CHAPTER III

POLITICAL ASPECT OF SOCIALISM

The importance of the political aspect of Socialism depends upon the kind of Socialism selected for study. In Fourier's system, the social side altogether predominates--the political side is relatively unimportant. In state Socialism, on the other hand, the political side is the most important and the social side is subsidiary. In modern Socialism, the government takes an intermediary position; the functions of the state under modern Socialism would be in some respects less extended than in such a government as that of Prussia; while in other respects it would be more extended; but in no department would it assume the excessive power and interference generally associated with Socialism in the public mind.

It cannot be too emphatically repeated that modern Socialism discards the idea of a common home or even of a common table except to the extent that a common table is sometimes found convenient in our own day. To just the same extent the cooperative commonwealth discards the idea of state ownership of industry and state ownership of land except within the limits set forth in the previous chapter.

The two great political objections to Socialism are: that it would give to the government a power destructive of individual liberty; and that the corruption in our existing government demonstrates the unwisdom of increasing the scope of its operations.

On the first of these objections it is not necessary to dwell; for it is obvious that the moment state Socialism is abandoned, this objection falls to the ground. The state no longer has the onerous and probably impossible function of assigning tasks; the state no longer controls the hours of labor; the state no longer interferes in the private life of the individual any more than to-day. The relations of the government are not so much with the individual as with conglomerations of individuals in the respective industries; and even here, the government does no more than indicate the amount of a given thing that must be produced and the rate at which the thing so produced is to exchange with the other necessaries of life. It has been suggested that just as in France where commercial cases are brought before purely commercial courts and thus separated from civil and criminal cases, so all things pertaining to production and distribution might be determined by an industrial parliament that would determine such matters as the amount of a given thing to be produced and the rate at which this thing is to exchange with other necessaries, subject to the approval of Congress.

Such a system would have the great advantage of referring business matters to business men who would bring no other than business considerations to the solution of them. It would relieve Congress of the necessity of discussing commercial details with which its members are generally unfamiliar, and it would above all prevent that sacrifice of business interests to purely political considerations which often occurs to-day.

There will be an important role to be played in determining the amount of the various necessaries of life which the socialized industries will be called upon to produce, in distributing these products, exchanging surplus products with foreign markets, and distributing the proceeds of these exchanges. All this work is of a purely business character and should be confided to business men, who have shown themselves by their practical success in business fields most fitted therefor. It would seem wiser to refer these matters to a parliament composed of the representatives of associated industries, of agricultural producers, and of distributing bodies. It would be the duty of such a parliament to appoint its own executive and cabinet, and it may be advisable to associate with the representatives of agriculture and industry in such a parliament, representatives selected by the citizens at large, so as to minimize the possibility of combinations between powerful groups of industries for the purpose of determining questions of public interest to their particular advantage.

No attempt will be made here to work out the details of such a system, the object of this book being rather to indicate the possibility of doing these things than to point out the particular method by which they should be done.

The objection that the corruption in our existing government demonstrates the unwisdom of increasing the scope of its operations seems at first sight a formidable one. If our government is as corrupt as our "yellow journals" make it out to be, it seems folly to extend its functions and give it larger opportunities for the exercise of this corruption and for the demoralization of the community which this corruption tends to produce. There are, however, many reasons for believing that the less government has to do, the more corrupt it is; and the more it has to do, the less corrupt it is.

For example, the Board of Aldermen in the city of New York was once the governing body of the city. It was a body to which men of importance belonged because its functions were important. When corruption crept into the Board of Aldermen the legislature was persuaded more and more to abridge its powers, and Tweed availed himself of this disposition to take practically all the powers of government out of the hands of the board and concentrate it in a small body of men called "supervisors," to which he took care that he and the members of his ring should belong. Some time after the Tweed ring was broken up the Board of Aldermen retained the right of confirming the appointments of the mayor; but this power too was taken from it by ex-President--then Assemblyman--Roosevelt in 1884, and from that year the Board of Aldermen became little more than a franchise-bestowing corporation. The board has consequently become so corrupt that the title of Alderman, which used to be a title of honor, is in New York a title of disgrace. If we compare the Board of Aldermen to the board which corresponds to it in London, we shall find a totally different state of things. In London it is the County Council that governs the municipality, and accordingly we find on it men who stand first in the ranks of the business world.

