The truth about socialism

by Allan L. Benson

Now, let us see just what is meant by “keeping everybody upon a dead level.” As the world stands to-day, people differ chiefly as to wealth and to intellect. If one person is not on a “dead level” with another it is because he is more intelligent or more stupid than that other, or because he is richer or poorer. Nobody, of course, believes that Socialism or anything else could put Edison on a dead level with the boss of Tammany Hall. If Socialism is to establish a dead level, it must therefore be by establishing equality as to wealth.

Capitalism has pretty nearly done that already. The great bulk of the world is poor, living from hand to mouth, worrying about the increased cost of living, and going to the grave as empty-handed as when it came into the world. Only a few have any money, beyond their immediate needs, and as a rule that few is composed of men who perform no useful labor. Here and there is a man who combines a little useful labor with a great deal of cogitation as to how he can appropriate something that somebody else has produced. He may have enough to cause him to mortgage his house to buy an automobile, and to make a little pretence of affluence. But financially he is a faker and he knows it. On the other hand, the men who are not financial fakers are not workers. That is to say, either they do no work that is useful to society, or the work they do that is useful justifies but a small part of their incomes.

To illustrate: The owner of a great industry devotes his time to the management of that industry. So far as his managerial activities pertain to the production and distribution of his product, they are socially useful. So far as they pertain to obtaining a profit for himself upon that product they are not socially useful. The value of the socially useful part of his activities may be approximately measured by what he would pay another man for managing the manufacturing and distributing end of his business. The extent to which he is a parasite upon the community may be approximately measured by the difference between his net income from the industry and the sum he would pay another man to manage the manufacturing and distributing end of his business. A hired manager might receive $5,000 a year. The capitalist proprietor may receive $50,000 a year or he may receive nothing—he is in a gambler’s game and must take a gambler’s chances. If he receives $50,000 a year $45,000 of it is because he owns the machinery. If he did not own the machinery, he himself would be compelled to hire out as a manager at $5,000 a year. In other words, $45,000 a year is the price that the workers pay the capitalist for the privilege of working with his machinery. Socialists therefore contend that we are already on a dead level of wealth, except as to the fact that we have permitted a few who do little or no useful labor to rise above those who do nothing else.

Socialists, however, are not opposed in principle to the economic dead level, and they do not believe anybody else is. If it were desirable that each human being should have a billion dollars, and, by pressing a button, each human being could have a billion dollars, Socialists do not believe there would be an extended Alphonse and Gaston performance over the ceremony of pressing the button. Socialists are opposed only to a dead level that is so nearly level with the hunger line. They want to raise the level to the point where it will comfort, not alone the stomach, but the heart and the brain.

Now, mind you, Socialists have no patented wage scales that they intend to force upon the people. If Socialism stands for anything, it stands for the expression of popular will, and therefore it will be for the people to say, when Socialism comes, whether the manager of a railway system shall receive greater compensation than a train conductor on that system. I do not fear contradiction when I say almost every Socialist believes extraordinary ability should be rewarded with extraordinary compensation—not $10,000 a month for the manager of a railway system that pays its conductors $100 a month, but enough more than the conductor to show that the manager’s services are appreciated at their worth. Socialists would also give garbage men and sewer diggers extraordinary wages, on the theory that their work is vitally necessary to everybody else and extremely disagreeable to themselves.

But to satisfy those who want the dead level objection analyzed to the bone, suppose everybody were to receive equal compensation? Should we not have less injustice in the world than we have now? Should we have any suffering from hunger and cold? Should we have so many crimes due to poverty? Should we have any women forced into prostitution by poverty? Should we have a single human being upon the face of the earth haunted by the constant fear that he could not get work and could not get food?

We have all of these evils now. Are they worth thinking about? Are they serious enough to justify us in trying to be rid of them? Granted, for the sake of argument, that we cannot get rid of them without doing an injustice to the railroad manager who would be paid no more than a conductor—is it not better to do injustice to an occasional person who would still be treated as well as any of the others, than to compel all the others to endure present conditions? If not, the “good of the greatest number” is a fallacy, and majority rule is a crime.

But would anyone question either the right or the expediency of such action if the situation were reversed? Suppose that the present system under which a few men own almost everything had made almost everybody rich. Suppose the few who were not rich—corresponding in numbers to the present capitalist class—were to demand that the rules of the game be so changed that they could be made rich by making everyone else poor. Let us suppose, even, that the few were to say that the present system, while it worked satisfactorily for everybody else, worked an injustice to them. Let us go farther and say that the mere handful of objectors were right in such contention. Would the 95 per cent. of the people who were prospering under the system nevertheless voluntarily overturn it and impoverish themselves merely that 5 per cent. might become wealthy?

But there is still another side to the “dead level” objection. Is not enough enough? Who but a glutton wants more food than he should eat? Who but a fop wants more clothing than he needs to wear? Who but a man who has been pampered with riches, or spoiled by the envy that riches so often produce, wants more than a comfortable, roomy, sanitary house in which to live? Does the possession of more things than these make the few who have them happier?

Socialists doubt it. If they did not doubt it, they would still be against conditions that give such advantages to a few who are not socially useful while denying even ordinary comforts to everyone else. And, right here, Socialists again ask these questions: “Even if such luxuries be conceded as advantages, are we not paying too great a price to give them to a few? Is it well that so many should have no home in order that a few should have many homes? And, if there is to be any difference in homes, ought not the difference to be in favor of those who are most useful instead of those who are the most predatory?”