Violence and the Labor Movement Part 13

We left the socialists, on September 30, 1890, in the midst of jubilation over the great victory they had just won in Germany. The Iron Chancellor, with all the power of State and society in his hands, had capitulated before the moral force and ma.s.s power of the German working cla.s.s. And, when the sensational news went out to all countries that the German socialists had polled 1,427,000 votes, the impulse given to the political organizations of the working cla.s.s was immense. Once again the thought of labor throughout the world was centered upon those stirring words of Marx and Engels: "Workingmen of all countries, Unite!" First uttered by them in '47, repeated in '64, and pleaded for once again in '72, this call to unity began to appear in the nineties as the one supreme commandment of the labor movement. And, in truth, it is an epitome of all their teachings. It is the pith of their program and the marrow of their principles. Nearly all else can be waived. Other principles can be altered; other programs abandoned; other methods revolutionized; but this principle, program, and method must not be tampered with. It is the one and only unalterable law. In unity, and in unity alone, is the power of salvation. And under the inspiration of this call more and more millions have come together, until to-day, in every portion of the world, there are mult.i.tudes affiliated to the one and only international army. In '47 it was not yet born. In '64 efforts were made to bring it into being. In '72 it was broken into fragments.

In '90 it won its first battle--its right to exist. Now, twenty-three years later, nothing could be so eloquent and impressive as the figures themselves of the rising tide of international socialism.

THE SOCIALIST AND LABOR VOTE, 1887-1913.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1887 1892 1897 1903 1913 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Germany 763,000 1,786,000 2,107,000 3,010,000 4,250,329 France 47,000 440,000 790,000 805,000 1,125,877 Austria 750,000 780,000 1,081,441 United States 2,000 21,000 55,000 223,494 931,406 Italy 26,000 135,000 300,000 825,280 Australia 678,012 Belgium 320,000 457,000 464,000[AG] 600,000 Great Britain 55,000 100,000 373,645 Finland 10,000 320,289 Russia 200,000 Sweden 723 10,000 170,299 Norway 7,000 30,000 124,594 Denmark 8,000 20,000 32,000 53,000 107,015 Switzerland 2,000 39,000 40,000 70,000 105,000 Holland 1,500 13,000 38,000 82,494 New Zealand 44,960 Spain 5,000 14,000 23,000 40,725 Bulgaria 25,565 Argentina 54,000 Chile 18,000 Greece 26,000 Canada 10,780 Servia 9,000 Luxembourg 4,000 Portugal 3,308 Roumania 2,057 ------- --------- --------- --------- ---------- Total 823,500 2,657,723 4,455,000 5,916,494 11,214,076 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------

The above table explains, in no small measure, the quiet patience and supreme confidence of the socialist. He looks upon that wonderful array of figures as the one most significant fact in the modern world. Within a quarter of a century his force has grown from 800,000 to 11,000,000.

And, while no other movement in history has grown so rapidly and traversed the entire world with such speed, the socialist knows that even this table inadequately indicates his real power. For instance, in Great Britain the Labor Party has over one million dues-paying members, yet its vote is here placed at 373,645. Owing to the peculiar political conditions existing in that country, it is almost impossible for the Labor Party to put up its candidates in all districts, and these figures include only that small proportion of workingmen who have been able to cast their votes for their own candidates. The two hundred thousand socialist votes in Russia do not at all represent the sentiment in that country. Everything there militates against the open expression, and, indeed, the possibility of any expression, of the actual socialist sentiment. In addition, great ma.s.ses of workingmen in many countries are still deprived of the suffrage, and in nearly all countries the wives of these men are deprived of the suffrage. Leaving, however, all this aside, and taking the common reckoning of five persons to each voter, the socialist strength of the world to-day cannot be estimated at less than fifty million souls.

Coming to the parliamentary strength of the socialists, we find the table on the following page illuminating.

SOCIALIST AND LABOR REPRESENTATIVES IN PARLIAMENT.

Number of Seats Per in Lower House. Cent.

Total Socialist. Socialist ---------------------------------------------- Australia 75 41 54.61 Finland 200 90 45.00 Sweden 165 64 38.79 Denmark 114 32 28.07 Germany 397 110 27.71 Belgium 186 39 20.96 Norway 123 23 18.70 Holland 100 17 17.00 Austria 516 82 15.89 Italy 508 78 15.35 Luxembourg 53 7 13.21 France 597 75 12.56 Switzerland 170 15 8.82 Great Britain 670 41 6.12 Russia 442 16 3.62 Greece 207 4 2.00 Argentina 120 2 1.67 Servia 160 1 .62 Portugal 164 1 .61 Bulgaria 189 1 .53 Spain 404 1 .25 ---------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------

