Socialism As It Is

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Whether the radical of to-day, the "State Socialist," favors political
democracy or not, depends on whether these "passive beneficiaries" of
the new "altruistic" system are in a majority. If they are not in a
majority, certain political objects may be gained (without giving the
non-capitalist masses any real power) by allowing them all to vote, by
removing undemocratic constitutional restrictions, and by introducing
direct legislation, the recall, and similar measures. If they are a
majority, it is generally agreed that it is unsafe to allow them an
equal voice in government, as they almost universally fail to rest
satisfied with the benefits they secure from collectivist capitalism and
press on immediately to a far more radical policy.

So in agricultural communities like New Zealand, Australia, and some of
our Western States, where there is a prosperous property-holding
majority, the most complete political democracy has come to prevail.
Judging everything by local conditions, the progressive small
capitalists of our West sometimes even favor the extension of this
democracy to the nation and the whole world, as when the Wisconsin
legislature proposes direct legislation and the recall in our national
government. But they are being warned against this "extremist" stand by
conservative progressive leaders of the industrial sections like
Ex-President Roosevelt or Governor Woodrow Wilson.

This latter type of progressive not only opposes the extension of
radical democracy to districts like our South and East, numerically
dominated by agricultural or industrial laborers, but often wants to
restrict the ballot in those regions. Professor E. A. Ross, for example,
writes in _La Follette's Weekly_ that "no one ought to be given the
ballot unless he can give proof of ability to read and write the English
language," which would disqualify a large part, if not the majority, of
the working people in many industrial centers; while Dr. Abbott
concluded a lengthy series of articles with the suggestion that the
Southern States have "set an example which it would be well, if it were
possible, for all the States to follow."

"Many of them have adopted in their constitutions," Dr. Abbott
continues, "a qualified suffrage. The qualifications are not the
same in all the States, but there is not one of those States in
which every man, black or white, has not a legal right to vote,
provided he can read and write the English language, owns three
hundred dollars' worth of property, and has paid his taxes. A
provision that no man should vote unless he has intelligence enough
to read and write, thrift enough to have laid up three hundred
dollars' worth of property, and patriotism enough to have paid his
taxes, would not be a bad provision for any State in the Union to
incorporate in its constitution."[38]

Such a provision accompanied by the customary Southern poll tax, which,
Dr. Abbott overlooked (evidently inadvertently), would add several
million more white workingmen to the millions (colored and white) that
are already without a vote.[39]

We cannot wonder, then, that the working people, who are enthusiastic
supporters of every democratic reform, should nevertheless distrust the
democracy of the new movement. It is generally supposed in the United
States that the reason the new "Insurgency" is weaker in the East than
in the West is because of the greater ignorance and political corruption
of the masses of the great cities of the East. But when we see the
radicalism of the West also, as soon as it enters the towns, tending to
support the Socialists and Labor parties rather than the reformers, we
realize that the distrust has no such local cause.

Perhaps the issue is more clearly seen in the hostility that exists
among the working people and the Socialists towards the so-called
commission plan of city government, which the progressives unanimously
regard as a sort of democratic municipal panacea. The commission plan
for cities vests the whole local government in a board of half a dozen
elected officials subject to the initiative and referendum and recall.
The Socialists approve of the last feature. They object to the
commission and stand for the very opposite principle of an executive
subordinate to a legislature and without veto power, because a board
does not permit of minority representation, and because it allows most
officials to be appointed through "influence" instead of being elected.
They object also, of course, to the high percentages usually required
for the initiative and the recall. It is Socialist and Labor Union
opposition, and not merely that of political machines, that has defeated
the proposed plan in St. Louis, Jersey City, Hoboken, and elsewhere, and
promises to check it all over the country. As a device for saving the
taxpayer's money, the commission plan in its usual form is ideal, as a
means for securing the benefits of the expenditure of this money to the
non-propertied or very small propertied classes, it is in its present
form worse in the long run than the present corruption and waste. State
legislatures and courts already protect the taxpayers from any measure
in the least Socialistic, whatever form of local government and
whatever party may prevail. It has caused more than a little resentment
among the propertyless that the taxpayers should actually have the
effrontery to propose the still more conservative commission plan as
being a radically democratic reform.

It is on such substantial grounds that the propertyless distrust the
democracy of the progressives and radicals. They find it extends only to
sections or districts where small capitalist voters are in a majority.
The "State Socialist" and Reform attitude towards political democracy is
indeed essentially opportunistic. Not only does it vary from place to
place, but it also changes rapidly with events. As long as the new
movement is in its early stages, it deserves popularity, owing to the
fact that it brings immediate material benefits to all and paves the
way, either for capitalistic or for Socialistic progress, robs
capitalism of all fear of the masses, and is ready to remove all
undemocratic constitutional barriers and to do everything it can to
advance popular government. These constitutional checks and balances
prevent the small capitalists and their progressive large capitalist
allies from bringing to time the reactionaries of the latter class,
while they are so many that, in removing a few of them, there is little
danger of that pure political democracy which would alone give to the
masses any "dangerous" power. At a later stage, when "State Socialism"
will have carried out its program, and the masses see that it is ready
to go only so far as the small capitalists' interests allow and no
farther, and when it will already have forced recalcitrant large
capitalists to terms, and so have reunited the capitalist class, we may
expect to see a complete reversal of the present semi-democratic
attitude. But as long as the "State Socialist" program is still largely
ahead of us, the large capitalists not yet put into their place, and
full political democracy--in spite of rapid progress--still far in the
distance, a radical position as to this, that, or the other piece of
political machinery signifies little. So many reforms of this kind are
needed before political democracy can become effective--and in the
meanwhile many things can happen that will give ample excuse to any of
the "progressive" classes that decide to reverse their present more or
less democratic attitude, such as an "unpatriotic" attitude on the part
of the masses, a grave railroad strike, etc.

For there will be abundant time before democratic machinery can reach
that point in its evolution, when the non-capitalist masses can make the
first and smallest use of it _against_ their small and large capitalist
masters. If, for example, the Supreme Court of this country should ever
be made elective, or by any other means be shorn of its political power,
and if then the President's veto were abolished, and others of his
powers given to Congress, there would remain still other alternatives
for vetoing the execution of the people's will--and one veto is
sufficient for every practical purpose. Even if the senators are
everywhere directly elected, the Senate may still remain the permanent
stronghold of capitalism unless overturned by a political revolution.

The one section of the Constitution that is not subject to amendment is
the allotment of two senators to each of the States. And even if public
opinion should decide that this feature must be made changeable by
ordinary amendment like the rest, it might require 90 or even 95 per
cent of the people to pass such an amendment or to call a constitutional
convention for the purpose. For Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont,
Delaware, are not only governed by antiquated and undemocratic
constitutions, but are so small that wholesale bribery or a system of
public doles is easily possible. The constitutions of the mountain
States are more modern, but Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, and New Mexico, and
others of these States are so little populated as make them very easy
for capitalist manipulation, as present political conditions show. Now
if we add to these States the whole South, where the upper third or at
most the upper half of the population is in firm control, through the
disfranchisement of the majority of the non-capitalistic classes (white
and colored), we see that, even if the country were swept by a tide of
democratic opinion, it is most unlikely that it will ever control the
Senate. Moreover, if the capitalists (large and small) are ever in
danger of losing the Senate, they have only to annex Mexico to add half
a dozen or a dozen new States with limited franchises and undemocratic
constitutions.

