Twentieth Century Socialism: What It Is Not; What It Is: How It May Come

by Edmond Kelly

This passage is extremely illuminating because we find in it the opinions of two men thoroughly representative of the two wings of the Socialist party: Eugene Debs, who is what Mr. Roosevelt would call "an extreme Socialist"; that is to say, he looks at Socialism from the revolutionary point of view; he regards the issue as between the capitalist on the one side and the proletariat on the other; he is an ardent exponent of the class struggle theory; his sympathies are exclusively marshalled on the side of the poor, and his first impulse, therefore, on being questioned on this subject, is to express an opinion contrary to compensation. And yet his ideas on this subject are not so rooted but that they can at once be corrected when he is reminded by Victor Berger of the evils likely to result from expropriation without compensation.

To those unfamiliar with the personnel of the Socialist party, it is important to say a word regarding Victor Berger. He is the editor of the Social Democratic Herald, published in Milwaukee; but he is far more than this. He is the recognized leader of the Socialist party in Wisconsin, the only State in which Socialism has succeeded in electing members to the municipal council and to the State legislature. No one who reads his editorials can fail to recognize that he is not only an economist, but a scholar. He is regularly elected to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist party at the head of the poll; and although I must not be understood to imply that there are no other men in the party of as great weight as Mr. Victor Berger, I think it may be stated without fear of contradiction that he to-day has more personal influence in the party than any other one man. The ease with which he brought the Presidential nominee around to his view on the subject of compensation is a measure of his influence. I think that upon the subject of compensation the opinion of Victor Berger is likely to prevail.[160]

The socialization of industry does not mean any change in the personnel of the industry whatever. Every man drawing salary or wages from the Standard Oil will go on drawing salary or wages as before. The industry will be handed over to those who actually maintain and work at it. These men will run the industry in very much the same way as did the guilds in the Middle Ages, subject to the payment of annuities to old stockholders determined by the court.

There would, however, be some notable distinctions, between the medieval guild and the guild under a coöperative commonwealth.

The latter would not constitute a complete monopoly; on the contrary, independent refiners would continue to refine and distribute oil, maintaining a wholesome competition of a character to prevent the oil guild from becoming perfunctory and inefficient. This competition would tend to avert the evils that attended the close monopoly of the medieval guild, practically all of which can be traced to the completeness of their monopoly.

Again the state would not own the oil industry; it would reserve the right to control it. No direct control need be exercised providing the industry were wisely administered; but if the industry had recourse to devices for crushing out competition to which the trusts to-day habitually resort, the state would exercise this direct control by appointing one or more members to the governing board of the industry. The oil guild would, therefore, be kept upon its good behavior, both by the competition of the independent refineries and by the danger of state intervention.

When the public became convinced that the time had come for the socialization of the steel industry, exactly the same process would be adopted. In this case, the function of those who had to value stockholdings would be facilitated. It has never been revealed how much J. Pierpont Morgan got in common stock for his rôle in the organization of the Steel Trust; but it is known that the amount of stock taken by him on that occasion was enormous. It would be interesting to calculate the number of hours of work he personally spent in promoting this trust and to compare these hours with the amount of stock which he received as a price of this service. Such a method might facilitate the work of those who had to value the stock and determine the amount to which he was entitled for the service he rendered.

The socialization of industry, therefore, will be seen to be a process in which, once started, the state need have little further to do. It will practically consist of a transfer of the industry from the hands of the capitalist to the hands of those actually engaged therein. It will involve the valuation of every stockholding in such a fashion that the capitalist will during his life receive in some cases all, though in other cases less than he has heretofore received; so that the excessive income now enjoyed by the capitalist will be applicable to improving the conditions of those engaged in the industry; it will also be applicable to the reduction of cost to the consumer. And this process applied to every trusted industry will have for immediate effect gradually to improve the condition of the workingmen. When applied to them all, not only will the workers receive an increased wage, but the wage they receive will have its purchasing power increased by the lowering of prices in all industries. Obviously this system is not going immediately to put the luxuries now enjoyed by the multi-millionaire at the disposal of every workingman; but it will increase them as the annuitants die, so that with the disappearance of the first generation of multi-millionaires, the conditions of labor will be still further improved; and with the disappearance of the second generation, to whom doubtless some annuities will also be given, the workingman will receive all the benefits now given to the capitalist.

Inasmuch as the wage-earners now receive on an average a little less than one-half of the whole profits of the industry, from this socialization of industry alone the laborer's will ultimately have their compensation doubled by increase of wage and decrease of prices.

By "worker" is not meant what we now call workingmen alone. It includes all engaged in industry through the work of their hands or their heads. It is a common error into which Mr. Roosevelt has fallen that Socialism proposes to improve the condition of the one at the expense of the other; that it is a doctrine of Socialists that "all wealth is produced by manual workers."[161] No such foolish proposition has ever been propounded by any Socialist however "extreme."[162] Socialists recognize the enormous rôle played by brain in the organization and administration of industry. What Socialism seeks to do is to eliminate the idle stockholder—not the industrious manager. If Mr. Roosevelt would cast his comprehensive eye around the class to which he belongs, he will observe that it is composed in great part of idle stockholders who contribute nothing whatever to the work of the industries which furnish their dividends. And because these stockholders are idle, he will find that they tend also to be "thriftless and vicious," and that he is denouncing his own class when he characterizes as "morally base" the proposition that "the thriftless and the vicious, who could or would put in but little, should be entitled to take out the earnings of the intelligent, the foresighted, and the industrious." He is very hard on them; he says this is living by "theft or by charity" and that this means "in each case degradation, a rapid lowering of self-respect and self-reliance."[163] If a Socialist were to use this language of the idle stockholders, he would be characterized as intemperate. I would not myself go so far as Mr. Roosevelt. There are many idle stockholders who, because they are unconscious of living "by theft or by charity," have preserved a social conscience that sets them to righting the wrongs of the many. Mr. Roosevelt himself, indeed, belongs to this very class. If he ever takes the trouble to understand Socialism, he will see that it proposes to put an end to the class that is idle and tends to be "thriftless and vicious"; that in other words, in this as in every other point on which Mr. Roosevelt attacks us, Socialism stands for the very opposite of what Mr. Roosevelt thinks. It proposes to take our industries out of the control of the idle and hand them over to the industrious, whether their industry be of the hand or of the head.