The truth about socialism

by Allan L. Benson

But what wonder, also, that the robbed should resist those who robbed them? The robbed, too, have the instinct of self-preservation. They, too, want to live. All through the ages, they have fought for the right to live. By the sheer force of numbers, they have driven their exploiters from pillar to post. Again and again, they have compelled their exploiters to abandon one method of robbery, only to see them take up another. And, though some men no longer own other men’s bodies, some men still live by the sweat of other men’s brows.

The question is: Must this go on forever? Must a few always live so far from poverty that they cannot see it, while the rest live so close to it that they cannot see anything else? Must millions of women work in factories at men’s work, while millions of men walk the streets unable to get any work? Must the cry of child-labor forever sound to high heaven above the rumble of the mills that grind their bodies into dividends? Must the pinched faces of underfed children always make some places hideous?

No man in his senses will say that this situation must always exist. Human nature revolts at it. The wrong of it rouses the feelings even before it touches the intellect. Something within us tells us to cry out and to keep crying out until we find relief. We have tried almost every remedy that has been offered to us, but every remedy we have tried has failed. The hungry children are still with us. The hungry women are still with us. The hungry men are still with us. Never before was it so hard for most people to live. Yet, we live at a time when men, working with machinery, could make enough of everything for everybody.

Your radical Republican recognizes these facts and says something is the matter. Your Democratic radical recognizes these facts and says something is the matter. Your Rooseveltian Progressive also recognizes these facts and says something is the matter. But if you will carefully listen to these gentlemen, you will observe that none of them believes much is the matter. None of them believes much need be done to make everything right. One wants to loosen the tariff screw a little. The others want to put a new little wheel in the anti-trust machine.

Socialists differ from each of these gentlemen. Socialists say much is the matter with this country. Socialists say much is the matter with any country, most of whose people are in want or in fear of want, and some of whose people are where want never comes or can come. Some such conditions might have been tolerated a thousand years ago. Socialists will not tolerate them to-day. They say the time for poverty has passed. They say the time for poverty passed when man substituted steam and electricity for his muscles and machinery for his fingers.

But poverty did not go out when steam and electricity came in. On the contrary, the fear of want became intensified. Now, nobody who has not capital can live unless he can get a job. In the days that preceded the steam engine, nobody had to look for a job. Everybody owned his own job. The shoemaker could make shoes for his neighbors. The weaver could weave cloth. Each could work at his trade, without anybody’s permission, because the tools of their trades were few and inexpensive. Now, neither of them can work at his trade, because the tools of his trade have become numerous and expensive. The tools of the shoemaker’s trade are in the great factory that covers, perhaps, a dozen acres. The tools of the weaver’s trade are in another enormous factory. Neither the shoemaker nor the weaver can ever hope to own the tools of his trade. Nor, with the little hand-tools of the past centuries, can either of them compete with the modern factories. The shoe trust, with steam, electricity and machinery, can make a pair of shoes at a price that no shoemaker, working by hand, could touch.

Thus the hand-workers have been driven to knock at the doors of the factories that rich men own and ask for work. If the rich men can see a profit in letting the poor men work, the poor men are permitted to work. If the rich men cannot see a profit in letting the poor men work, then the poor men may not work. Though there be the greatest need for shoes, if those in need have no money, the rich men lock up their factories and wave the workers away. The workers may starve, if they like. Their wives and children may starve. The workers may become tramps, criminals or maniacs; their wives and their little children may be driven into the street—but the rich men who closed their factories because they could see no profit in keeping them open—these rich men take no part of the responsibility. They talk about the “laws of trade,” go to their clubs and have a little smoke, and, perhaps, the next week give a few dollars to “worthy charity” and forget all about the workers.

Now, the Socialists are extremely tired of all this. Their remedy may be all wrong, but they are tired of all this. Put the accent upon the tired all the time. They say it is all wrong. Not only do they say it is all wrong, but they say they know how to make it all right. They do not propose to do any small job of tinkering, because they say that if small jobs of tinkering were enough to cure the great evil of poverty, we should have cured it long ago. They say we have been tinkering with tariffs, income taxes and the money question for a hundred years without reducing either want or the fear of want. They say we have made no progress, during the last hundred years, in reducing want and the fear of want, because we have never hit the grafters where they live. By this, they mean that we have never cut the tap root upon which robbery grows. The serfs cut off the tap root when they threw off chattel slavery, but another tap root has grown and we have not yet discovered where to strike.

The Socialists say they know where to strike.

“Strike at the machinery of the country,” they say, “by having the people, through the government, own the machinery of the country.”