which
gave such a splendid opportunity to the Jacobines to organize a revolt
of the passive citizens and was one of the chief causes leading up to
the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic reaction that followed. The
Washington plan, however, has been a complete failure. It has had no
imitators in the Socialist movement, nor is it likely to have.

On the other hand, the most influential representatives of the extreme
revolutionary wing of the movement, like Herve in France, have
championed the non-wage-earning elements of the movement as fearlessly
as the reformists.

"In the ranks of our party," writes Herve, "are to be found small
merchants, small employers, wretched, impoverished, educated
people, small peasant proprietors, none of whom on account of
occupation can enter into the general Federation of Labor, which
only admits those receiving wages and salaries. These are
revolutionary elements which cannot be neglected; these volunteers
of the Revolution who have often a beautiful revolutionary
temperament would be lost for the Revolution if our political
organization was not at hand to nourish their activity. Besides,
the General Federation of Labor is a somewhat heavy mass; it will
become more and more heavy as it comprises the majority of the
_working class which is by nature rather pacific at the bottom_."

While there is no sufficient reason for the accusation that the
Socialist movement neglects the brain workers of the salaried and
professional classes, there is somewhat more solid ground, in spite of
the above quoted declarations of Liebknecht and Herve, for the
accusation that it antagonizes those sections of the middle classes
which are, even to a slight degree, small capitalists, as, for example,
especially the farmers.

"The unimaginative person," says Mr. H. G. Wells, "who owns some little
bit of property, an acre or so of freehold land, or a hundred pounds in
the savings bank, will no doubt be the most tenacious passive resister
to Socialist ideas; and such I fear we must reckon, together with the
insensitive rich, as our irreconcilable enemies, as irremovable pillars
of the present order."[221]

This view is widespread among Socialists, and is even sustained by
Kautsky. "Small merchants and innkeepers," he writes, "have despaired of
ever rising by their own exertions; they expect everything from above
and look only to the upper classes and to the government for
assistance," though they "find their customers only in laboring circles,
so that their existence is absolutely dependent upon the prosperity or
adversity of the laboring classes." The contradiction Kautsky finds goes
even further. He says, "Servility depends upon reaction--and furnishes
not only the willing supporters, but the fanatical advocates of the
monarchy, the church, and the nobility." With all this they (the
shopkeepers, etc.) remain democratic, since it is only through democracy
that they can obtain political influence. Kautsky calls them the
"reactionary democracy."[222] But if they are democratic and in part
economically dependent on the laboring classes, then why should not this
part cast its lot economically and politically with the working class?

Kautsky extends his criticism of the small capitalists very far and even
seems in doubt concerning the owners of small investments such as
savings bank deposits. "Well-meaning optimists," he says, "have seen in
this a means of decentralizing capital, so that after a while, in the
most peaceable manner, without any one noticing it, capital would be
transformed into social property. In fact, this movement really means
the transformation of all the money of the middle and lower classes,
which is not used by them for immediate consumption, into money capital,
and as such placing it at the disposal of the great financiers for the
buying out of industrial managers, and thereby assisting in the
concentration on industry in the hands of a few financiers."

The classes which have invested their capital directly or indirectly in
stocks or bonds through savings banks and through insurance companies
number many millions, and include the large majority of all sections of
the middle class, even of its most progressive part, salaried employees,
and the professional element. It is undoubtedly true, as Kautsky says,
that small investors are not obtaining any direct control over capital,
and that their funds are used in the way he points out, constituting one
of the striking and momentous tendencies of the time. But it does not
follow that they are destined to lose such investments altogether, as
the legislative reforms to protect banks may be extended to the
railroads and other forms of investments. The small investors will
scarcely be turned to favor capitalism by their investments, which bring
in small profit and allow them nothing to say in the management of
industry, but neither will the losses they sometimes suffer from this
source be sufficient in themselves to convert them into allies of the
working class.