Your pay envelope

by John Richard Meader

My dear John,

If you want to see how mad a man can get and still live, ask the soap-box orator if Socialism proposes to pay all kinds of workers the same wage. Tell him that you have heard that, in the Co-operative Commonwealth, there will be absolute equality of remuneration.

If you put this question to the street-corner agitator, I’ll promise that you will get all that you bargained for and more. But don’t be frightened by his torrent of wrath and indignation. Quietly but persistently press the question home. Have your quotations where you can get at them easily, and be sure that they are strictly “scientific”—that you have the right page of the book from which they have been taken. If you will do this, and maintain your equanimity, you can very soon take the wind out of the soap-boxer’s sails, because, whatever some Socialists say to the contrary, equality of remuneration is the only possible outcome of the socialistic system, and there are plenty of simon-pure Marxists who admit as much.

In my last letter I told you what Socialism means by “equality of opportunity,” and I proved the truth of my statements by citing quotations the authenticity of which no Socialist can deny. Not one of these quotations was “torn from its context,” or otherwise mutilated, though there may be some Socialists who will tell you that this is what has happened.

Having seen that “equality of opportunity” means merely the opportunity to do the things that meet the approval of the bosses, we will now consider the question of equality of reward; and again we shall let the Socialists themselves tell us what Socialism really means to do towards “solving” the wage problem.

In the first place, let us refer to Karl Marx, for his orthodoxy is probably above suspicion. We find that the great master of the socialistic philosophy is a little uncertain as to what may happen during the transitional period between capitalism and the realization of the Socialist ideal. At this stage, he says, there may be inequalities in rights, including remuneration, but about the ultimate effect of collectivism, he has no such doubt. “In a higher phase of communist society,” he says, “after the slavish subordination of the individual under divisions of labor and consequently the opposition between mental and bodily work has disappeared ... after the individual has become more perfect in every respect ... then only ... society may inscribe on its banner: ‘From each one according to his abilities, to each one according to his needs.’” (“Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Parteiprogramms.”)

It is difficult to construe this statement of Marx to mean anything except that the end of Socialism is practically complete equality in matters of reward. Certainly this is the idea which Mr. Spargo has formed from his study of the Marxist philosophy, for he tells us very definitely in his book, “Socialism” (p. 233), that “it may be freely admitted that the ideal to be aimed at ultimately must be approximate equality of income.”

George Bernard Shaw, the eminent English Socialist, also admits that equality is the ultimate aim of Marxism. In a paper read before the Fabian Society, in 1910, and published in the Fabian News (January, 1911), Mr. Shaw defines Socialism as “a state of society in which the income of the country would be divided equally among the inhabitants, without regard to character, industry or any other consideration except that they were human beings.”

And, that there might be no misunderstanding about his attitude toward this question, Mr. Shaw, talking to an interviewer for The Labor Leader, said (March 31, 1912): “Socialism is the system of society where all the income of the country is to be divided up in exactly equal portions; every one to have it, whether idle or industrious, young or old, good or bad ...; anyone who does not believe that, is not a Socialist.... