The illusion contained in the words "freedom of contract" is well demonstrated in the history of the trade union, for if the employee is to be free to make such contracts as he chooses, he is not only free as regards the contracts he chooses to make with his employer, but also as regards the contracts he chooses to make with his fellow employee. And amongst the contracts that he is free to make with his fellow employee is the contract not to work for his employer except under certain agreed conditions. In other words, the trade union is simply an expression of freedom of contract between employee and employee. But to what does this freedom of contract between employee and employee lead? It leads to a suppression of the freedom of contract, for it is an agreement not to work with the employee except under conditions imposed by the trade union. Freedom of contract, therefore, so far as the employee is concerned, under the competitive system compels employees to abandon freedom of contract.
This may seem paradoxical until we understand the real significance of it. Man stands between two alternatives—the unlimited freedom and insecurity of savagery and the limited freedom and security of civilization. This has been developed in the chapter on Property and Liberty and receives interesting confirmation in the history of trade unions, which has been too often and too well told to make it necessary to repeat it here. Suffice it to point out that all historians of the trade union movement record the fact that at the very time when employers were shouting for freedom of contract they passed laws denying freedom of contract to workingmen.[83] But the very effort of the employers to prevent employees from combining with one another reduced wages to so low a level and brought about so wicked an exploitation of women and children and such unsanitary conditions of the whole working population, that a parliament of employers was as a matter of national defence compelled to restore to workingmen the right to agree to abandon freedom of contract.
It may appear to the unsophisticated that for a workingman to endeavor to escape from the tyranny of the employer by subjecting himself to the tyranny of the trade union is but a jump from the frying-pan into the fire. But such a conclusion would display woeful ignorance as to the whole trend of human development; that is to say, from involuntary subjection to a power over which we have no control, to voluntary subjection to a power over which we have control. This is the history of the development of all popular government. Reactionaries are disposed to dwell on what they call the tyranny of the majority and compare it unfavorably with the beneficent despotism of a Henri IV. They, however, ignore the very material fact that an absolute monarchy represents an involuntary servitude over which the subject has no control; whereas the tyranny of a majority represents a voluntary subjection to authority over which we have control. It may be and undoubtedly is true that control over government even under popular forms of government is small and ineffectual; but I hope to make it clear in the chapter on the Political Aspect of Socialism[84] that the ineffectualness of our control over government is due to the competitive system and that under a coöperative system our control over government would be effectual; and that it is only under a coöperative commonwealth that the ideal democracy can be realized.
The development of trade unionism throws also a great light on the fact of human solidarity. Socialists are often accused of being theoretical and the bourgeois is disposed to regard human solidarity as a theory. But in the growth of trade unionism it will be observed that solidarity presents itself as a rock upon which the competitive system must ultimately be wrecked. The capitalist class expressed its wish in the law of 1799, which was a law of oppression; but the inconvenient fact that women cannot be worked like beasts of burden under ground without arousing the sympathies even of the capitalist class; that little children cannot be made to suffer and to starve without reaching the hearts of the whole nation, and that cholera bred in unsanitary dwellings will find its way to the doors of the rich, forced this same capitalist class to abrogate the law of 1799; to abandon the policy of oppression in consideration of its own best interests.
So combinations amongst employees have grown in strength in spite of all the power of capital—political and industrial. This progress was inevitable. Given freedom of contract, or in other words, the competitive system; given some intelligence on the part of some of the proletariat; and some compassion in the hearts of some employers, and trade unions had to develop and grow in strength.
But now that they have developed and grown in strength—now that they can be said to have reached what seems to be maturity, let us consider how much good they have done. Let us discuss the unsolved and what I believe to be the insoluble problems that result from trade unionism.
Before entering into this subject, let me say that if I do not discuss here the merits of trade unionism it is not because I am not aware of them; but rather because in this work on Socialism, which I desire to make as concise as possible, it is not the merits of trade unionism which it is important to emphasize, but their demerits. Although the intelligence, order, and self-restraint displayed in the trade union movement must be to the eternal credit of the workingman, nevertheless all his efforts, however intelligent, however orderly, however sacrificing, have failed to solve the problem of the conflict between labor and capital. It is obviously wiser for the workingman to seek salvation where it is to be found than by clinging exclusively to trade unionism to abandon salvation altogether. Trade unionism, I cannot emphasize it too much—was and is still a necessary step in the development and education of the workingman; but it is only a step, and nothing demonstrates the inadequacy of trade unionism better than the conditions of unemployment that have existed during the last two years not only in the United States of America, but almost throughout the entire civilized world. It must not be supposed, however, that because trade unions are believed to have created new evils almost as intolerable as those they were organized to suppress, that trade unions are to be looked upon with disfavor. On the contrary, the whole argument of this book proceeds upon the self-evident fact that trade unions have performed a necessary function and are bound to perform a necessary function in the community until the trade union realizes its ideal, but that a realization of this ideal is impossible under the competitive system. In other words, the attempt will be made not only to demonstrate that trade unions have, under the competitive system, failed and must continue to fail to accomplish the work they set out to do, but that under the coöperative system they can and will attain their ideal—they can and will perform exactly what they started out to do. However much, therefore, our argument may demonstrate the failure of trade unions under existing conditions, it only leads to the triumph of trade unions under coöperative conditions. What the trade union has failed to do under competition, it can and will accomplish under a coöperative commonwealth.
The argument of this book, therefore, is not to abandon trade unions, but, on the contrary, to appeal to the unorganized employee to join the trade union in order to strengthen it industrially; and on the other hand to appeal to all employees, organized or unorganized, to combine politically for the purpose of securing by franchise what they never can accomplish by the strike.
The moral then to be drawn from the following pages is not that trade unions have come to an end of their usefulness, but that whereas their task in the past has been to check exploitation, their rôle in the future will be to put an end to it altogether.