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Socialism (Its broader meaning)

in its broader meaning, is the conception that the production and distribution of all those commodities which satisfy the wants of the people should be under the collective, democratic control of the people as a whole, with the result that use would be the only incentive to industry, and that the private profit of capitalistic enterprise would be eliminated as an element. With this definition no Socialist will quarrel. It is chiefly in how this end is to be achieved, and the form in which the public industries are to be administered, that Socialists differ, on which differences are based the various groups, some of which are so widely separated in their sympathies from the others that only by the broadest generalization may they be considered as the component parts of the one movement.

Socialism had its origin in the invention and establishment of steam-driven machinery, by by which means the handicrafts system of production was gradually transformed into the pre present large scale system of capitalist industry. Previous to the introduction of machinery each worker had produced commodities in his home and sold his surplus to his immediate neighbors. Such inventions as the power loom not only multiplied the productive power of the individual workers many hundreds of times, but made necessary the factory system of production, whereby great numbers of men and women were brought together under the roof of the factory which housed the machinery. The machinery, however, remained the property of one owner, on whom all the workers became dependent for their means of livelihood, since large scale production, by its vast superiority, had killed the handicrafts industries.

This autocratic, economic power over the workers enabled the owner of the machinery to dictate the terms on which they were to work, with the result that the hours became as long as human endurance could bear and that wages were cut down to the barest means of subsistence.

From these conditions, growing gradually worse, trades unionism had its inception.

The workers banded together for mutual protection against the masters, and by the strength of their organization were enabled gradually to counteract the evil tendencies. The vast improvements in the conditions of the workers during the past century are largely the result of the SOCIALISM activities of the labor unions, together with the legislation in their favor inspired and supported by them and their sympathizers. But since their object is merely to increase wages and shorten the hours of the working day, they are not, in themselves, in any way a part of the Socialist movement.

Socialism had its definite origin in those groups of keen idealists who immediately saw the injustice in a system which provided that the machinery of social production should be in the hands of private ownership. They held that since the factories produced the needs of the people, for their consumption, the people should own and control them. Or, a little more definitely, since the workers used the machinery of production to produce the needs of life, they should own them, as they had owned their own tools under the handicrafts system. This latter conception, somewhat more narrow, was undoubtedly the first. It persists to the present day in the Guild Socialist and Syndicalist movements, off-shoots of the main Socialist movement, and will be considered later.

The first one to formulate the idea of collective ownership of the tools of production was Robert Owen, himself not a workingman, but, peculiarly enough, the owner and manager of a large textile factory in New Lanark, on the Clyde. Owen has been considered the father of Socialism, in England at least. Owen improved the conditions of the several hundreds of workers in his own mills, shortening the hours and raising wages, limiting child labor, and then strove heroically to persuade other employers that self-interest, if not a sense of humanity, should impel them to follow his example, since better conditions enabled his workers to reach a higher degree of productiveness. He was, however, only scornfully laughed at, and his failure led him to elaborate more radical schemes for the betterment of the workers. He, therefore, presented various plans for the establishment of isolated communist colonies, in which factories were to be established, to be owned collectively by the colonists, the profits of their industry to be shared equally between them. These plans were in several cases actually carried out, one of them in this country, at New Harmony, Ind. All failed, but Owen nevertheless made a strong impression on a number of educated Englishmen, who accepted his fundamental principles and modified them in an effort to render them more practical.

At about the same time, during the first two or three decades of the last century, François Fourier, in France, was proposing similar communist enterprises, SOCIALISM wherein workers were to establish isolated colonies and produce and enjoy collectively. Fourierism made some impression in this country, and was taken up actively by Horace Greeley and Albert Brisbane in the forties. The communist colonies resulting from their preachings and writings form a whole phase of the early history of Socialism in this country, though they, too, met nothing but failure.

This is what is generally known as the Utopian stage of Socialism, in which idealists sought to jump immediately to idealistic conditions, merely by organizing society on their principles. This was followed by what modern Socialists call scientific, or evolutionary, Socialism, which they declare has its basis in the laws of social evolution.

The founder of this more elaborate scheme of social betterment was Karl Marx, who was born of Jewish parents, in Treves, Prussia, in 1818, and had the advantages of a first class education, studying at Jena, Bonn and Berlin. As a result of the revolutionary disturbances in Germany, in 1848, he was expelled from Prussia and settled in London, where he made a meagre living as London correspondent for Greeley's New York "Tribune." For several years he studied political economy and kindred subjects in the British Museum Library.