It appears that labor is in control of Australia, that 45 per cent. of the Finnish Parliament is socialist, while in Sweden more than a third, and in Germany and Denmark somewhat less than a third, is socialist. In several of the Northern countries of Europe the parliamentary position of the socialists is stronger than that of any other single party. In addition to the representatives here listed, Belgium has seven senators, Denmark four, and Sweden twelve, while in the state legislatures Austria has thirty-one, Germany one hundred and eighty-five, and the United States twenty. Here again the strength of socialism is greatly understated. In the United States, for instance, the astonis.h.i.+ng fact appears that, with a vote of nearly a million, the socialist party has not one representative in Congress. On the basis of proportional representation it would have at least twenty-five Congressmen; and, if it were a sectional party, it could, with its million votes, control all the Southern states and elect every Congressman and Senator from those states. The socialists in the German Reichstag are numerous, but on a fair system of representation they would have two or three score more representatives than at present. However, this, too, is of little consequence, and in no wise disturbs the thoughtful socialist. The immense progress of his cause completely satisfies him, and, if the rate of advance continues, it can be only a few years until a world victory is at hand.

If, now, we turn from the political aspects of the labor movement to examine the growth of cooperatives and of trade unions, we find a progress no less striking. In actual members.h.i.+p the trade unions of twenty nations in 1911 had ama.s.sed over eleven million men and women.

And the figures sent out by the international secretary do not include countries so strongly organized as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to add here reliable figures regarding the wealth of the great and growing cooperative movement. In Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and Switzerland, as well as in the Northern countries of Central Europe, the cooperative movement has made enormous headway in recent years. The British cooperators, according to the report of the Federation of Cooperative Societies, had in 1912 a turnover amounting to over six hundred millions of dollars. They have over twenty-four hundred stores scattered throughout the cities of Great Britain. The Cooperative Productive Society and the Cooperative Wholesale Society produced goods in their own shops to a value of over sixty-five millions of dollars; while the goods produced by the Cooperative Provision Stores amounted to over forty million dollars.

Seven hundred and sixty societies have Children's Penny Banks, with a total balance in hand of about eight million dollars. The members of these various cooperative societies number approximately three million.[AH] Throughout all Europe, through cooperative effort, there have been erected hundreds of splendid "Houses of the People," "Labor Temples," and similar places of meeting and recreation. The entire labor, socialist, and cooperative press, numbering many thousands of monthly and weekly journals, and hundreds of daily papers, is also usually owned cooperatively. Unfortunately, the statistics dealing with this phase of the labor movement have never been gathered with any idea of completeness, and there is little use in trying even to estimate the immense wealth that is now owned by these organizations of workingmen.

America lags somewhat behind the other countries, but nowhere else have such difficulties faced the labor movement. With a working cla.s.s made up of many races, nationalities, and creeds, trade-union organization is excessively difficult. Moreover, where the railroads secretly rebate certain industries and help to destroy the compet.i.tors of those industries, and where the trusts exercise enormous power, a cooperative movement is well-nigh impossible. Furthermore, where vast numbers of the working cla.s.s are still disfranchised, and where elections are notoriously corrupt and more or less under the control of a hireling cla.s.s of professional political manipulators, an independent political movement faces almost insurmountable obstacles. Nor is this all. No other country allows its ruling cla.s.ses to employ private armies, thugs, and a.s.sa.s.sins; and no other country makes such an effort to prevent the working cla.s.ses from acting peaceably and legally. While nearly everywhere else the unions may strike, picket, and boycott, in America there are laws to prevent both picketing and boycotting, and even some forms of strikes. The most extraordinary despotic judicial powers are exercised to crush the unions, to break strikes, and to imprison union men. And, if paid professional armies of detectives deal with the unions, so paid professional armies of politicians deal with the socialists. By every form of debauchery, lawlessness, and corruption they are beaten back, and, although it is absolutely incredible, not a single representative of a great party polling nearly a million votes sits in the Congress of the United States.

Nevertheless, the American socialist and labor movement is making headway, and the day is not far distant when it will exercise the power its strength merits. Although somewhat more belated, the various elements of the working cla.s.s are coming closer and closer together, and it cannot be long until there will be perfect harmony throughout the entire movement. In many other countries this harmony already exists.

The trade-union, cooperative, and socialist movements are so closely tied together that they move in every industrial, political, and commercial conflict in complete accord. So far as the immediate aims of labor are concerned, they may be said to be almost identical in all countries. Professor Werner Sombart, who for years has watched the world movement more carefully perhaps than anyone else, has pointed out that there is a strong tendency to uniformity in all countries--a "tendency,"

in his own words, "of the movement in all lands toward socialism."[1]

Indeed, nothing so much astonishes careful observers of the labor movement as the extraordinary rapidity with which the whole world of labor is becoming unified, in its program of principles, in its form of organization, and in its methods of action. The books of Marx and Engels are now translated into every important language and are read with eagerness in all parts of the world. The Communist Manifesto of 1847 is issued by the socialist parties of all countries as the text-book of the movement. Indeed, it is not uncommon nowadays to see a socialist book translated immediately into all the chief languages and circulated by millions of copies. And, if one will take up the political programs of the party in the twenty chief nations of the world, he will find them reading almost word for word alike. For these various reasons no informed person to-day questions the claims of the socialist as to the international, world-wide character of the movement.

