The truth about socialism

by Allan L. Benson

Also, there is a difference of opinion among Socialists as to how the government should proceed to obtain ownership of the industrial trusts, the railroads, telegraph, telephone and express companies and so forth. Some Socialists are in favor of confiscating them, on the theory that the people have a right to resort to such drastic action. In a way, they have excellent authority for their position. Read what Benjamin Franklin said about property at the convention that was called in 1776 to adopt a new constitution for Pennsylvania:

“Suppose one of our Indian nations should now agree to form a civil society. Each individual would bring into the stock of the society little more property than his gun and his blanket, for at present he has no other. We know that when one of them has attempted to keep a few swine he has not been able to maintain a property in them, his neighbors thinking they have a right to kill and eat them whenever they want provisions, it being one of their maxims that hunting is free for all. The accumulation of property in such a society, and its security to individuals in every society, must be an effect of the protection afforded to it by the joint strength of the society in the execution of its laws.

“Private property is, therefore, a creature of society, and is subject to the calls of that society whenever its necessities require it, even to the last farthing.”

But one need quote only the law of self-preservation to prove that if any people shall ever become convinced that their lives depend upon the confiscation of the trusts that such confiscation will be justified. When men reach a certain stage of hunger and wretchedness they pay scant attention to every law except the higher law that says they have a right to live.

I believe that most Socialists twenty years ago, were in favor of confiscation. The trend now is all toward compensation. Not that Socialists have changed their minds at all about the equities of the matter. They have not. But they are coming to see that compensation is the easier and quicker way. Victor Berger, the first Socialist congressman, introduced in the House of Representatives an anti-trust bill in which he proposed that the government should buy all of the trusts that control more than forty per cent. of the business in their respective lines, and pay therefor their full cash values—minus, of course, wind, water and all forms of speculative inflation. In short the differences in the Socialist party upon the question of compensation are not unlike the differences which once existed with regard to the best means by which the negroes might be emancipated. Years before the Civil War, Henry Clay proposed that the government should buy the negroes at double their market price and set them free. He said this would be the cheapest and quickest way of settling the troubles between the North and the South. The slave owners would not consent, and, eventually Lincoln freed their slaves without paying for them.

When Socialists speak of buying the trusts, they naturally invite the inquiry as to where they expect to get the money to pay for them. They expect to get the money out of the profits of the trusts. That is the way that Representative Berger provided in his bill. It is a poor trust that does not pay dividends upon stock and interest upon bonds that do not aggregate at least ten per cent. of the capital actually invested. Most of them pay more, and some of the express companies occasionally spring a fifty or a 100 per cent. dividend.

The Socialist proposal is that the government pay for the trusts with two-per cent. bonds, and that each year, enough money be put into a sinking fund to retire the bonds in not more than fifty years. The burden of purchasing the trusts would thus be spread over a little more than two generations, but Socialists say the burden would be a burden only in name, since the prices of trust goods could be radically reduced, even while the trusts were being paid for, and upon the retirement of the bonds, all prices could be reduced to cost.

Those who know little or nothing about Socialism believe that Socialists also differ as to the advisability of using violence to bring about Socialism. Never was there a greater mistake. Above all others, the Socialist party is the party of peace. When Germany and England, in 1911, were ready to fly at each other’s throats, it was the Socialist party of Germany that assembled 200,000 men in Berlin one Sunday afternoon and declared that if there were a war, the Socialists of Germany would not help fight it. It was generally admitted, at the time, that the attitude of the German Socialists, more than anything else, was responsible for the avoidance of war.

Socialists are equally pacific when considering the best means by which Socialism may be brought about. Socialists are, first, last and all the time in favor only of political action and trade-union action. Wherever there is a free ballot, they believe in using it, to the exclusion of bombs and bullets. Socialists realize that they can win only by converting a majority of the people to their belief. That is why they begin one campaign the next morning after the closing of another. They are busy with the printing press and their tongues all the while. For them, there is no closed season.

Socialists realize that Socialism can be reared only upon understanding, and that the use of dynamite would turn the minds of the people against them for a hundred years. Any Socialist who believes otherwise is the same sort of a potential criminal that can be found in any other party—and equally as rare. The Republican party had its Guiteau and its Czolgosz, but it repudiated neither of them more quickly than the Socialist party would repudiate one of its own members who should commit a great crime.