The result of his long labor was a voluminous work, "Capital," which he published in German, in 1867. This work is the Bible of a large proportion of present-day Socialists.

Marx, however, had already published his ideas on Socialism, in collaboration with Frederich Engels; together, in 1848, they had issued what is considered by their many followers the most important piece of literature in the history of Socialism, the "Communist Manifesto." Though only in the form of a short pamphlet, probably no other piece of literature, except the Bible, has been more frequently quoted. Nor has any other writing, except the Bible, been more variously interpreted.

Three theoretical propositions constitute the fundamental basis of the "Communist Manifesto." They are: the materialist conception of history; the class struggle and the theory of surplus value. The first implies that all history, that is, the activities of all nations, has been dictated by economic conditions. The second implies that through all history there have always been two classes antagonistic toward each other; the master class, living parasitically on the second class, which is made up of the workers, the producers. This class struggle, under the capitalist system, centers about surplus SOCIALISM value, which the master class extracts from the working class at the point of production. The workers are compelled to work with_tools owned by the capitalist class. For this work they receive merely enough wages to subsist, while the surplus surplus value of their labor is appropriated by the capitalist class. The higher the degree of perfection in machinery and large-scale factory organization, the bigger becomes this margin, and the more powerful becomes the capitalist class. Correspondingly the pressure on the working class grows, until it becomes intolerable, and the latter rises in revolution and overthrows the master class. Marx, Engels and their disciples were not interested in politics, in the form of political parties. This was natural, since at that time the suffrage was very much restricted in European countries. The change would not be brought about by politics, but by an intensification of the class struggle. Agitation should be carried on to create "class consciousness" among the workers. The intensification of the misery of the workers would be an ry.o ally of the agitators. Finally, when class consciousness had become a quality of a large majority of the workers, they would rise in revolution, overthrow the master class and seize political power, which would bring about the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Once in power, the proletariat would organize industry on a collective basis, all members of society would have to become workers, and class rule would give place to pure Socialism, or Communism. This is the program of the purely Marxian Socialists. These are the principles on which was founded the International Workingmen's Association, in Paris, in 1864, and which a few years later was removed to New York in a moribund condition, there to be unobtrusively interred.

For the Marxian program did not work out according to schedule. Trade unions improved the conditions of the workers.

Legislation, backed by so-called capitalist parties, also improved their conditions.

Suffrage was widened, and the political parties bid for the support of the working classes. All this tended to impede the development of "class consciousness" and of its final climax, the social revolution.

Finally the rank and file of the socialist organizations began to insist on participation in politics. They wanted candidates elected to office, especially representatives sent to the legislative bodies. The staunchest of the Marxians fought this tendency, some to the present day.

These have been known as the "impossibilists," or "direct actionists." The majority, however, succumbed to the prospects of political party power.

SOCIALISM The first Socialist representatives elected to legislative bodies were sent to the North German Diet, in the seventies, and soon after Socialist political parties were formed in other countries as well.

From that day until the present there has been a steady growth in all countries, of the Socialist political parties and of the number of their representatives in the governing bodies. But even within the parties themselves there continued the original split, between those who, while willing to have their representatives elected to legislative bodies, did not believe they should support reform legislation; and those who supported all legislative measures for the betterment of the masses.

The first believed that all reform measures retarded and even checked the growth of class consciousness, therefore delayed the social revolution, which was to be the means by which the proletariat would achieve power. The latter succumbed to pressure from below, and followed the dictates of the rank and file, who, little interested in abstract theories, wanted their material conditions improved.

This partisanship between the Marxian theorists and the practical politicians in the movement continued, now and then breaking out into violent party dissentions. It remained for the recent World War to bring about an open split.

In the United States the Socialist Labor Party was organized in 1877. Its chief was Daniel De Leon, a true Marxian, though he believed in political activity for its propaganda value. As the Socialist Labor Party met with little or no success at the polls, it was not tempted to deviate from its Marxian principles, since its chiefs were not elected to office.