Perhaps there is no experience quite like that of the socialist who attends one of the great periodical gatherings of the international movement. He sees there a thousand or more delegates, with credentials from organizations numbering approximately ten million adherents. They come from all parts of the world--from mills, mines, factories, and fields--to meet together, and, in the recent congresses, to pa.s.s in utmost harmony their resolutions in opposition to the existing regime and their suggestions for remedial action. Not only the countries of Western Europe, but Russia, j.a.pan, China, and the South American Republics send their representatives, and, although the delegates speak as many as thirty different languages, they manage to a.s.semble in a common meeting, and, with hardly a dissenting voice, transact their business. When we consider all the jealousy, rivalry, and hatred that have been whipped up for hundreds of years among the peoples of the various nations, races, and creeds, these international congresses of workingmen become in themselves one of the greatest achievements of modern times.

Although Marx was, as I think I have made clear, and still is, the guiding spirit of modern socialism, the huge structure of the present labor movement has not been erected by any great architect who saw it all in advance, nor has any great leader molded its varied and wonderful lines. It is the work of a mult.i.tude, who have quarreled among themselves at every stage of its building. They differed as to the purpose of the structure, as to the materials to be used, and, indeed, upon every detail, big and little, that has had to do with it. At times all building has been stopped in order that the different views might be harmonized or the quarrels fought to a finish. Again and again portions have been built only to be torn down and thrown aside. Some have seen more clearly than others the work to be done, and one, at least, of the architects must be recognized as a kind of prophet who, in the main, outlined the structure. But the architects were not the builders, and among the mult.i.tude engaged in that work there have been years of quarrels and decades of strife. The story of terrorism, as told, is that of a group who had no conception of the structure to be erected. They were a band of dissidents, without patience to build. They and their kind have never been absent from the labor movement, and, in fact, for nearly one hundred years a battle has raged in one form or another between those few of the workers who were urging, with pa.s.sionate fire, what they called "action" and that mult.i.tude of others who day and night were laying stone upon stone.

No individual--in fact, nothing but a force as strong and compelling as a natural law--could have brought into existence such a vast solidarity as now exists in the world of labor. Like food and drink, the organization of labor satisfies an inherent necessity. The workers crave its protection, seek its guidance, and possess a sense of security only when supported by its solidarity. Only something as intuitively impelling as the desire for life could have called forth the labor and love and sacrifice that have been lavishly expended in the disheartening and incredibly tedious work of labor organization. The upbuilding of the labor movement has seemed at times like constructing a house of cards: often it was hardly begun before some ill wind cast it down. It has cost many of its creators exile, imprisonment, starvation, and death. With one mighty a.s.sault its opponents have often razed to the ground the work of years. Yet, as soon as the eyes of its destroyers were turned, a mult.i.tude of loving hands and broken hearts set to work to patch up its scattered fragments and build it anew. The labor movement is unconquerable.

Unlike many other aggregations, a.s.sociations, and benevolent orders, unlike the Church, to which it is frequently compared, the labor movement is not a purely voluntary union. No doubt there is a _camaraderie_ in that movement, and unquestionably the warmest spirit of fellows.h.i.+p often prevails, but the really effective cause for working-cla.s.s unity is economic necessity. The workers have been driven together. The unions subsist not because of leaders and agitators, but because of the compelling economic interests of their members. They are efforts to allay the deadly strife among workers, as organizations of capital are efforts to allay the deadly strife among capitalists. The cooperative movement has grown into a vast commerce wholly because it served the self-interest of the workers. The trade unions have grown big in all countries because of the protection, they offer and the insurance they provide against low wages, long hours, and poverty. The socialist parties have grown great because they express the highest social aspirations of the workers and their antagonism toward the present regime. Moreover, they offer an opportunity to put forward, in the most authoritative places, the demands of the workers for political, social, and economic reform. The whole is a struggle for democracy, both political and industrial, that is by no means founded merely on whim or caprice. It has gradually become a religion, an imperative religion, of millions of workingmen and women. Chiefly because of their economic subjection, they are striving in the most heroic manner to make their voice heard in those places where the rules of the game of life are decided. Thus, every phase of the labor movement has arisen in response to actual material needs.

And, if the labor movement has arisen in response to actual material needs, it is now a very great and material actuality. The workingmen of the world are, as we have seen, uniting at a pace so rapid as to be almost unbelievable. There are to-day not only great national organizations of labor in nearly every country, but these national movements are bound closely together into one unified international power. The great world-wide movement of labor, which Marx and Engels prophesied would come, is now here. And, if they were living to-day, they could not but be astonished at the real and mighty manifestation of their early dreams. To be sure, Engels lived long enough to be jubilant over the ma.s.sing of labor's forces, but Marx saw little of it, and even the German socialists, who started out so brilliantly, were at the time of his death fighting desperately for existence under the anti-socialist law. Indeed, in 1883, the year of his death, the labor movement was still torn by quarrels and dissensions over problems of tactics, and in America, France, and Austria the terrorists were more active than at any time in their history. It was still a question whether the German movement could survive, while in the other countries the socialists were still little more than sects. That was just thirty years ago, while to-day, as we have seen, over ten millions of workingmen, scattered throughout the entire world, fight every one of their battles on the lines laid down by Marx. The tactics and principles he outlined are now theirs. The unity of the workers he pleaded for is rapidly being achieved throughout the entire world, and everywhere these armies are marching toward the goal made clear by his life and labor. "Although I have seen him to-night," writes Engels to Liebknecht, March 14, 1883, "stretched out on his bed, the face rigid in death, I cannot grasp the thought that this genius should have ceased to fertilize with his powerful thoughts the proletarian movement of both worlds. Whatever we all are, we are through him; and whatever the movement of to-day is, it is through his theoretical and practical work; without him we should still be stuck in the mire of confusion."[2]

What was this mire? If we will cast our eyes back to the middle of last century we cannot but realize that the ideas of the world have undergone a complete revolution. When Marx began his work with the labor movement there was absolute ignorance among both masters and men concerning the nature of capitalism. It was a great and terrible enigma which no one understood. The working cla.s.s itself was broken up into innumerable guerilla bands fighting hopelessly, aimlessly, with the most antiquated and ineffectual weapons. They were in misery; but why, they knew not.

They left their work to riot for days and weeks, without aim and without purpose. They were bitter and sullen. They smashed machines and burned factories, chiefly because they were totally ignorant of the causes of their misery or of the nature of their real antagonist. Not seldom in those days there were meetings of hundreds of thousands of laborers, and not infrequently mysterious epidemics of fires and of machine-breaking occurred throughout all the factory districts. Again and again the soldiers were brought out to ma.s.sacre the laborers. In all England--then the most advanced industrially--there were few who understood capitalism, and among masters or men there was hardly one who knew the real source of all the immense, intolerable economic evils.

The cla.s.s struggle was there, and it was being fought more furiously and violently than ever before or since. The most striking rebels of the time were those that Marx called the "bourgeois democrats." They were forever preaching open and violent revolution. They were dreaming of the glorious day when, amid insurrection and riot, they should stand at the barricades, fighting the battle for freedom. In their little circles they "were laying plans for the overthrow of the world and intoxicating themselves day by day, evening by evening, with the hasheesh-drink of: 'To-morrow it will start;'"[3] Before and after the revolutionary period of '48 there were innumerable thousands of these fugitives, exiles, and men of action obsessed with the dream that a great revolutionary cataclysm was soon to occur which would lay in ruins the old society.

That a crisis was impending everyone believed, including even Marx and Engels. In fact, for over twenty years, from 1847 to 1871, the "extemporizers of revolutions" fretfully awaited the supreme hour.

Toward the end of the period appeared Bakounin and Nechayeff with their robber wors.h.i.+p, conspiratory secret societies, and international network of revolutionists. Wherever capitalism made headway the workers grew more and more rebellious, but neither they nor those who sought to lead them, and often did, in fact, lead them, had much of any program beyond destruction. Bakounin was not far wrong, at the time, in thinking that he was "spreading among the ma.s.ses ideas corresponding to the instincts of the ma.s.ses,"[4] when he advocated the destruction of the Government, the Church, the mills, the factories, and the palaces, to the end that "not a stone should be left upon a stone."

This was the mire of confusion that Engels speaks of. There was not one with any program at all adequate to meet the problem. The aim of the rebels went little beyond retaliation and destruction. What were the weapons employed by the warriors of this period? Street riots and barricades were those of the "bourgeois democrats"; strikes, machine-breaking, and incendiarism were those of the workers; and later the terrorists came with their robber wors.h.i.+p and Propaganda of the Deed. In the midst of this veritable pa.s.sion for destruction Marx and Engels found themselves. Here was a period when direct action was supreme. There was nothing else, and no one dreamed of anything else.

