The truth about socialism

by Allan L. Benson

In view of such facts as these, is it not idle to talk about “regulating” the property of others? Is it not stupid to believe that in such regulation lies our greatest hope of material well-being? You must admit that, thus far, the process of regulation has gone on painfully slowly. If poverty, the fear of poverty and enforced idleness are any indications of the progress of the country, it is difficult to see that we have made any progress. Never before were so many millions of men out of work in this country as there were during the panic of 1907. Never before were so many millions of human beings so uncertain of their future. A few men hold us all in the hollows of their hands. Our destinies lie, not in ourselves, but in them.

Is it not so? Don’t be blinded by “commissions,” political pow-wow and nonsense—is it not so? If it is so, how much progress have we made toward getting rid of poverty by trying to regulate property that we do not own? We have been playing the game of “regulation” for more than a generation. It has done nothing for you. How many more generations do you expect to live? Are you willing to go to your grave with this pestilential question of poverty still weighing upon your heart? Are you willing to go out of the world feeling that you never really lived in it—that it was only a place where you toiled and sweat and suffered while others lived?

We Socialists put it to you as a common-sense affirmation that your time can come now if you and all others like you will join in a political effort to make it come.

Any political partisan will make you the same promise, but you know, from sad experience, that their promises are worthless. We ask you to consider whether our promises are worthless.

We promise you, for instance, that if you will give us power you need never again want for work. If the people, through the government, owned the trusts and other great industries, why should anybody ever again want for work? Thenceforward, the great plants would always be open. No factory door would ever be closed so long as there was a demand for the product of the factory. If the demand for goods were greater than the capacity of the factories, the number of factories would be increased. Nothing is simpler than to increase the number of factories. Only men and materials are required. We have an abundance of each.

But we promise you more. We promise you that, if you will give us power, we will give you not only the continuous opportunity to work, but we will give you continuous freedom from robbery. Again, nothing is simpler than to work without robbery. All that is necessary is to enable the worker to go to work without walking into anyone’s clutches. No one can now go to work without walking into many men’s clutches. When a man goes to work for the Steel Trust, he walks into the clutches of everybody who owns the stocks or the bonds of the trust. When a man goes to work for a railway company, he walks into the clutches of every person who owns the stocks or the bonds of the railway company. In other words, the stock and bondholders of these institutions, by virtue of their control of the machinery involved, have it in their power to say whether the worker shall work or not work. They say he shall not work unless they can make a profit upon his labor. The worker cannot haggle too long because he must labor or starve. Therefore, he comes to terms. He walks into the clutches of those who want to rob him of part of what he produces. He consents to work for a wage that represents only a part of what he has produced.

That is robbery. You may call it business, but it is robbery. If robbery is anything, it is the taking of the property of another against his will. The worker knows his wage is not all he earns. He resents the fact that he must toil long and hard for a poor living, while his employer lives in luxury without doing any useful labor. But the worker has no alternative. He must consent. He does consent.

Under Socialism, there would be no such robbery, because goods would not be produced for profit. Goods would be produced only because the people wanted them. Whatever the people wanted would be produced, not in niggardly volume, but in abundance.

Decent homes, for instance, would be produced. Millions of people in the great cities now live in houses that are death-traps. They are not houses, in the sense that country dwellers understand the word, but dingy rooms, piled one upon another in great blocks. Light seldom enters some of them. Fresh air can hardly get into any of them. The germs of tuberculosis abound. The germs of other diseases swirl through the dust of the streets. The death-rate is abnormally high—particularly the death-rate of children. Yet, nothing would be simpler, if the profit-seeking capitalists were shorn of their power, than to give every human being in this country a decent home.

The best material out of which to make a house is cement or brick. Either is better than wood because wood both rots and burns. There is practically no limit to the number of cement and brick houses that could be built in this country. Every State contains enough clay and other materials to build enough houses to supply the whole country. If the five millions of men who were out of work for many years following the panic of 1907 could have been employed at house-building, they themselves would not only have been prosperous, but the American people would have been housed as they had never been housed before. If the two millions of men who are always denied employment, even in so-called “good” times, were continuously engaged in house-building, good houses would be so numerous that we should not know what to do with them.