Either the President, or the Senate, or the Supreme Court might prove
quite sufficient to prevent the execution of the will of the people, in
any important crisis--they would be especially effective when
revolutionary changes in property, and rapid shifting of economic and
political power into the hands of the people, are at stake, as
Socialists believe they will be. But to resist such a movement, still
another political weapon is available,--even if President, Senate, and
Supreme Court fell into the hands of the people (and it is highly
probable that the small capitalists, who themselves suffer under the
above-mentioned constitutional limitations, will force the larger
capitalists to fall back on this other weapon in the end),--namely, a
limitation of the suffrage.

The property and educational qualifications for voting which are
directed against the colored people in the Southern States are being
used to a considerable degree, both North and South, against the poorer
whites. While there is no likelihood that this process will continue
indefinitely, or that it will spread to all parts of the country, it is
already sufficient to throw the balance of political power in favor of
the capitalists in the national elections. If we put the total number of
voters in the country at 15,000,000, we can see how significant is the
fact that more than a million, black and white, have already been
directly disfranchised in the South alone.

In view of these numerous methods of thwarting democracy in this country
(and there are others) there is no reason why the capitalists should not
permit political leaders after a time to accept a number of radical and
even revolutionary reforms in political methods. The direct election of
senators, though it was bitterly opposed a few years ago, is already
widely accepted; the direct nomination of the President has become the
law in several States; Mr. Roosevelt threatens that the "entire system"
may have to be changed, that constitutions may be "thrown out of the
window," and the power of judges over legislation abolished, which, as
he notes, has already been advocated by the Socialist member of
Congress[40]; the Wisconsin legislature formally calls for a national
constitutional convention and proposes to make the constitution
amendable henceforth by the "initiative"; Governor Woodrow Wilson
suggests that _many_ of our existing evils may be remedied by national
constitutional amendments[41], and two such amendments are now nearing
adoption after forty years, during which it was thought that all
amendment had ceased indefinitely.

Whether it will be decided to take away the power of the Supreme Court
over legislation and make it directly responsible to Congress or the
people, or to call a constitutional convention, is doubtful. A
convention, as Senator Heyburn recently pointed out in the Senate, is
"bigger than the Constitution" and might conceivably amend what is
declared in that instrument not to be amendable, by providing that the
States should be represented in the Senate in proportion to population.
Even then the existing partial disfranchisement of the electors would
prevent a new constitution from going "too far" in a democratic
direction. It is also true, as the same senator said, that the habit of
amending the Constitution is a dangerous one (to capitalism), and that
it might some day put the capitalistic government's life at stake[42].
But this after all amounts only to saying that political evolution, like
all other kinds, is cumulative, and that its tempo is in the long run
constantly accelerated. Certainly each change leads to more change. None
of these proposed political reforms, however, even a constitutional
convention, _is in itself_ revolutionary, or promises to establish even
a political democracy. All could coexist, for example, with a still
greater restriction of the suffrage.

Nor do any of these measures _in themselves_ constitute the smallest
step in the direction of political democracy as long as a single
effective check is allowed to remain. If there is any doubt on the
matter, we have only to refer to other constitutions than ours which
accomplish the same object of checkmating democracy without a Supreme
Court, without an absolute executive veto, without an effective second
chamber, and in one important case without a written constitution
(England).

Or, we can turn to France, Switzerland, or New Zealand, where the
suffrage is universal and political democracy is already approximated
but rendered meaningless to the non-capitalist masses by the existence
of a majority composed of small capitalists. And in countries like the
United States, where the small capitalists and their immediate
dependents are nearly as numerous as the other classes, a temporary
majority may also be formed that may soon make full democracy as "safe"
for a considerable period as it is in Switzerland or New Zealand.[43]