The enemies of the existing order were employing exactly the same means and methods used by the upholders of that order. Among the workers, for instance, the only weapons used were general strikes, boycotts, and what is now called sabotage. These were wholly imitative and retaliative. It is clear that the strike is, after all, only an inverted lockout; and as early as 1833 a general strike was parried by a general lockout. The boycott is identical with the blacklist. The employer boycotts union leaders and union men. The employees boycott the non-union products of the employer; while sabotage, the most ancient weapon of labor, answers poor pay with poor work, and broken machines for broken lives. And, if the working cla.s.s was striking back with the same weapons that were being used against it, so, too, were the "pan-destroyers," except that for the most part their weapons were incredibly inadequate and ridiculous. Sticks and stones and barricades were their method of combating rifles and trained armies. All this again is more evidence of the mire of confusion.

However, if the weapons of the rebellious were utterly futile and ineffectual, there were no others, for every move the workers or their friends made was considered lawless. All political and trades a.s.sociations were against the law. Peaceable a.s.sembly was sedition.

Strikes were treason. Picketing was intimidation; and the boycott was conspiracy in restraint of trade. Such a.s.sociations as existed were forced to become secret societies, and, even if a working-cla.s.s newspaper appeared, it was almost immediately suppressed. And, if all forms of trade-union activity were criminal, political activity was impossible where the vast majority of toilers had no votes. With methods mainly imitative, retaliative, and revengeful; with no program of what was wanted; in total ignorance of the causes of their misery; and with little appreciation that in unity there is strength, the workers and their friends, in the middle of the last century, were stuck in the mire--of ignorance, helplessness, and confusion.

This was the world in which Marx and Engels began their labor. Direct action was at its zenith, and the struggle of the cla.s.ses was ferocious.

Indeed, all Europe was soon to see barricades in every city, and thrones and governments tumbling into apparent ruin. Yet in the midst of all this wild confusion, and even touching elbows with the leaders of these revolutionary storms, Marx and Engels outlined in clear, simple, and powerful language the nature of capitalism--what it was, how it came into being, and what it was yet destined to become. They pointed out that it was not individual employers or individual statesmen or the Government or even kings and princes who were responsible for the evils of society, but that unemployment, misery, and oppression were due to an economic system, and that so long as capitalism existed the ma.s.s of humanity would be sunk in poverty. They called attention to the long evolutionary processes that had been necessary to change the entire world from a state of feudalism into a state of capitalism; and how it was not due to man's will-power that the great industrial revolution occurred, but to the growth of machines, of steam, and of electrical power; and that it was these that have made the modern world, with its intense and terrible contrasts of riches and of poverty. They also pointed out that little individual owners of property were giving way to joint-stock companies, and that these would in turn give way to even greater aggregations of capital. An economic law was driving the big capitalists to eat up the little capitalists. It was forcing them to take from the workers their hand tools and to drive them out of their home workshops; it was forcing them also to take from the small property owners their little properties and to appropriate the wealth of the world into their own hands. As a result of this economic process, "private property," they said, "is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population."[5] But they also pointed out that capitalism had within itself the seeds of its own dissolution, that it was creating a new cla.s.s, made up of the overwhelming majority, that was destined in time to overthrow capitalism. "What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers."[6] In the interest of society the nine-tenths would force the one-tenth to yield up its private property, that is to say, its "power to subjugate the labor of others."[7]

Taking their stand on this careful a.n.a.lysis of historic progress and of economic evolution, they viewed with contempt the older fighting methods of the revolutionists, and turned their vials of satire and wrath upon Herwegh, Willich, Schapper, Kinkel, Ledru-Rollin, Bakounin, and all kinds and species of revolution-makers. They deplored incendiarism, machine destruction, and all the purely retaliative acts of the laborers. They even ridiculed the general strike.[AI] And, while for thirty years they a.s.sailed anarchists, terrorists, and direct-actionists, they never lost an opportunity to impress upon the workers of Europe the only possible method of effectually combating capitalism. There must first be unity--world-wide, international unity--among all the forces of labor. And, secondly, all the energies of a united labor movement must be centered upon the all-important contest for control of political power. They fought incessantly with their pens to bring home the great truth that every cla.s.s struggle is a political struggle; and, while they were working to emphasize that fact, they began in 1864 actually to organize the workers of Europe to fight that struggle. The first great practical work of the International was to get votes for workingmen. It was the chief thought and labor of Marx during the first years of that organization to win for the English workers the suffrage, while in Germany all his followers--including La.s.salle as well as Bebel and Liebknecht--labored throughout the sixties to that end. Up to the present the main work of the socialist movement throughout the world has been to fight for, and its main achievement to obtain, the legal weapons essential for its battles.

Let us try to grasp the immensity of the task actually executed by Marx.

