Socialism and Democracy in Europe Part 47

Part of the

PROGRAM OF THE PROGRESSIVES

_Rates._--Reduce the Occupiers' Rates one-half, by charging that portion upon the great Landlords, whose ground values are increased by every improvement, and are now untaxed; and by a Munic.i.p.al Death Duty.

_Gas and Water._--Reduce the cost and improve the quality and quant.i.ty by new sources of supply, if the present Companies will not come to terms favorable to the Taxpayer.

_City Companies._--Apply their whole Income of, say 500,000 (on leave obtained from the new Parliament), for the benefit of London. The Royal Commission of 1884 stated that this income is virtually Public Property. About 300,000 is now squandered each year among the members and their friends.

_Homes for the Poor._--The Poor can all be comfortably housed, as in the Munic.i.p.al Dwellings of Glasgow and Liverpool, without extra cost to the Taxpayer, and the "Doss-houses" abolished.

_Cheap Food._--By doing away with the Market Monopolies of the City Corporation and other private owners, Food can be lowered in price.

Good food, especially fish, is now often destroyed or sold for manure to keep up the price.

_Poor Man's Vote._--One-third of your Votes are lost. The Registration Laws must be thoroughly altered.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Debates, House of Lords, July, 31, 1885. The speech was privately printed.

[2] Debates, May 19, 1890. This speech was also given private circulation.

VI. GENERAL

1. ORIGIN OF THE WORD "COLLECTIVISM"

"This word, invented by Colins, came into common use toward the end of the Empire. Bakunin used it in the congress at Berne in 1868, to oppose it to the communistic regime of Cabet. An economist in 1869 designated, under this name, the system under which production will be confined to communes or parishes. The Socialists who opposed authority, disciples of Bakunin, used the word for a long time to designate their doctrine. The section of Locle was one of the first to employ it. But by and by, about 1878, the Marxists, partisans of the proletarian reign, used the word 'collectivism' to distinguish their 'scientific Socialism,' of which term they were fond, from the communistic utopias of the older school, which they discovered. And they gave to Bakunins the name Anarchists. These accepted the name, taking care to write it with a hyphen, _an-archie_, as their master Proudhon had done. They soon dropped the hyphen and accepted the word anarchy as a declaration of war against all things as they are."[1]

2. TABLE SHOWING RESULTS OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

(COMPILED FROM REPORT OF SECRETARY OF THE INTERNATIONAL, 1910)

====================+===========+===========+===========+============== _No. _Total No. _No. Seats _Per cent. of _Country_ Socialist Seats in Held by Socialists Votes_ Parliament_ Socialists_ Seats_ --------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-------------- Great Britain (1910) 505,690 670 40 5.97 Germany (1912) 4,250,000 397 110 38.81 Luxemburg (1909) 48 10 20.8 Austria (1907) 1,041,948 516 88 17.06 France (1910) 1,106,047 584 76 13.01 Italy (1909) 338,885 508 42 8.26 Spain (1910) 40,000 404 1 0.25 Russia 442 17 3.82 Finland (1910) 316,951 200 86 43.00 Norway (1907) 90,000 123 11 8.94 Sweden (1909) 75,000 165 36 21.81 Denmark (1910) 98,721 114 24 21.06 Holland (1909) 82,494 100 7 7.00 Belgium (1910) 483,241 166 35 21.08 Switzerland (1908) 100,000 170 7 4.11 Turkey (1908) 196 6 3.06 Servia (1908) 3,056 160 1 0.62 U.S.A. (1910) 1 --------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+--------------

IN 1910 THE SOCIALISTS HELD THE FOLLOWING NUMBER OF LOCAL OFFICERS, ACCORDING TO THE REPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARY

============================+============================ Great Britain 1126 Finland 351 Germany 7729 Norway 873 Austria-Bohemia 2896 Sweden 125 Hungary 96 Denmark 1000 France 3800 Belgium 850 Bulgaria 7 Servia 22 ----------------------------+----------------------------

