Socialism As It Is

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"La Salle used to say to his followers in confidential talks: 'When I
speak of universal suffrage you must always understand that I mean
revolution.' And the Party has always conceived of universal suffrage as
a means of revolutionary recruiting" (_Die Neue Zeit_, December 16,
1911).

[291] From a press interview with Mr. Henry Watterson in 1909; verified
by a private letter to the author.

CHAPTER IX

THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM

The Socialist policy requires so complete a reversal of the policy of
collectivist capitalism, that no government has taken any steps whatever
in that direction. No governments and no political parties, except the
Socialists, have any such steps under discussion, and finally, no
governments or capitalist parties are sufficiently alarmed or confused
by the menace of Socialism to be hurried or driven into a policy which
would carry them a stage nearer to the very thing they are most anxious
to avoid.

If we are moving towards Socialism it is due to entirely different
causes: to the numerical increase, and the improved education and
organization of the non-capitalist classes, to their training in the
Socialist parties and labor unions for the definite purpose of turning
the capitalists (as such) out of industry and government, to the
experience they have gained in political and economic struggles against
overwhelmingly superior forces, to the fact that the enemy, though he
can prevent them at present from gaining even a partial control over
industry or government, or from seizing any strategic point of the first
importance, is utterly unable to crush them, notwithstanding his greater
and greater efforts to do so, and cannot prevent them from gaining on
him constantly in numbers and superiority of organization.

If we are advancing towards Socialism, it is not because the
non-capitalist classes, when compared with the capitalists, are
gradually gaining a greater share of wealth or more power in society. It
is because they are gradually gaining that capacity for organized
political and economic action which, though useless except for defensive
purposes to-day, will enable them to take possession of industry and
government _when their organization has become stronger than that of the
capitalists_.

The overwhelming majority of Socialists and labor unionists are occupied
either with purely defensive measures or with preparations for
aggressive action in the future. This does not mean that no economic or
political reforms of benefit or importance can be expected until the
Socialists have conquered capitalism or forced it to recognize their
power; I have shown that, on the contrary, a colossal program of such
reforms is either impending or in actual process of execution. It means
only that for every advance allotted to labor, a greater advance will be
gained by the capitalist class which is promoting these reforms, that
their most important effect is to increase the _relative power_ of the
capitalists.

The first governmental step towards Socialism will have been taken when
the Socialist organizations are able to say: _During this administration
the position of the non-capitalist classes has improved faster than that
of the capitalists._ But even such a governmental step towards Socialism
does not mean that Socialism is being installed. It may be followed by a
step in the opposite direction. _No advance can be permanently held
until the organizations of non-capitalists have become superior to or at
least as powerful as those of the capitalists._ An actual step _in_
Socialism, moreover, as distinct from such an insecure political step
_towards_ Socialism, depends in no degree upon the action of
non-Socialist governments (and still less on local Socialist
administrations subject to higher non-Socialist control) unless such
governments are already practically vanquished, and so forced to obey
Socialist orders. An actual installment of Socialism awaits, first, a
certain development of Socialist parties and labor unions, and second,
on these organizations securing control of a sovereign and independent
government (if there be any such), or of a group of industries that
dominates it. And if the governments of the various capitalistic
countries are as interdependent as they seem, a number of them will have
to be captured before the possession of any is secure.

_The essential problem before the Socialists under State capitalism,
with every reform now under serious discussion already in force, will be
fundamentally the same as it is under the private capitalism of to-day._
The capitalists will be even more powerful than they are, the _relative_
position of the non-capitalists in government and industry still more
inferior than it now is. However, with better health, more means,
greater leisure, superior education, with a better organized and more
easily comprehended social system, with the enemy more united and more
clearly defined, Socialists believe that the conditions for the
successful solution of this problem will be far more favorable.

The evolution of industry and government under capitalism sets the
problems and furnishes the conditions necessary for the solution, but
the solution, if it comes at all, must come from the Socialists
themselves. I have shown what the Socialists are doing to-day to gain
supreme control over governments. What do they expect to do when they
have obtained that power? I have given little attention to the steps
they will probably take at that time because the question belongs to the
future, and has not yet been practically confronted. It is impossible to
tell how any body of men will answer any question until it is before
them and they know their answer must be at once translated into acts.
Yet a few concrete statements as to what Socialists expect and intend
for the future--especially in those matters where there is practical
unanimity among them, may be justified, and may help to define their
present aims. There are certain matters where Socialists have as yet had
no opportunity to show their position in acts, and yet where their
present activities, supported by their statements, indicate what their
course will be.

First, how do Socialists expect to proceed during the transitional
period, when they have won supreme power, but have not yet had time to
put any of their more far-reaching principles into execution? The first
of these transitional problems is: What shall be done with those
particular forms of private property or privilege which stand in the way
of an economic democracy? How far shall existing vested rights be
compensated?