First, consider his scientific work. During all the period of these many battles every leisure moment was spent in study. While others were engaged in organizing what they were pleased to call the "Revolution"

and waiting about for it to start, Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, and all this group were spending innumerable hours in the library. We see the result of that labor in the three great volumes of "Capital," in many pamphlets, and in other writings. By this painstaking scientific work of Marx the nature of capitalism was made known and, consequently, what it was that should be combated, and how the battle should be waged. In addition to these studies, which have been of such priceless value to the labor and socialist movements of the world, Marx, by his pitiless logic and incessant warfare, destroyed every revolution-maker, and then, by an act of surgery that many declared would prove fatal, cut out of the labor movement the "pan-destroyers." Once more, by a supreme effort, he turned the thought of labor throughout the world to the one end and aim of winning its political weapons, of organizing its political armies, and of uniting the working cla.s.ses of all lands. Here, then, is a brief summary of the work of this genius, who fertilized with his powerful thoughts the proletarian movements of both worlds. The most wonderful thing of all is that, in his brief lifetime, he should not only have planned this gigantic task, but that he should have obtained the essentials for its complete accomplishment.

And, as we look out upon the world to-day, we find it actually a different world, almost a new world. The present-day conflict between capital and labor has no more the character of the guerilla warfare of half a century ago. It is now a struggle between immense organizations of capital and immense organizations of labor. And not only has there been a revolution in ideas concerning the nature of capitalism but there has been as a consequence a revolution in the methods of combat between labor and capital. While all the earlier and more brutal forms of warfare are still used, the conflict as a whole is to-day conducted on a different plane. The struggle of the cla.s.ses is no longer a vague, undefined, and embittered battle. It is no longer merely a contest between the violent of both cla.s.ses. It is now a deliberate, and largely legal, tug-of-war between two great social categories over the _ends_ of a social revolution that both are beginning to recognize as inevitable.

The representative workers to-day understand capitalism, and labor now faces capital with a program, clear, comprehensive, world-changing; with an international army of so many millions that it is almost past contending with; while its tactics and methods of action can neither be a.s.sailed nor effectively combated. From one end of the earth to the other we see capital with its gigantic a.s.sociations of bankers, merchants, manufacturers, mine owners, and mill owners striving to forward and to protect its economic interests. On the other hand, we see labor with its millions upon millions of organized men all but united and solidified under the flag of international socialism.

And, most strange and wondrous of all--as a result of the logic of things and of the logic of Marx--the actual positions of the two cla.s.ses have been completely transposed. Marx persuaded the workers to take up a weapon which they alone can use. Like Siegfried, they have taken the fragments of a sword and welded them into a mighty weapon--so mighty, indeed, that the working cla.s.s alone, with its innumerable millions, is capable of wielding it. The workers are the only cla.s.s in society with the numerical strength to become the majority and the only cla.s.s which, by unity and organization, can employ the suffrage effectively. While fifty years ago the workers had every legal and peaceable means denied them, to-day they are the only cla.s.s which can a.s.suredly profit through legal and peaceable means. It is obvious that the beneficiaries of special privilege can hope to retain their power only so long as the working cla.s.s is divided and too ignorant to recognize its own interests. As soon as its eyes open, the privileged cla.s.ses must lose its political support and, with that political support, everything else.

That is absolutely inevitable. The interests of ma.s.s and cla.s.s are too fundamentally opposed to permit of permanent political harmony.

n.o.body sees this more clearly than the intelligent capitalist. As the workers become more and more conscious of their collective power and more and more convinced that through solidarity they can quietly take possession of the world, their opponents become increasingly conscious of their growing weakness, and already in Europe there is developing a kind of upper-cla.s.s syndicalism, that despairs of Parliaments, deplores the bungling work of politics, and ridicules the general incompetence of democratic inst.i.tutions. At the same time, however, they exercise stupendous efforts, in the most devious and questionable ways, to retain their political power. Facing the inevitable, and realizing that potentially at least the suffrages of the immense majority stand over them as a menace, they are beginning to seek other methods of action. Of course, in all the more democratic countries the power of democracy has already made itself felt, and in America, at any rate, the powerful have long had resort to bribery, corruption, and all sorts of political conspiracy in order to retain their power. Much as we may deplore the debauchery of public servants, it nevertheless yields us a certain degree of satisfaction, in that it is eloquent testimony of this agreeable fact, that the oldest anarchists are losing their control over the State. They hold their sway over it more and more feebly, and even when the State is entirely obedient to their will, it is not infrequently because they have temporarily purchased that power. When the manufacturers, the trusts, and the beneficiaries of special privilege generally are forced periodically to go out and purchase the State from the Robin Hoods of politics, when they are compelled to finance lavishly every political campaign, and then abjectly go to the very men whom their money has put into power and buy them again, their bleeding misery becomes an object of pity.

This really amounts to an almost absolute transposition of the cla.s.ses.