3. TABLE SHOWING THE MEMBERs.h.i.+P OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY, IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

(COMPILED FROM REPORTS OF THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERNATIONAL, 1909-10)

=========================+===================+=================== 1907 1908 -------------------------+-------+-----------+-------+----------- _Local _Local _Country_ Groups_ _Members_ Groups_ _Members_ -------------------------+-------+-----------+-------+----------- Great Britain, L.P. 275 1,072,412 307 1,152,786 Great Britain, J.L.P. 600 35,000 765 50,000 Great Britain, S.D.F. 202 14,500 250 16,000 Great Britain, Fabians 10 1,207 27 2,015 Germany 2704 530,466 3120 587,336 (10,943) (29,458) Austria Bohemia Hungary 130,000 102,054 France 48,237 49,328 Italy 43,000 Russia* 8 16,000 8 5,000 Spain Poland-Prussian 10 400 Poland-Russian 22,700 Finland 1156 80,328 1127 71,266 (18,873) (16,826) Norway 499 23,000 602 27,500 (1,800) (2,000) Sweden 296 112,693 Denmark Holland 167 7,471 176 8,411 Belgium 803 161,239 183,997 Switzerland Servia 615 Bulgaria 71 2,658 80 2,886 U.S.A. 1900 26,784 -------------------------+-------+-----------+-------+----------- =========================+==================== 1909 -------------------------+-------+------------ _Local _Country_ Groups_ _Members_ -------------------------+-------+------------ Great Britain, L.P. 318 1,481,368 (4,000) Great Britain, J.L.P. 900 60,000 Great Britain, S.D.F. 17,000 Great Britain, Fabians 39 2,462 Germany 3281 633,309 (62,259) Austria 126,000 Bohemia 2462 156,000 (6,000) Hungary 769 85,266 France 2500 51,692 Italy 30,000 Russia* 8 3,000 Spain Poland-Prussian 40 1,500 Poland-Russian 3,500 Finland Norway 637 26,500 (2,500) Sweden 338 60,183 Denmark 360 47,000 Holland 211 9,289 Belgium 906 185,318 Switzerland 23 21,132 Servia 1,950 Bulgaria 109 4,287 U.S.A. 3200 53,375 -------------------------+-------+-----------

* Province of Lettland.

Figures in parenthesis indicate number of women members.

4. AMERICAN SOCIALIST PARTY PLATFORM

[Adopted by National Convention May, 1908, and by Members.h.i.+p Referendum August 8th, 1908. Amended by Referendum September 7th, 1909.]

PRINCIPLES

Human life depends upon food, clothing, and shelter. Only with these a.s.sured are freedom, culture, and higher human development possible.

To produce food, clothing, or shelter, land and machinery are needed.

Land alone does not satisfy human needs. Human labor creates machinery and applies it to the land for the production of raw materials and food. Whoever has control of land and machinery controls human labor, and with it human life and liberty.

To-day the machinery and the land used for industrial purposes are owned by a rapidly decreasing minority. So long as machinery is simple and easily handled by one man, its owner cannot dominate the sources of life of others. But when machinery becomes more complex and expensive, and requires for its effective operation the organized effort of many workers, its influence reaches over wide circles of life. The owners of such machinery become the dominant cla.s.s.

In proportion as the number of such machine owners compared to all other cla.s.ses decreases, their power in the nation and in the world increases. They bring ever larger ma.s.ses of working people under their control, reducing them to the point where muscle and brain are their only productive property. Millions of formerly self-employing workers thus become the helpless wage slaves of the industrial masters.

As the economic power of the ruling cla.s.s grows it becomes less useful in the life of the nation. All the useful work of the nation falls upon the shoulders of the cla.s.s whose only property is its manual and mental labor power--the wage worker--or of the cla.s.s who have but little land and little effective machinery outside of their labor power--the small traders and small farmers. The ruling minority is steadily becoming useless and parasitic.