In the late nineties, however, a growing number of native Americans were converted to Socialism, including Eugene Debs, a prominent labor leader, and dissatisfaction with the policy of the German Socialists who had formed the bulk of the Socialist Labor Party began to manifest itself. In 1900 came a split; the Socialist Party was organized, and in the presidential elections of that year it polled nearly 100,000 votes. Henceforward the Socialist Labor Party dwindled in strength, while the Socialist Party developed rapidly, polling 901,361 votes in the presidential election in 1912. This later party frankly adopted a platform of reform measures, and while it did not repudiate the Marxian theories, it made the development of its political strength its chief aim. Its appeal has been openly to the people as citizens, or consumers, while its championship of the workers at the "point of production" has been chiefly SOCIALISM confined to the editorials of its official organs. In 1912, at a national convention, held in Indianapolis, the "direct actionists," those who remained true to the old Marxian program of mass revolution, were definitely thrown out.

In 1899 the first international Socialist Congress was held, and thereafter a similar international meeting was held every three years, for the purpose of formulating common action. Needless to remark, the politicians were behind these congresses, and of these the German Socialists were dominant. German Socialism, which had built up the biggest political party in Germany, remained the ideal of the Socialists in all other countries, with the exception of England, where, through the influence of the Fabian Society (q. v.), the Labor Party had been gradually developed with a platform based simply on an extension of government enterprise. The Continental parties, at least, still held that it would be useless to support state industrial enterprises until the government had been definitely captured by the Socialist votes.

In 1900 the "Second International" was organized, in the International Socialist Bureau which was established in Brussels.

This central bureau functioned until the outbreak of the World War, when, not so much through the interruption of communications, as because of the action of the German Socialists in supporting their Government in the war, it was disrupted.

Political activities, naturally, had developed a corresponding degree of nationalism in the Socialist parties, though the Marxian program had emphasized very strongly the international character of the Socialist movement and specifically pointed out that the brotherhood of the proletariat was more important than pa-, triotism, which was considered merely a medium by which the ruling classes di. vided the solidarity of labor. The true Marxians in Germany were represented by such leaders as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who refused to support the war and suffered imprisonment therefor. In this country, when the time came, the Socialist party stood strongly against the war, not so much, perhaps, on account of Marxian principles, as because a large portion of the rank and file was of German birth.

For the first two and a half years of the war Socialism in all countries remained practically quiescent. It had been shocked insensible by the unexpected effect that the war had had on itself. Then came the revolution in Russia, in March, 1917. Essentially this began as a protest of all classes of society against the incompetence and the treason of the ruling autocracy, but the Socialists were EE-Cys Vol 8 SOCIALISM the only ones who had the organization needed to hold the revolutionary masses together, through their Council of Workingmen Delegates, which was hastily called into being for the purpose. The Socialists only were capable of coherent action, and therefore the power fell to them. Certainly they had not had any more than their proportionate share in creating the overturn.

The rise into power of the Socialists in Russia suddenly revived Socialism in other countries. In May, 1917, the Council of Workingmen Delegates, which while not itself the Government, was at any rate the biggest unit of power behind the Government, issued a call to all Socialists in other countries to hold an international conference in Stockholm, where war aims should be discussed and mutually agreed upon.

The Stockholm Conference was not held, as practically all the belligerent governments refused to issue passports to the delegates, but nevertheless there had been a willingness on the part of the national organizations to be represented. If the Socialists could not prevent the outbreak of the war, they felt that at least they might capture the honor of ending e it. it.

The statesmen of the parties in power were determined that they should not have this honor, and successfully defeated their hope.

From now on there was a steady effort to revive the International. In the fall of 1918, after the signing of the armistice, there was held in London an Inter-Allied Labor and Socialist Congress, which found its most radical expression in an indorsement of President Wilson's "fourteen points." This conference called an international conference to be held at Berne, Switzerland, in February, 1919.

To this came the German Socialist delegates, representing not only the German Socialist Movement, but the German Socialist Government, which had been captured by the old German Socialist politicians. This conference of the Second International declared itself for "parliamentary" Socialism; that is, for a continuation of the political party policies which had been adopted against the protests of the Marxians. Meanwhile, in Russia, the Bolsheviki had captured, first the Council of Workingmen Delegates, and then, in November, entire control of the government. The Bolshevist leaders were true Marxians, as they showed when they disbanded the Constituent Assembly, the creation of a parliamentary régime, and established the "dictatorship of the proletariat." They had come into power, however, not through the class consciousness of the workers, but through the discontent of SOCIALISM the peasantry with carrying on further warfare.

The Bolsheviki repudiated the Berne Conference. This stand by the Russians immediately awoke the Marxians in all countries, and now came such a split as had never existed before.