But there is another consideration of vastly more importance than this. New York citizens continue to complain year after year of the low order of men selected by its citizens, not only to the Board of Aldermen, but to all elective offices, including the State Assembly and the Senate. Yet they do not stop to inquire the reason for this, though it is obvious. What stake have the majority of New York citizens in the government of the city? The vast majority are not interested in the tax rates, for they do not pay taxes, or do not think they do. The majority are not interested in an efficient fire department, because they do not own property likely to be destroyed by fire and, indeed, it is said that it is members of this very majority that start most of the fires in New York. They are not interested in clean streets, for foul though our streets be, they are not as foul as the unwholesome tenements. They are not interested in an efficient police. They are not interested in a board of education, because all they want to get out of school for their children is reading, writing, and arithmetic--enough to get a job. It is difficult to see in what respect the large majority of our citizens are interested in good government at all.

What then are they interested in? They are interested in bad government. They want to get a brother or a cousin on the police force; and they want the police to be complaisant to a brother or a cousin in a liquor saloon. The retailer does not want to be disturbed in his encroachments on the sidewalk. The building trade does not want to be annoyed by a too conscientious building department. The German wants his beer on Sunday and barrooms want to do business on Sunday. The peddler wants to violate street ordinances and stand his cart in the already too crowded streets. Churches want to receive per capita contributions to their asylums and have long made efforts to secure per capita contributions to their schools. The gambler wants to keep open his gambling den; and the people want the gambler to be undisturbed. The business man, the corporation, and the criminal want to be "let alone"; and those dregs of the population too low to be able to use the vote, want to sell it for a pittance on election day. These are the conditions under which distinguished citizens and committees of one hundred expect to secure good government! And we go on ineffectually organizing municipal leagues, good government clubs, and citizens' unions to this hopeless end. It is not reasonable to suppose that in a government determined by the majority we can expect the government to be good when the majority does not want the government good, but wants it bad.

Occasionally the government in New York gets so bad that it outrages even our outrageous majority, and the overthrow of bad government is regarded as a triumph for reform. But no reform movement has ever lasted more than one administration. The public has emphatically assured us, over and over again, that it does not want reform administration, and indeed it may be said that some of these reform administrations have been just as bad as those they were intended to reform.

Municipal politicians want good laws, if at all, in order to use them for the purpose of levying blackmail, and the community is willing to pay the blackmail so long as it is not too extortionate. Business men find it cheaper to pay blackmail and be allowed to do what they want. And the same is true all the way down the line until we get to the criminal class, which has the biggest stake in bad government of all.

Yet the strange anomaly of existing conditions is that while the majority of the citizens of New York have shown year after year for a century that they want bad government and mean to have it, these citizens are not bad men, but want to be good. It is the folly of our economic conditions that makes them want bad government, and no more pitiable sight was ever presented to gods and men than this city of New York, or indeed any other of our great cities, full of citizens animated with the best intentions, forced by economic conditions to be bad. It has not yet seemed to dawn upon the reformers of the present day that, if they want to have good government, the majority of the citizens must be interested in the government being good; and not, on the contrary, interested in its being bad as at this present time.

There are two ways of accomplishing this. One way has been pointed out; to put an end to the competitive system that sets every man at the throat or pocket of his neighbor. The other is to enlarge the functions of the government sufficiently to make it important to every citizen that the government be good; then only will public spirit become stronger than private interest.

This conflict between public spirit and private interest is not a matter about which there can be any longer any doubt. When a group was engaged in organizing the City Club, we were told not once but a dozen times by a dozen different men of high standing in the community, that the whole question of good government to them resolved itself into this: "Can I by contributing money or time to reform sufficiently reduce taxes to make it worth my while to give my time and my money to this thing; or is it not better for me to use my money in purchasing protection from the organization that now controls the city and devote my time to my own private affairs?" To these men the question of good government was simply a question of tax rate, and these citizens are the ones least touched by political conditions. When we come to citizens whose business puts them continually in contact with political conditions, we find the contrast between public spirit and private interest still more marked; in the corporations that want franchises, in the builders who want their plans approved, and in the citizens already described who have an interest in keeping on good terms with the powers that be.

If now we remove the temptation on the one hand and give a motive for good government on the other, is it not reasonable to suppose that we are more likely to obtain good government than now?