A bitter struggle over the division of the products of labor is waged between the exploiting propertied cla.s.ses on the one hand and the exploited propertyless cla.s.s on the other. In this struggle the wage-working cla.s.s cannot expect adequate relief from any reform of the present order at the hands of the dominant cla.s.s.

The wage workers are therefore the most determined and irreconcilable antagonists of the ruling cla.s.s. They suffer most from the curse of cla.s.s rule. The fact that a few capitalists are permitted to control all the country's industrial resources and social tools for their individual profit, and to make the production of the necessaries of life the object of compet.i.tive private enterprise and speculation is at the bottom of all the social evils of our time.

In spite of the organization of trusts, pools, and combinations, the capitalists are powerless to regulate production for social ends.

Industries are largely conducted in a planless manner. Through periods of feverish activity the strength and health of the workers are mercilessly used up, and during periods of enforced idleness the workers are frequently reduced to starvation.

The climaxes of this system of production are the regularly recurring industrial depressions and crises which paralyze the nation every fifteen or twenty years.

The capitalist cla.s.s, in its mad race for profits, is bound to exploit the workers to the very limit of their endurance and to sacrifice their physical, moral, and mental welfare to its own insatiable greed.

Capitalism keeps the ma.s.ses of workingmen in poverty, dest.i.tution, physical exhaustion, and ignorance. It drags their wives from their homes to the mill and factory. It s.n.a.t.c.hes their children from the playgrounds and schools and grinds their slender bodies and unformed minds into cold dollars. It disfigures, maims, and kills hundreds of thousands of workingmen annually in mines, on railroads, and in factories. It drives millions of workers into the ranks of the unemployed and forces large numbers of them into beggary, vagrancy, and all forms of crime and vice.

To maintain their rule over their fellow-men, the capitalists must keep in their pay all organs of the public powers, public mind, and public conscience. They control the dominant parties and, through them, the elected public officials. They select the executives, bribe the legislatures, and corrupt the courts of justice. They own and censor the press. They dominate the educational inst.i.tutions. They own the nation politically and intellectually just as they own it industrially.

The struggle between wage workers and capitalists grows ever fiercer, and has now become the only vital issue before the American people.

The wage-working cla.s.s, therefore, has the most direct interest in abolis.h.i.+ng the capitalist system. But in abolis.h.i.+ng the present system, the workingmen will free not only their own cla.s.s, but also all other cla.s.ses of modern society. The small farmer, who is to-day exploited by large capital more indirectly but not less effectively than is the wage laborer; the small manufacturer and trader, who is engaged in a desperate and losing struggle for economic independence in the face of the all-conquering power of concentrated capital; and even the capitalist himself, who is the slave of his wealth rather than its master. The struggle of the working cla.s.s against the capitalist cla.s.s, while it is a cla.s.s struggle, is thus at the same time a struggle for the abolition of all cla.s.ses and cla.s.s privileges.

The private owners.h.i.+p of the land and means of production used for exploitation, is the rock upon which cla.s.s rule is built; political government is its indispensable instrument. The wage-workers cannot be freed from exploitation without conquering the political power and subst.i.tuting collective for private owners.h.i.+p of the land and means of production used for exploitation.

The basis for such transformation is rapidly developing within present capitalist society. The factory system, with its complex machinery and minute division of labor, is rapidly destroying all vestiges of individual production in manufacture. Modern production is already very largely a collective and social process. The great trusts and monopolies which have sprung up in recent years have organized the work and management of the princ.i.p.al industries on a national scale, and have fitted them for collective use and operation.

There can be no absolute private t.i.tle to land. All private t.i.tles, whether called fee simple or otherwise, are and must be subordinate to the public t.i.tle. The Socialist Party strives to prevent land from being used for the purpose of exploitation and speculation. It demands the collective possession, control, or management of land to whatever extent may be necessary to attain that end. It is not opposed to the occupation and possession of land by those using it in a useful and bona fide manner without exploitation.

The Socialist Party is primarily an economic and political movement.

It is not concerned with matters of religious belief.