A history of social thought

by Emory S. Bogardus

Dr. Ward, having defined what he considers the chief principles that will govern the new social order, proceeds to measure current movements by certain standards. He reviews the declarations of the British Labor Party, the Russian Soviet Republic, the League of Nations, and the labor movements in the United States. These tendencies are all expressions of a more or less blind desire for justice. In all countries of the world the masses are restless, stirring, and experiencing a keen sense of injustice. Their leaders are struggling, unscientifically as a rule, toward the light of a new day of democracy. The trend which this struggle takes depends on the given social environment and the attitude of the persons in authority. If undue repression and autocracy are exercised for a long period of time, as in Russia under the Czars, revolution is the only means of escape open to the masses. Schooled for a long time under the lash of autocracy, when they themselves come into control, they will use the only means of control that they know, the lash of autocracy.

The British Labor Party is moving in the direction of guild socialism, which includes the organization of industry into large units, in charge of the workers and relatively free from the rule of the politicians. The national government is to have a general oversight over the large industrial units. As immediate steps in this direction, the Labor Party demands the nationalization of the railroads, mines, and of the production of electric power. Municipalities participate in the common ownership program. The method of transformation is to be gradual, largely based on political action.

In regard to the League of Nations Covenant, which was agreed upon in Paris in 1919, Dr. Ward takes a negative attitude. Although he believes firmly in an organization of good will, in international friendship and in world solidarity upon democratic bases, he asserts stoutly that the Paris Covenant is “a symbol of the sacred right of private property,”[XXVI-52] that it provided for an international organization of capitalism with all the force of powerful national governments behind it, that it represented a series of compromises between nationally selfish units, that it was an expression of the wishes of the rulers of the democratic states who are essentially of “the same moral caliber as the ruling class of imperialistic militarism, and bear a similar sinister relationship to the future welfare of the common folk.”[XXVI-53]

The weakness of Dr. Ward’s treatment of the programs for the new social order is that it discusses almost entirely programs, platforms, ideals, without considerating the relations between the programs and the actual practices of the various organizations. In contrasting the best phases, for example, of the British Labor Party with the worst phases of capitalism, an incomplete picture is given. However, this weakness in method need not obscure the strength of thought which Dr. Ward displays. Some of the most thought-provoking deductions are:

1. That individualistic Christianity is losing ground.

2. That the middle class is becoming a class of privilege.

3. That the intellectuals of the middle class, while keenly aware of the evils in the capitalistic system, are so much indebted to that system that they would consider themselves ingrates if they spoke out against it, or they are simply afraid to speak out.

4. That jails and machine guns will not stop the laboring classes in appealing for a democratic reorganization of industry, but will rather hasten revolutions, with resultant dictatorships of the proletariat.

5. That capitalism is passing, as it is bound to do, because it is organized selfishness—its fundamental principle is wrong.

6. That political democracy is fighting for its life today, being attacked on the one flank by economic imperialism and on the other by the dictatorship of the proletariat.[XXVI-54]