Reformers proceed upon the assumption that the competitive system is good and that capitalists can be entrusted with the task of reforming it so to eliminate its admitted evils. The revolutionary Socialist on the contrary says that the competitive system is bad and that the capitalist cannot be entrusted with the task of putting an end to it. So he decries mere reform and insists upon nothing less than revolution, the transfer of political power from the capitalist to the people at large. There is thus between the reformer and the revolutionary Socialist a difference of principle; the one upholding the competitive system and the other denouncing it.
But there is also another difference of hardly less importance between the reformer and the revolutionary Socialist—a difference of method. A bourgeois reformer has no preconceived plan of reform. He hits at every evil like an Irishman at a fair—as he sees it. Governor Hughes, who belongs to this class, thought in 1908 that race track gambling was the greatest evil of existing conditions and devoted the entire session of the legislature to an anti-race track gambling bill which he triumphantly passed, only to see it nullified at the first opportunity by the courts. In 1909 he thought that a primary election bill was the most important reform; but this primary election bill failed to pass. The legislature, very much under his guidance, spent two years in passing a useless anti-race track gambling bill and refusing to pass a primary bill, although during these two years at least 200,000 men have been seeking employment and not finding it, and a population therefore of about a million[154] in New York State alone has been on the verge of starvation in consequence.
The most striking feature of the bourgeois reformer is his lack of sense of proportion; but there is a reason for it. Unemployment is not a popular subject with the class to which Governor Hughes belongs. As an evil it is too merciless; as a resource it is too unavowable.[155] So it is impossible to get any legislature in any State in this Union effectively to consider the subject of unemployment.
The Socialist, on the contrary, has a definite preconceived plan of legislative enactment. While the reformer, however well-intentioned and intelligent, is hacking away at random at the jungle of evils in which the competitive system encompasses him, and hardly ever attaining any substantial progress, the Socialist has his course directed for him by the polar star. He regards such bills as anti-race track gambling as a waste of time. Race-track gambling is a necessary and poisonous fruit of the competitive system. It is useless to attack the fruit and leave the tree standing. The only legislation, therefore, that interests the Socialist looks towards putting an end or a check to the competitive system that results in the exploitation of the Many by the Few. And of all the evils the one that has stood out most startling and appalling during the last two years is the evil of unemployment.
The immediate demands of the Socialist party published at the end of the Socialist platform,[156] indicate the character of measures which the Socialists urge. In one sense these are reforms, many of which Governor Hughes favors, but they all tend towards one definite end—the limitation and ultimate suppression of the competitive system with the exploitation of the Many by the Few. In one sense, therefore, Socialists are reformers, but revolutionary reformers; all their reforms look towards the transfer of political power from the Few who exploit political power for their individual benefit, to the Many who will utilize political power for the benefit of all.
Having indicated the difference between reform and revolution, let us consider how far the Socialist is justified in saying that the competitive system is so bad that it cannot be improved—that it must be replaced altogether.
When a wagon is thoroughly worn out, it is useless to repair it; for if one part is strengthened it throws the strain upon a neighboring part which breaks down; and if that part is strengthened it throws the strain upon another which again breaks down. It is possible by intelligently renewing various parts of the wagon upon a preconceived plan, eventually to replace the broken-down wagon by an entirely new one; but the difficulty of doing this is extreme, and the wagon when so reconstructed, being composed of parts of different ages, must again give way at its most worn part. So experience indicates that it is better to throw a fairly used-up wagon on the junk heap and build a new one in its place.
Reform measures such as we have had under former administrations resemble an effort to patch up a worn-out wagon; for a reform measure directed at one evil is found to produce other evils very apt to be as great, if not greater than those that the measure is trying to suppress. Not many years ago a society for the suppression of vice made a crusade in New York upon vicious resorts. Such resorts are abominable; they should not exist in an orderly community. But attacking these resorts, without attacking the conditions that created them, only distributed the evil all over the city, involving a pernicious contact with unperverted youth.
Again, the difficulty of reconciling Sunday closing of barrooms with furnishing bona fide travellers at hotels with refreshments was solved in New York by the Raines law, which defined a hotel by establishing a minimum of bedrooms. The result was that to almost every barroom there is attached this minimum of bedrooms to permit of the sale of liquor on Sunday; and this effort to secure Sunday closing has resulted in converting the barroom into a house of prostitution.
Again, legislation for putting an end to the awful congestion and filth of the New York city tenements has by imposing upon the landlord expensive repairs, raised rents, so that, although the tenement dweller is little benefited because of evasion of the law, his rent has been uniformly raised.