The truth about socialism

by Allan L. Benson

Then, painting a picture of the world to come, as he sees it, the professor said:

“Thus with the coming of the social state, family unity will be for a higher end. The wife, being no longer doomed to household drudgery, will have the greater blessing of economic equality. Children will be cared for by the community under healthful and uniform conditions, and we shall arrive at what has been called the happy time when continuity of society no longer depends upon the private nursery.”

But what Professor Peabody has said, or what Socialists have said with regard to the next step in the evolution of the family is a little beside the point, and is mentioned so at length only because the detractors of Socialism make so much of it. The point is: Ought the world if it can, to get rid of poverty, and will Socialism do it? If Socialism will rid the world of poverty, ought we to retain poverty to keep women good? Who knows that economic independence would make women bad? The grafters intimate that they know. But who believes the grafters? The grafters say the present status of the family is so good that we should be content to remain poor in order to preserve it. Professor Peabody says the present status of the family is so bad that it is falling to pieces. The professor has proof of his statement in every divorce court. The grafters have proof of their statement in no court, nor anywhere else.

Besides, the testimony of the grafters is properly subject to suspicion. If Socialism would remove poverty it would also remove the grafters. If Socialism would not remove poverty or the grafters, but would bring about free love, do you believe the grafters would oppose it? Is it not more likely that the grafters believe Socialism would remove both poverty and themselves and that they are trying to throw a scare into the people by howling about the threatened destruction of the family? If not, why do not the grafters themselves do something to stop their own destruction of the family? A $100 bill will make more happiness in a home than a sermon against Socialism. Why don’t they give up their dividends and let the workers have what they produce? Why don’t they drum Professor Peabody out of Harvard? If the Socialists are free-lovers, Professor Peabody is a free-lover. Why don’t they put him out? Is it because he does not also advocate Socialism?

“Ah,” say the grafters, “but the lives of Socialists do not bear out their protestations of devotion to the family. Look at the ‘affinities’ that some of them have had.”

“Quite true,” say the Socialists, “but one affinity does not make a fire, nor do two make a forest. What if one or two Socialists of more or less prominence have been divorced? Are affinities and divorces unknown among Democrats and Republicans? Is the percentage of divorces greater in Socialist families than it is in Democratic or Republican families? Where is your proof? What have you got on Debs? What have you got on Berger? What have you got on Seidel, the former Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee? These men are in the limelight. If they should make a mismove, you would blazon it. What do you know against them?”

The foregoing pretty well sums up the situation, so far as the free-love and destroying-the-family charges are concerned. There is nothing in them. Socialists are trying to eradicate poverty now. They have no other immediate concern. If the eradication of poverty should send the world to hell, the Socialists, if they can, will send the world to hell. They do not believe anything that can be kept only with poverty is worth keeping. Their observation has taught them that poverty is always and everywhere a curse. They believe no other curse is nearly so great except the curse of excessive riches.

Let us now pass to objections to Socialism that are both pertinent and honest. It is the common belief of those who do not understand Socialism that, under a Socialist form of government, the government would do everything and the people could therefore do nothing; that “everybody would be held down to a dead level,” and that as a consequence of the individual’s inability to rise, nobody would have an incentive to work.

Here are several kindred objections rolled into one. Let us pick them to pieces and see what is in them.

Let it be conceded that under Socialism the government would own and operate all of the great industries. What of it? The people would do precisely what they are doing now, except that they would do it through the government for themselves, instead of through capitalists for themselves and the capitalists. The people are now engaged in useful labor. A small body of parasites are appropriating much that the people produce. Under Socialism, the parasites will have to go to work. The people will simply continue to work, though under better conditions and for a greater return than they now receive.