"And as for taking such property from the owners," asks Mr. H. G.
Wells, "why shouldn't we? The world has not only in the past taken
slaves from their owners, with no compensation or with meager
compensation; but in the history of mankind, dark as it is, there
are innumerable cases of slave owners resigning their inhuman
rights.... There are, no doubt, a number of dull, base, rich people
who hate and dread Socialism for purely selfish reasons; but it is
quite possible to be a property owner and yet be anxious to see
Socialism come into its own.... Though I deny the right to
compensation, I do not deny its probable advisability. So far as
the question of method goes it is quite conceivable that we may
partially compensate the property owners and make all sorts of
mitigating arrangements to avoid cruelty to them in our attempt to
end the wider cruelties of to-day."[292]

Socialists are, of course, quite determined that either the vested
interests of all persons dependent on small unearned incomes and unable
otherwise to earn their living shall be protected, or that they shall be
equally well provided for by other means. No practical Socialist has
ever proposed, during this transitional period, to interfere in any way
either with savings bank accounts or with life insurance policies on a
reasonable scale, or with widows and orphans who are using incomes from
very small pieces of property for identical purposes.

As to the compensation of the wealthier classes, this becomes entirely a
secondary question, a matter of pure expediency. The great British
scientist and Socialist, Alfred Russell Wallace, and the moderate
Socialist, Professor Anton Menger of Vienna, propose almost identical
plans of compromise with the wealthy classes,--compromises which would
perhaps result in a saving to a Socialist government and might therefore
be advisable, aside from any sentimental question of protecting or
abolishing vested "rights." Professor Wallace, objects to "continuing
any payments of interests beyond the lives of the present receivers and
their direct heirs [now living], who may have been brought up to expect
such inheritance." For if we were to compensate any others, Wallace
points out that we would be "actually robbing the present generation to
the enrichment and supposed advantage of certain unborn individuals, who
in most instances, as we now know, are much more likely to be injured
than benefited."[293] Professor Menger proposes that, in exchange for
property taken by the government from owners of large fortunes, there
should be allotted to them, and their descendants now living, a modest
annuity "sufficient to satisfy their legitimate needs," as being more
reasonable than Wallace's plan of such an income as they were "brought
up to expect."[294] But in the long run the difference between the two
methods would be immaterial--and the one chosen would doubtless depend
on the social or anti-social attitude assumed by the wealthy. In either
case there would be no unearned incomes in any generation not yet born.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible that a Socialist Party which
had seized the reins of political power might, through motives of
caution and self-protection, use greater severity against those of the
capitalists whom they thought had played an unfair part in the welfare
against the installation of the new government. It is scarcely to be
doubted, for instance, that those capitalists who tried to embroil us in
foreign wars in order to prevent the establishment of social democracy
would probably be exiled and their property confiscated. Certainly these
measures would be employed against all such persons as had counseled or
participated in the suspension of civil government or other violent
measures.

But where will the money come from even for the payment of such limited
compensation as the Socialists decide upon? Assuming that the stocks and
bonds of the railways and other large businesses were paid for at the
cost of reproduction, or, let us say, at 50 per cent their present
market value, a vast amount would still be required. The Socialist
answer to this question is very brightly given by America's most popular
and influential Socialist organ, the _Appeal to Reason_. It reminds us
that the Socialists, once having the reins of political power, will then
be the possessors of all the credit of the government.

"How much money," asks the _Appeal_, "did Morgan need in order to
buy up all the independent steel companies for the steel trust?"
And it answers: "Not a penny. Rather than needing money, he issued
stock in the new concern in payment for the old independent mills,
and after all was done proceeded to almost double his stock! In
other words, instead of needing money, he acquired a vast sum in
the transaction. One who is familiar with the way the railroads
have been built and the vast fortunes erected understands that
there was almost no investment. It all came through a series of
tricks. Those tricks, as honest in the reversal as when the
capitalist played them, can be reversed. Hardly a corporation but
has forfeited its charter. With the charter cancelled stocks would
tumble and the water would speedily go. Socialists are not fools
that they should merely fall into the hands of men who think that
they can unload on them in such a manner as to saddle a perpetual
debt on the people. If the steel trust, after organizing and buying
up smaller concerns, could still issue vast series of stocks and
bonds, why could not the Socialists issue all the money they needed
to accomplish the same things? And would not the money based on
lands and mills be as good security as the money we now have based
on nothing under the sun but inflated railroad and trust stocks
[securities]?"

Undoubtedly some such method will be followed--with those essential
industries that will not already have become collective property under
capitalism.