As soon as "State Socialism" reaches its point of most rapid
development, and as long as it continues to reach ever new classes with
its immediate benefits, it will doubtless receive the support of a
majority, not only of the voters, but also of the whole population.
_During this period_ the "Socialistic" capitalists will be tempted to
popularize and strengthen their movement not only by uncompleted
political reforms, that are abortive and futile as far as the masses are
concerned, but also by the most thoroughgoing democracy. For radical
democracy will not only be without danger, but useful and invaluable in
the struggle of the progressive and collectivist capitalists against the
retrogressive and individualist capitalists. As long as there is a
majority composed of large and small capitalists and their dependents,
together with those of the salaried and professional classes who are
satisfied with the capitalistic kind of collectivism (_i.e._ while its
progress is most brilliant), it is only necessary for the progressives
to hold the balance of power in order to have everything their own way
both against Socialism and reaction. The powerful Socialist and
revolutionary minority created in industrial communities by equal
suffrage and a democratic form of government, _as long as it remains
distinctly a minority_, is unable to injure the combined forces of
capitalism, while it furnishes a useful and invaluable club by which the
progressive capitalists can threaten and overwhelm the reactionaries.

In Great Britain, for example, the new collectivist movement of Messrs.
Churchill and Lloyd George, basing itself primarily on the support of
the small capitalist class, which there as elsewhere constitutes a very
large part (over a third) of the population, seeks also the support of a
part of the non-propertied classes. It cannot make them any plausible or
honest promise of any equitable redistribution of income or of political
power, but it can promise an increase of well-paid government
employment, and it can guarantee that it will develop the industrial
efficiency of all classes and allow them a certain share, if a lesser
one, in the benefits of this policy.

If then "State Socialism," like the benevolent despotisms and
oligarchies of history, sometimes offers the purely _material_ benefits
which it brings in some measure to all classes, as a _substitute_ for
democratic government, it also favors democracy in those places where
the small capitalists and related classes form a majority of the
community. The purpose of the democratic policy, where it is adopted, is
to stimulate new political interest in the "State Socialistic" program,
and by increasing cautiously the political weight of the
non-capitalists--without going far enough to give them any real or
independent power--to check the reactionary element among the
capitalists that tries to hold back the industrial and governmental
organization the progressives have in view. It was in order to shift the
political balance of power that the reactionary Bismarck introduced
universal suffrage in Germany, and the same motive is leading Premier
Asquith, who is not radical, to add considerably to the political weight
of the working classes in England, _i.e._ not to the point where they
have any power whatever for their own purposes, but only to that point
where their weight, added to that of the Liberals, counterbalances the
Tories, and so automatically aids the former party.

The Liberals are giving Labor this almost valueless installment of
democracy, just as they had previously granted instead such immediate
and material benefits as we see in the recent British budgets, _as if_
they were concessions, only hiding the fact that _they would soon have
conferred these benefits on the workers through their own self-interest,
whether the workers had given them their political support or not_.

Mr. Lloyd George has said:--

"The workingman is no fool. He knows that a great party like ours
can, with his help, do things for him he could not hope to
accomplish for himself without its aid. It brings to his assistance
the potent influences drawn from the great middle classes of this
country, which would be frightened into positive hostility by a
_purely class organization_ to which they do not belong. No party
could ever hope for success in this country which does not win the
confidence of a _large portion_ of this middle class....

"You are not going to make Socialists in a hurry out of farmers and
traders and professional men of this country, but you may scare
them into reaction.... They are helping us now to secure advanced
Labor legislation; they will help us later to secure land reform
and other measures for all classes of wealth producers, and we need
all the help they give us. But if they are threatened with a class
war, then they will surely sulk and harden into downright Toryism.
What gain will that be for Labor?" (My italics.)[44]