Temptation can be removed in many ways. Altogether the greatest motive for corruption is that furnished by the eagerness of corporations to secure franchises. Indeed the city was at one time governed by the owners of our city transportation system. The temptation to violate building laws would be removed if it were the city who built and not the private individual. The temptation to vote for a corrupt police force would be removed if the city instead of private barrooms sold alcoholic drinks. The temptation to vote for corruptible milk inspectors would be removed if the city instead of private dealers supplied milk. In a word, if the city were to undertake the tasks heretofore suggested, practically all temptation for graft would be eliminated.

The same process would not only eliminate temptation for graft, but would give the citizens a stake in good government. If the city distributed milk the citizen would be interested in having pure milk at a low price; if the city owned tramways, the citizen would be interested in having transportation effective and cheap; if the city manufactured gas and electric light, the citizen would be interested in having good heat and light at proper prices; and so at last the dream of the reformer that all citizens of the same city regard themselves as stockholders in the same corporation, would cease to be a dream and would be realized. They would have the same interest in the gas plant, electric plant, ice plant, milk plant, transportation plant of their city as a stockholder to-day has in the dividends which these respective industries accord him, though the dividends would not be paid in gold, but in wholesome service at cheap prices. Then only would the conflict between public spirit and private interest come to an end, for a man would find it more to his interest that the government be carried on honestly and efficiently than he does now to secure a government that is dishonest and inefficient. In a word, as Mr. Mill said that the cure for the abuse of liberty is more liberty, so the cure for the abuse of government is more government. This must not be understood as a relapse in favor of state Socialism. It cannot be too often repeated that it would be as great an error to confide too much to the state as, at present, it is an error to confide too little to it. The solution is to be found in taking the middle course: _medio tutissimus ibis_. Give to the government the work it is fitted to do and no more. What work it is fitted to do and what work it is not fitted to do has already been explained.[196]

Amongst the tasks for which it is fitted is the work of Education:

Sec. 1. EDUCATION

There is no reason why the present system of education should be much changed in a cooperative commonwealth. In its nature it would remain very much the same and would only be extended in time; that is, all children who show themselves capable of profiting by education will have the opportunity of extending their education as far as their abilities justify. Education need by no means be confined to the state. There is no reason why the existing universities should not continue their work of education even though they be maintained by Rockefellers and Carnegies, and throw all their weight in support of the competitive system against the cooperative. Socialism stands for light, and if at any period in its development it turns out that the community is not fitted for the phase of Socialism which it has attempted, it may be important to correct the perfunctoriness of official administration by a larger dose of private initiative; and in such case let privately endowed schools and universities be there to preach this doctrine.

Nor need there be any objection to sectarian schools. Once the human mind is freed from the shackles of economic servitude, it can be trusted to choose its religion, whether educated by sectarian schools or not.

The essential difference between the educational system in a cooperative commonwealth and under existing conditions will be that, inasmuch as child labor in competitive industries will be absolutely forbidden, no child will be deprived of education by economic conditions. Every child, therefore, will have an equal opportunity for mental development.

And the fact that the hours of work will be shorter will give to every human being leisure throughout his his entire life in which to develop talents of which no trace may be observable during attendance at school or university. The cooperative commonwealth, therefore, without changing the existing forms of education, will furnish to every man, woman, and child an opportunity for educational development during the whole of life instead of confining it as now to the very first few years of it.

It is important to note that, under this system, every industry will be free to work as few hours as it chooses, subject only to the condition of working long enough to pay taxes, to furnish the minimum required by the state, and to create a fund to provide for sickness, accident, and old age.

Citizens in this respect will divide themselves into different categories:

Some will want to work the least possible and devote the rest of their time to idleness or pleasure. Others will want to work at the particular industries in which they are engaged the least possible and devote the rest of their time to such things as will more interest them--to literature, art, music, or even to some other industry--even to industries competing with the state. Others, instead of working the short hours required in a cooperative commonwealth, will prefer to work long hours so as to have a longer vacation than that enjoyed by the majority; others, on the contrary, will prefer to work long hours at the industry to which they belong, not with a view to earning a longer vacation, but for the purpose of earning more wages applicable to the increase of their comforts, luxuries, and amusements.