In so far as "State Socialism" or collectivist capitalism will have
paved the way, by extensive government ownership, the problem of
confiscation or compensation becomes much simplified. Kautsky has very
ably summarized the prevailing Socialist plan for dealing with it at
this point:--

"As soon as all capitalist wealth had taken the form of
(government) bonds, it would be possible to raise a progressive
income, property and inheritance tax, to a height which until then
was impossible.

"It is one of our demands at the present time that such a tax shall
be substituted for all others, especially for the indirect tax.

"But even if we had to-day the power to carry through such a
measure with the support of the other parties, which is plainly
impossible, because no bourgeois party would go so far, we would at
once find ourselves in the presence of great difficulties.

"It is a well-known fact that the higher the tax the greater the
efforts at tax dodging.

"But when a condition exists where any concealment of income and
property is impossible, even then we would not be in a position to
force the income and property tax as high as we wish, because the
capitalists, if the tax on their income or property pressed them
too closely, would simply leave the State.

"Above a certain measure such taxes cannot rise to-day even if we
had the political power.

"_The situation is completely changed, however, when capitalist
property takes the form of public debts._

"The property to-day that is so hard to find then lies in broad
day-light.

"It would then only be necessary to declare that all bonds must be
public, and it would be known exactly what was the value of every
property and every capitalist income.

"_The tax would then be raised as high as desired_ without the
possibility of tax frauds.

"It would then also be impossible to escape taxation by emigration,
for the tax could simply be taken from the interest before it was
paid out. [A similar tax exists in France to-day.]

"_If necessary it might be put so high as to be equivalent, or
nearly so, to a confiscation of the great properties._

"It might be well to ask what is the advantage of this round-about
way of confiscation over that of taking the direct road?

"The difference between the two methods is not so trifling as at
first appears.

"Direct confiscation of all capitalists would strike all, the small
and the great, those utterly useless to labor, in the same manner.

"It is difficult, often impossible, in this method to separate the
large possession from the small, when these are united in the form
of money capital in the same undertaking.

"Direct confiscation would complete this quickly, often at one
stroke, while _confiscation through taxation permits the
disappearance of capitalists' property through a long-drawn-out
process, proceeding in the exact degree in which the new order is
established and its benevolent influence made perceptible._

"Confiscation in this way loses its harshness and becomes more
acceptable and less painful.

"The more peaceable the conquest of political power by the
proletariat, and the more firmly organized and enlightened it is,
the more we can expect that the primitive forms of confiscation
will be softened." (My italics.)[295]

Nor are any of the more influential Socialists anxious to make a clean
sweep of private enterprise in industry. It is only the more important
and fundamental industries, those which underlie all the processes of
manufacturing, or furnish the sheer necessities of the people, that must
necessarily be directly controlled by a Socialist society. "It may be
granted," says Kautsky, "that small establishments will have a definite
position in the future in many branches of industry that produce
directly for human consumption, for machines manufacture essentially
only products in bulk, while many purchasers desire that their personal
taste shall be considered. It is easily possible that under a
proletarian regime the number of small businesses may increase as the
well-being of the masses increases." Of such industries Kautsky says
that they can produce for private customers or even for the open market.
As to-day, he insists, so also in the future, it will be open to the
working people to employ themselves either in public or private
industry.

"A seamstress, for example," he says, "can occupy herself for a
time in a national factory, and at another time make dresses for
private customers at home, then again she can sew for another
customer in her own house, and finally she may, with a few
comrades, unite in a cooeperative for the manufacture of clothing
for sale.

"The most manifold forms of property in the means of
production--national, municipal, cooeperatives of consumption and
production and private industry can exist beside each other in a
Socialist society--the most diverse forms of industrial
organization, bureaucratic, trades union, cooeperative and
individual; the most diverse forms of remunerative labor, fixed
wages, time wages, piece wages, profit sharing in the economies in
raw material, machinery, etc., profit sharing in the results of
intensive labor; the most diverse forms of distribution of
products, like contract by purchase from the warehouses of the
State, from municipalities, from cooeperatives of production, from
producers themselves, etc., etc. _The same manifold character of
economic mechanism that exists to-day is possible in a Socialistic
society._ Only the hunting and the hunted, the struggling and the
resisting, the annihilating and being annihilated of the present
competitive struggle are excluded, and therewith the contrast
between exploiter and exploited." (Italics mine.)[296]

Equally important, or more important, than private cooeperative
industries in the Socialist State, it is expected, will be the increase
of private _organizations of other kinds_, especially in the fields of
publications, education, etc., by what Kautsky calls free associations,
which will serve art and science and public life and advance production
in these spheres in the most diverse ways, or undertake it directly, as
the associations which to-day bring out plays, publish newspapers,
purchase artistic works, publish writings, fit out scientific
expeditions. _He expects such private organizations to play an even more
important role than the government_, for "it is their destiny to enter
into the place now occupied by capital and individual production and _to
organize and to lead mankind as a social being_."[297] (Italics mine.)