In the early nineties Engels saw the beginning of this change, and, in what Sombart rightly says may be looked upon as a kind of "political last will and testament" to the movement, Engels writes: "The time for small minorities to place themselves at the head of the ignorant ma.s.ses and resort to force in order to bring about revolutions is gone. A complete change in the organization of society can be brought about only by the conscious cooperation of the ma.s.ses; they must be alive to the aim in view; they must know what they want. The history of the last fifty years has taught that. But, if the ma.s.ses are to understand the line of action that is necessary, we must work hard and continuously to bring it home to them. That, indeed, is what we are now engaged upon, and our success is driving our opponents to despair. The irony of destiny is turning everything topsy-turvy. We, the 'revolutionaries,'

are profiting more by lawful than by unlawful and revolutionary means.

The parties of order, as they call themselves, are being slowly destroyed by their own weapons. Their cry is that of Odilon Barrot: 'Lawful means are killing us.'... We, on the contrary, are thriving on them, our muscles are strong, and our cheeks are red, and we look as though we intend to live forever!"[8]

And if lawful means are killing them, so are science and democracy. We no longer live in an age when any suggestion of change is deemed a sacrilege. The period has gone by when political, social, and industrial inst.i.tutions are supposed to be unalterable. No one believes them fas.h.i.+oned by Divinity, and there is nothing so sacred in the worldly affairs of men that it cannot be questioned. There is no law, or judicial decision, or decree, or form of property, or social status that cannot be critically examined; and, if men can agree, none is so firmly established that it cannot be changed. It is agreed that men shall be allowed to speak, write, and propagate their views on all questions, whether religious, political, or industrial. In theory, at least, all authority, law, administrative inst.i.tutions, and property relations are decided ultimately in the court of the people. Through their press these things may be discussed. On their platform these things may be approved or denounced. In their a.s.semblies there is freedom to make any declaration for or against things as they are. And through their votes and representatives there is not one inst.i.tution that cannot be molded, changed, or even abolished. Upon this theory modern society is held together. It is a belief so firmly rooted in the popular mind that, although everything goes against the people, they peacefully submit. So firmly established, indeed, is this tradition that even the most irate admit that where wrong exists the chief fault lies with the people themselves.

Whatever may be said concerning its limitations and its perversions, this, then, is an age of democracy, founded upon a widespread faith in majority rule. Whether it be true or not, the conviction is almost universal that the majority can, through its political power, accomplish any and every change, no matter how revolutionary. Our whole Western civilization has had bred into it the belief that those who are dissatisfied with things as they are can agitate to change them, are even free to organize for the purpose of changing them, and can, in fact, change them whenever the majority is won over to stand with them.

This, again, is the theory, although there is no one of us, of course, but will admit that a thousand ways are found to defeat the will of the majority. There are bribery, fraudulent elections, and an infinite variety of corrupting methods. There is the control of parliaments, of courts, and of political parties by special privilege. There are oppressive and unjust laws obtained through trickery. There is the overwhelming power exercised by the wealthy through their control of the press and of nearly all means of enlightenment. Through their power and the means they have to corrupt, the majority is indeed so constantly deceived that, when one dwells only on this side of our political life, it is easy to arrive at the conviction that democracy is a myth and that, in fact, the end may never come of this power of the few to divert and pervert the inst.i.tutions for expressing the popular will.

But there is no way of achieving democracy in any form except through democracy, and we have found that he who rejects political action finds himself irresistibly drawn into the use of means that are both indefensible and abortive. Curiously enough, in this use of methods, as in other ways, extremes meet. Both the despot and the terrorist are anti-democrats. Neither the anarchist of Bakounin's type nor the anarchist of the Wall Street type trusts the people. With their cliques and inner circles plotting their conspiracies, they are forced to travel the same subterranean pa.s.sages. The one through corruption impresses the will of the wealthy and powerful upon the community. The other hopes that by some dash upon authority a spirited, daring, and reckless minority can overturn existing society and establish a new social order.

The method of the political boss, the aristocrat, the self-seeker, the monopolist--even in the use of thugs, private armies, spies, and _provocateurs_--differs little from the methods proposed by Bakounin in his Alliance. And it is not in the least strange that much of the lawlessness and violence of the last half-century has had its origin in these two sources. In all the unutterably despicable work of detective agencies and police spies that has led to the destruction of property, to riots and minor rebellions that have cost the lives of many thousands in recent decades, we find the sordid materialism of special privilege seeking to gain its secret ends. In all the unutterably tragic work of the terrorists that has cost so many lives we find the rage and despair of self-styled revolutionists seeking to gain their secret ends. After all, it matters little whether the aim of a group of conspirators is purely selfish or wholly altruistic. It matters little whether their program is to build into a system private monopoly or to save the world from that monopoly. Their methods outrage democracy, even when they are not actually criminal. The oldest anarchist believes that the people must be _deceived_ into a worse social order, and that at least is a tribute to their intelligence. On the other hand, the Bakouninists, old and new, believe that the people must be _deceived_ into a better social order, and that is founded upon their complete distrust of the people.