It would not be difficult for every industry to take account of these various contingencies: A certain number of hours those engaged in a particular industry will have to work, but they will be far shorter than the hours of to-day. Those who volunteer to work longer hours will be allowed to work longer hours. The work of the factory will naturally be divided into two shifts: the one, a morning shift; and the other, an afternoon shift, so that one shift can put in all their work in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Who shall work in each shift will be determined primarily by choice and, wherever choice cannot be resorted to, by lot.

Such a condition of things as the foregoing would give to every industry the greatest opportunity for transfer from one industry to another. One who desired to exchange steel working for garment making, could work during the morning shift at the steel trade and during the afternoon shift at the garment trade; and when he had become proficient in the garment trade, he would be able to abandon the steel trade altogether and devote all his working hours to garment making.

Still more important, the system would give an opportunity to every man to develop his peculiar talents, however late in life. It is well known that men of genius often show no trace of their genius at school. It is impossible to calculate how much human ability is lost to the race by the fact that, not being observable in the few school years during which children are subject to observation, it is crushed out altogether in the competitive mill. The fact that the number of hours we have to work in a cooperative commonwealth would be small, would give to every man the rest of the day in which to develop his undeveloped talents.

Sec. 2. CHURCHES

There is no reason why churches should not be supported in a cooperative commonwealth under exactly the same conditions as to-day. It is probable, however, that there will be a tendency to modify public worship so as to render it less subject to obvious objections than to-day.

At the present time, children animated with a desire to preach are encouraged to join the ministry; and it sometimes happens that men of vast business and political experience are made by the convention of respectability to sit every Sabbath Day under a boy in the pulpit reading crude theological essays. Few men are equipped in a manner usefully to instruct or advise their fellow creatures in matters so intimate as those of religion until they have attained years which, while they unfit them for the hard work of industrial life, do by accumulated experience peculiarly fit them for the work of the pulpit.

The divinity school and the divinity student will tend to diminish and our pulpits will be filled by men who have shown themselves during fifty or sixty years of active work in the community to be best fitted to fill them. And these men, having at that age earned a retiring pension, will not be at the expense of the community nor will they be required by economic conditions as at present, to preach doctrines as to the truth of which some are in doubt and others absolutely disbelieve.

Sec. 3. POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION

Let us see now whether we can come to some conclusion regarding the political construction of government under a cooperative commonwealth. The idea prevails that Socialism involves an extreme centralization of government. This, however, is quite contrary to modern notions of Socialism. Indeed, in one sense of the word, Socialism upon the plan already proposed would deprive the federal government of much of its power. Nor do I see any reason why our present federal form of government should be materially changed. For example, the present state governments would be maintained with practically all the rights they now enjoy, and the federal government would continue to operate with less than the enumerated powers given it by our present constitution. For example, instead of having as at present the right to regulate commerce, to coin money, and to make patent laws, these powers would be delegated to the industrial parliament subject only to the approval of Congress. And although the title of all such properties as railroads, mines, etc., would be vested in the United States, the effectual control and administration of these properties would be left to the industrial parliament, so that real power as regards these matters would be exercised not by the federal government, but by the industrial parliament, elected not upon the geographical basis of Congress, but by the industries respectively wheresoever situated, as explained in the previous chapter.[197]

It would be well to give the right of appeal to Congress because the industrial parliament would consist of producers and each would have an interest in securing for his industry the largest price possible. It may be feared that a few powerful industries might, by the number of votes they control in the chamber elected proportionately to numbers, secure for itself privileges not fair to other industries. This power would be restrained by the fact that the other chamber, elected according to industries, not numbers, would exercise a wholesome check upon any such attempt, and an appeal to Congress may therefore not be necessary. Nevertheless, Congress would represent the whole mass of the nation and would be, as it were, the consumers' parliament in its relation to the industrial parliament. And it would seem proper to give to Congress the right to reconsider and discuss all new departures in connection with the business of the country, not only out of consideration of the rights of consumers, but also for the dignity of Congress.

What under these circumstances would be the special functions of Congress? Congress would continue to exercise the powers it now exercises as regards collecting taxes, establishing rules of naturalization, providing for the punishment of counterfeiting, establishing postoffices and postroads, organizing federal courts, punishing piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations, declaring war, and providing for and maintaining the army, navy, and militia.

The States would enjoy all the rights they now enjoy as regards the federal government; but the cities would enjoy much larger powers of government than they now do. There seems to be no reason why the question whether the city of New York should own its own subway should be referred to farmers sitting in Albany, who have no interest and little, if any, knowledge of the needs and resources of the city of New York. It is probable, therefore, that on the whole the effect of Socialism would be to decentralize rather than to centralize.