"The utmost restriction of private property under Socialism," Mrs.
Gilman says, "leaves us still every article of personal use and
pleasure. One may still 'own' land by paying the government for it
as now; with such taxation, however, as would make it very
expensive to own too much! One may own one's house and all that is
in it: one's clothes and tools and decorations; one's horses,
carriages and automobiles; one's flying machines--presently. All
'personal property' remains in our personal hands.

"But no man or group of men could own the country's coal and decide
how much the public can have, and what we must pay for it. Private
holding of public property would be abolished."[298]

It can never be too often repeated or too strongly emphasized that, with
some unfortunate exceptions, from the time of Marx to the present,
Socialists have opposed not private property, but capitalism. It is the
domination of society by the capitalists, _i.e._ "capitalism" or the
capitalist system, that is to be done away with.

"The distinguishing feature of Communism," wrote Marx, using this
word instead of Socialism, "is not the abolition of property
generally, but the abolition of capitalist property. But modern
capitalist property is the final and most complete expression of
that system of producing and appropriating products that is based
on class antagonism, on the expropriation of the many by the
few."[299]

In seeking the better organization of industry and leaving the most
perfect freedom to individuals and to private organizations, what the
Socialists are really aiming at is really to restrict the government to
_a government of things rather than to a government of men_; and this
phrase is in common use among them. It is sought not to increase the
power of higher officials over government employees and citizens, but,
on the contrary, to limit their powers to the necessities of industry
itself, and to leave the most perfect and complete freedom to the
individual _in every other sphere_, as well as in industry, so far as
the physical conditions themselves allow. There is no doubt, for
instance, that whole departments of restrictive legislation directed
against individual liberty would at once be repealed by any Socialist
government (though not by a government of so-called "State Socialists").

Perhaps the idea is best expressed by the Belgian Socialist,
Vandervelde:--

"The capitalist State has as an end the government of men; it needs
centralized power, ministers ready to employ force, functionaries
blindly obeying the least sign. Enlarge its domain [_i.e._
institute 'State Socialism.'--W.] and you will create a vast
barracks, you will institute a republic of scoundrels.

"The Socialist State, on the contrary, will have for its end an
administration of things; it will need a decentralized
organization, practical men of science, industrial forces over
which spontaneity and initiative will be required above every other
quality."[300]

Surely such a State does not resemble in any way the paternalistic,
bureaucratic capitalism or "State Socialism" towards which we are at
present tending.

"It is quite as possible," says Mr. Spargo, "for a government to
exploit the workers in the interests of a privileged class as it is
for private individuals, or quasi-private corporations, to do so.
Germany with her State-owned railroads, or Austria-Hungary and
Russia with their great government monopolies, are not more
Socialistic, but less so than the United States, where these things
are owned by individuals or corporations. The United States is
nearer Socialism for the reason that its political institutions
have developed farther towards pure democracy than those of the
other countries named.... The real _motif_ of Socialism is not
merely to change the form of industrial organization and ownership,
but to eliminate exploitation.... Every abuse of capitalism calls
forth a fresh installment of legislation restrictive of personal
liberty, with an army of prying officials. Legislators keep busy
making laws, judges keep busy interpreting and enforcing them, and
a swarm of petty officials are kept busy attending to this
intricate machine of popular government. In sober truth, it must be
said that capitalism has created, and could not exist without, the
very bureaucracy it charges Socialism with attempting to foist upon
the nation."[301]

The Socialists are as far from proposing anything resembling a system of
mechanical and absolute equality as they are from attacking personal or
industrial liberty. Ninety-nine and one half per cent of the product of
the men of the different social classes, says Edward Bellamy, "is due in
every case to advantages afforded by modern civilization."[302] So that
if one man is twice as capable as another, it merely raises the
proportion of the product due to his personal efforts from one half of
one per cent to one per cent. International Socialism realizes with
Bellamy that the product is social in far greater proportion than is at
present recognized, but it does not deny that there are cases in which
the contribution of the individual is more important even than
everything that can be attributed to his social advantages. It does not
propose, therefore, to level incomes. It is true that this communist
principle of Bellamy's has a wide practical application both in the
Socialist scheme of things and in present-day society, as, for example,
in free schools and parks, and in the "State Socialist" program. But the
extension of such communism, the distribution of services to the general
public without charge, is due to-day, not to any acceptance of the
general principle, but to the fact that it is inconvenient or impossible
to attempt to distribute the cost of many services among individuals in
proportion as they take advantage of them.