Who would thus tyrannize over the people? “The Socialists,” it is answered. But who, at that time, will the Socialists be? They will constitute at least a majority of the people, will they not? The Socialists will never gain control of the government until they become a majority—the Milwaukee coalition plan of the old capitalist parties can be depended upon to prevent that. Then what you are asked to believe is that a majority of the people will deliberately go about it to create and afterwards maintain a form of government and industry under which the majority as well as the minority will be slaves.
Remember this: Socialism will never do anything that at least a majority of the people do not want done. This is not a promise, it is fact. A Socialist administration could do nothing to which a majority of the people objected. If such an act were attempted, the majority would instantly recall the administration, wipe out its laws, and assert its own will.
And, also, remember this: If the Socialists, after the next election, were to control every department of the government there would be no upheaval, no paralysis of industry. Everybody would go to work the next morning at his accustomed task. The business of socializing industry would proceed in an orderly, deliberate manner. One industry at a time would be taken over. Perhaps the railroads would be taken over first. A year might be required to take them over. But not a wheel would stop turning while the laws were being changed.
Gentlemen who talk about the blotting out of individual liberty under a Socialist government make this fatal mistake. They assume that a minority would control a Socialist government, precisely as a minority now controls this government. And having made this error they naturally easily proceed to the next error—the assumption that if Socialists were to establish such a crazy government, they would not suffer from it as much as anyone else, and, therefore, would maintain it against the will of the others.
There is absolutely no foundation for this “tyranny-loss-of-individual-liberty” charge. A government controlled by the people cannot tyrannize over the people, nor can the abolition of poverty curtail, under democratic government, the individual liberties of the people. Who now has the most individual liberty—the man who is poverty-stricken or the man who isn’t?
Yet Socialists make no pretense of a purpose to create a world in which the worker may blithely amble up to the governmental employment office and demand a job picking a guitar. The worker may amble and demand, but he will not get the job unless there is a guitar to pick. In other words, Socialists expect to exercise ordinary common sense in the conduct of industry. Broadly speaking, the man who is best fitted to do certain work will be given that work to do. It would be absurd to plan or promise anything else. At the same time, the destruction of poverty, and the multiplication of the mass of manufactured goods that will follow the satisfaction of all of the people’s needs, will give the workers greater freedom in exercising their discretion in the choice of an occupation.
At this point in the proceedings somebody always inquires, “Who will do the dirty work?”
Socialists do not expect ever to make the cleaning of sewers as pleasant as the packing of geraniums. They do expect, however, to offer such extraordinarily good compensation for this extraordinarily unpleasant work that the sewers will be cleaned. Why should anyone expect that plan to fail, since the present plan does not fail? We now offer very poor wages for this very unpleasant work, yet the sewers do not go uncleaned. Is it to be supposed that the same men who are now doing this dirty work for low wages would refuse to do it for high wages? Most certainly the government would be compelled to offer wages high enough to get the dirty, but important, work done. It is lack of work that now makes men take dirty work at dirty wages. Under Socialism there can be no lack of work, because the people will own their own industrial machinery and will be free to use it. Furthermore, machinery is now doing much of the dirty work, and, as time goes on, will do more of it.
Socialists are often asked what they will do with the man who will not work. If facetiously inclined, they usually reply that one thing they will certainly not do with him is to make him a millionaire. But, really, the question is absurd. What do the opponents of Socialism believe a Socialist government would do with the man who would not work? Do they believe such a man would be given a hero medal, or be pensioned for life? What is there to do with such a man, but to let him starve? I mean a man having the ability to work and having work offered to him, who would nevertheless refuse to work.
But, outside the ranks of criminals, there is no such man, nor will there ever be. Socialists would punish thieves precisely as capitalists punish them, except for the fact that Socialists would not discriminate in favor of the biggest thieves. To answer the question in a single sentence, Socialists would depend upon the spurs afforded by the desires for food, clothing and shelter, to keep most of the people at work, and the odd man who might choose to steal would be treated in the ordinary way—imprisoned.