The parties in a cooperative commonwealth would probably be determined by the main issue between cooperation and competition, and we find here a reason for leaving to Congress the last word as regards the decisions of the industrial parliament. For the latter would be a parliament of cooperative industries and disposed, in protecting these industries, to perpetually invade the territory of competition. So long as humanity needs the stimulus of competition, it is essential that this element be fairly represented in the political organization of the state. All measures tending to restrain competition ought therefore to be subject to the approval of the whole nation represented in Congress.

One principal bourgeois objection to Socialism is that, under competitive conditions the men best fitted to run an enterprise are those to whom business enterprises are to-day confided upon the principle of the survival of the fittest; whereas under a cooperative commonwealth, the selection of those who are to manage industries must be left to the doubtful intrigues of politics. This objection cannot be seriously taken into consideration. There is probably nothing more difficult for the bourgeois to understand than the difference that would exist between the politics of a cooperative and those of a competitive commonwealth. In the latter, the field of politics is inevitably a cesspool of corruption, because every business man has something to lose or gain through politics. The tariff law just enacted presents one of the most recent illustrations of this. Not only so, but the men appointed to office and elected to Congress in our competitive commonwealth are selected by business interests, and not appointed because of special fitness for the task.

In a cooperative commonwealth this situation would be reversed. When all our comforts in life and the necessaries of existence are furnished by our municipalities and our guilds, the management of these municipalities and guilds will be of the utmost importance to every one of us. Our citizens, instead of being interested in bad government, will become interested in good government, in good management and in good administration. Here the public will benefit by the power of recall which, though it may work very imperfectly under competitive, ought to work well under cooperative conditions. For every man is interested in his municipal bakery furnishing good bread, his municipal gas plant furnishing good gas; and citizens will be so deeply interested in matters that touch them as nearly as this that they will not be influenced by political cabals to put in a bad man as superintendent of the municipal bakery, or to replace a good one by a bad one for purely political reasons.

One reason why our politics are bad to-day is that hardly any of us have time to give to making them good even if we wanted them good. The workingman who works ten or more hours in the factory and travels two or more hours to reach his work in the morning and return home when his work is done, can hardly have much vitality left to attend to politics. Indeed, the complaint of the trade unions is that he has not vitality enough left to attend to matters so important to him as those of his own trade union. But when the workingman in the first place is thoroughly trained by an education that will last not less than eighteen years--when he is not called upon to work more than four or five hours a day, he will have the knowledge necessary to understand his political needs, and the leisure to organize political movements when necessary to remove a bad administrator and put a good administrator in his place.

Indeed, popular government is impossible under capitalism for the reasons just stated; those of us who want good government have not the time to secure it. Popular government is only possible when the people are sufficiently educated to understand their rights and have leisure enough to organize with a view to enforcing them.

In the foregoing two chapters entitled, respectively, The Economic Construction of the Cooperative Commonwealth, and The Political Aspect of Socialism, I have endeavored to draw a picture of a cooperative commonwealth in which capitalism is eliminated from the production and distribution of all the necessaries and many of the comforts of life; leaving, however, full play to the existing competitive system as regards the luxuries, some of its comforts, and even as regards necessaries wherever the cooperative commonwealth fails to do its work up to the standard of taste of the community.

This picture has been drawn not because it is possible at this time to forecast exactly what this economic and political construction will be, but because many persons find it impossible to form to themselves any idea how things can be produced and distributed without the help of capitalism. No more is claimed for these chapters than that they do present a scheme by means of which necessaries and many comforts can be produced and distributed without the evils of capitalism, of unemployment, of pauperism, of prostitution, and of economic crime.

Obviously, the two foregoing chapters suggest a thousand questions to an inquiring mind, but I hope that the missing details cannot be classed amongst those details which Gladstone characterized as organic. In other words, I hope that they present a picture giving sufficient details to make it clear that Socialism, as regards the production and distribution of the necessaries and most of the comforts of life, is not only beneficial, but practical and economical; that, in a word, it puts an end to the waste and the anarchy which jointly characterize the capitalistic system of to-day.

FOOTNOTES:

[196] Book III, Chapter II.

[197] Book III, Chapter II.