On March 2-6, 1919, all these elements came together in Moscow and there, under the leadership of the Bolshevist chiefs, formed the "Third International." As the Germans formerly dominated the Second International, so now, even more autocratically, the Russians dominated the Third International, which they term the "General Staff of the Social Revolution."

The third stands for the old Marxian program, by which "class consciousness" is to be developed until it has acquired such strength that it can, by forcible means or otherwise, overthrow the capitalist system and set up its dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Second International stands for the parliamentary method. By increasing its electoral strength it hopes gradually to permeate all existing governments and so accomplish its ends more peacefully and by a more evolutionary process. Its representatives are in power in Germany, Austria, Czecho-slovakia, and, until late in 1920, were so in Sweden. It is supported by the Socialist party majorities in about two dozen countries.

In May, 1920, the American Socialist Party held its national convention and passed a resolution supporting the Third International, with the important reservation, however, that it did not believe it feasible to adopt the revolutionary program culminating in the dictatorship of the proletariat. In March, 1920, the Third International held its second convocation in Moscow. Several months after that, and after the resolution passed by the American Socialists in May, the Executive Committee of the Third International presented twenty-one points which the American Socialist Party must indorse before it would be admitted to join. Among these points were: that the editors of the Party organs must be men who had declared themselves Communists previously, or, in other words, the present editors must all be dismissed and replaced by members of the Communist Party. The document read like terms presented to a defeated foe by a mighty conqueror. These terms were finally rejected by the National Executive Com mittee of the American Socialist Party, in December, 1920, and at that time there seemed little doubt that the party membership referendum would, when it took place, reverse the previous decision to join the Third International. This will mean the withdrawal of all the Slavic SOCIALISM and Finnish affiliated organizations, and reduce the membership of the American Socialist Party to something like 7,000, as compared to a membership which once stood at 140,000. A split had already taken place in August, 1919, in Chicago, when a large minority walked out of the convention hall, and formed the Communist and the Communist Labor parties, both of which organizations have since been driven underground by the prosecutions of the state and Federal authorities.

The origin, development and the principles of the chief Socialist organizations having been set forth it remains only to describe briefly several important offshoots of the main official movement.

First of these is Syndicalism, which had its origin in the French labor movement.

Syndicalism represents a reaction against State Socialism, to which, obviously , political action would lead.

Syndicalists hold that the State should be practically abolished, as it exists at present, at least, at least , and that the industries should be owned and controlled by the organized workers employed in them. The school teachers should own the schools, the postal employes should run the post office and the railroad workers should have full charge of transportation. The American representative organization of this movement is the I. W. W.

Against this conception there has been still another reaction, originated in England, known as Guild Socialism. The inovement is worthy of special notice, for while it remains comparatively small as on organization, it has nevertheless captured the younger elements of the British Labor movement. Its program is almost perfectly represented in this country by the Plumb Plan of the American railroad brotherhoods for the nationalization of the railroads.

The Guild Socialist program was first formulated, shortly before the World War , in the writings of G. D. H. Cole, an English writer, and A. R. Orage , editor of the "New Age." The idea is simply a combination of state ownership and control by the labor organizations . The state is to own the sources of raw material and the machinery of production. The workers, organized into "guilds ," or industrial unions, are to control, each its own industry, regulating working conditions and prices. There are also to be consumers' guilds, representing those who will consume the output of the guild factories, and these will have charge of distribution. Apparently they will have very little to say about the prices they are to pay to the producers' guilds for the commodities they consume. Nor is it definitely stated what value will there be in state ownership of industries with- SOCIALISTS out control. "Guildsmen," as they term themselves, do not emphasize political action. Their plan is to permeate the labor organizations with their idea, cause them to organize on an industrial basis, and, finally, by sheer weight of their economic strength, take over the industries.

Another form of Socialism, using the word in its very broadest sense, is Consumers' Co-operation, whose origin is older than that of Marxian Socialism, and which has ever since pursued its own course. It is the only form of collectivism which has demonstrated itself in actual practice. Here, society as a whole, as a general organization of consumers, will own and control, while labor co control , while labor will be in the service of society, on the old wage basis, modified by some system of joint-control, in so far as working conditions are concerned.

Co-operation, however, has no theoretical program , but follows obediently in the wake of its own successful experiments, though its declared ideal, in common with all Socialists, is the Co-operative Commonwealth. , is the Co-operative e Commonwealth.