The Chancellor of the Exchequer here bids for Labor's political support
on the plea that what he was doing for Labor meant an expense and not a
profit to the middle class, and that these reforms would only be
assented to by that class as the necessary price of the Labor vote. I
have shown grounds for believing that the chief motives of the new
reforms have nothing to do with the Labor vote. However much Mr. Lloyd
George, as a political manager, may desire to control that vote, he
knows he can do without it, as long as it is cast _against_ the Tories.
The Liberals will hold the balance of power, and their small capitalist
followers will continue to carry out their capitalistic progressive and
collectivist program--even without a Labor alliance. Nor does he fear
that even the most radical of reforms, whether economic or political,
will enable Labor to seize a larger share of the national income or of
political power. On the contrary, he predicted in 1906 that it would be
a generation before Labor could even hope to be sufficiently united to
take the first step in Socialism. "Does any one believe," he asked,
"that within a generation, to put it at the very lowest, we are likely
to see in power a party pledged forcibly to nationalize land, railways,
mines, quarries, factories, workshops, warehouses, shops, and all and
every agency for the production and distribution of wealth? I say again,
within a generation? He who entertains such hopes must indeed be a
sanguine and simple-minded Socialist."[45]

Mr. Lloyd George sought the support of Labor then, not because it was
all-powerful, but because, for a generation at least, it seemed doomed
to impotence--except as an aid to the Liberals. The logic of his
position was really not that Labor ought to get a price for its
political support, but that _having no immediate alternative_, being
unable to form a majority either alone or with any other element than
the Liberals, they should accept gladly anything that was offered, for
example, a material reform like his Insurance bill--even though this
measure is at bottom and in the long run purely capitalistic in its
tendency.

And this is practically what Labor in Great Britain has done. It has
supported a government all of whose acts strengthen capitalism in its
new collectivist form, both economically and politically. And even if
some day an isolated measure should be found to prove an exception, it
would still remain true that the present policies _considered as a
whole_ are carrying the country rapidly and uninterruptedly in the
direction of State Capitalism. And this is equally true of every other
country, whether France, Germany, Australia, or the United States, where
the new reform program is being put into execution.

Many "Socialistic" capitalists, however, are looking forward to a time
when through complete political democracy they can secure a permanent
popular majority of small capitalists and other more or less privileged
classes, and so build their new society on a more solid basis. Let us
assume that the railways, mines, and the leading "trusts" are
nationalized, public utilities municipalized, and the national and local
governments busily engaged on canals, roads, forests, deserts, and
swamps. Here are occupations employing, let us say, a fourth or a fifth
of the working population; and solvent landowning farmers, their numbers
kept up by land reforms and scientific farming encouraged by government,
may continue as now to constitute another fifth. We can estimate that
these classes together with those among the shopkeepers, professional
elements, etc., who are directly dependent on them will compose 40 to 50
per cent of the population, while the other capitalists and their direct
dependents account for another 10 per cent or more. Here we have the
possibility of a privileged _majority_, the logical goal of "State
Socialism," and the nightmare of every democrat for whom democracy is
anything more than an empty political reform. With government employees
and capitalists (large and small)--and their direct dependents, forming
50 per cent or more of the population, and supported by a considerable
part of the skilled manual workers, there is a possibility of the
establishment of an iron-bound caste society solidly intrenched in
majority rule.

There are strong reasons, which I shall give in later chapters, for
thinking that some great changes may take place before this day can
arrive.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] William Allen White in the _American Magazine_, January, 1911.

[36] Dr. Lyman Abbott in a series of articles published in the
_Outlook_, 1910, entitled "The Spirit of Democracy," now in book form.

[37] _New York Journal_, Aug. 2, 1910.

[38] The _Outlook_, Sept. 10, 1910.

[39] In his enthusiasm for these undemocratic measures, Dr. Abbott has
retrogressed more than the Southern States, which do not require both a
property and educational qualification, but only one of the two.
Moreover, by the "grandfather" and "understanding" clauses they seek to
exempt as many as possible of the whites, _i.e._ a majority of the
population in most of these States, from any substantial qualification
whatever. Nor does it seem likely that even in the future they will
apply freely; against the poor and illiterate of the white race, the
measures Dr. Abbott advocates. Just such restricted suffrage laws were
repealed in many Southern States from 1820 to 1850, and it is not likely
that the present reaction will go back that far.