And, rightly enough, the att.i.tude of the ma.s.ses toward the secret and conspiratory methods of both the idealist anarchist and the materialist anarchist is the same. If the latter distrust the people, the people no less distrust them. If the ma.s.ses would mob the terrorist who springs forth to commit some fearful act, the purpose of which they cannot in the least understand, they would, if possible, also mob the individual responsible for manipulation of elections, for the buying of legislatures, and for the purchasing of court decisions. They fear, distrust, and denounce the terrorist who goes forth to commit arson, pillage, or a.s.sa.s.sination no less than the anarchist who purchases private armies, hires thugs to beat up unoffending citizens, and uses the power of wealth to undermine the Government. In one sense, the acts of the materialist anarchist are clearer even than those of the other.

The people know the ends sought by the powerful. On the other hand, the ends sought by the terrorist are wholly mysterious; he has not even taken the trouble to make his program clear. We find, then, that the anarchist of high finance, who would suppress democracy in the interest of a new feudalism, and the anarchist of a sect, who would override democracy in the hope of communism, are cla.s.sed together in the popular mind. The man who in this day deifies the individual or the sect, and would make the rights of the individual or the sect override the rights of the many, is battling vainly against the supreme current of the age.

Democracy may be a myth. Yet of all the faiths of our time none is more firmly grounded, none more warmly cherished. If any man refuses to abide by the decisions of democracy and takes his case out of that court, he ranges against himself practically the entire populace. On the other hand, the man who takes his case to that court is often forced to suffer for a long time humiliating defeats. If the case be a new one but little understood, there is no place where a hearing seems so hard to win as in exactly that court. Universal suffrage, by which such cases are decided, appears to the man with a new idea as an obstacle almost overwhelming.

He must set out on a long and dreary road of education and of organization; he must take his case before a jury made up of untold millions; he must wait maybe for centuries to obtain a majority. To go into this great open court and plead an entirely new cause requires a courage that is sublime and convictions that have the intensity of a religion. One who possesses any doubt cannot begin a task so gigantic, and certainly one who, for any reason, distrusts the people cannot, of course, put his case in that court. It was with full realization of the difficulties, of the certainty of repeated defeats, and of the overwhelming power against them that the socialists entered this great arena to fight their battle. Universal suffrage is a merciless thing.

How often has it served the purpose of stripping the socialist naked and exposing him to a terrible humiliation! Again and again, in the history of the last fifty years, have the socialists, after tremendous agitation, gigantic ma.s.s meetings, and widespread social unrest, marched their followers to the polls with results positively pitiful. A dozen votes out of thousands have in more cases than one marked their relative power. There is no other example in the world of such faith, courage, and persistence in politics as that of the socialists, who, despite defeat after defeat, humiliation after humiliation, have never lost hope, but on every occasion, in every part of the modern world, have gone up again and again to be knocked down by that jury.

And let it be said to their credit that never once anywhere have the socialists despaired of democracy. "_Socialism and democracy ... belong to each other, round out each other, and can never stand in contradiction to each other. Socialism without democracy is pseudo-socialism, just as democracy without socialism is pseudo-democracy. The democratic state is the only possible form of a socialised society._"[9] The inseparableness of democracy and socialism has served the organized movement as an unerring guide at every moment of its struggle for existence and of its fight against the ruling powers. It has served to keep its soul free from that cynical distrust of the people which is evident in the writings of the anarchists and of the syndicalists--in Bakounin, Nechayeff, Sorel, Berth, and Pouget. It has also served to keep it from those emotional reactions which have led nearly every great leader of the direct-actionists in the last century to become in the end an apostate. Feargus O'Connor, Joseph Rayner Stephens, the fierce leaders of Chartism; Bakounin, Blanc, Richard, Jaclard, Andrieux, Bastelica, the flaming revolutionists of the Alliance; Briand, Sorel, Berth, the leading propagandists and philosophers of modern syndicalism; every one of them turned in despair from the movement. Cobden, Bonaparte, Clemenceau, the Empire, the "new monarchy," or a comfortable berth, claimed in the end every one of these impatient middle-cla.s.s intellectuals, who never had any real understanding of the actual labor movement. And, if the union of democracy and socialism has saved the movement from reactions such as these, it has also saved it from the desperation that gives birth to individual methods, such as the Propaganda of the Deed and sabotage.

That is what the inseparableness of democracy and socialism has done for the movement in the past; and it has in it an even greater service yet to perform. It has the power of salvation for society itself in the not remote future, when it will be face to face, throughout the world, with an irresistible current toward State socialism. Industrial democracy and political democracy are indissolubly united; their union cannot be sundered except at the cost of destruction to them both.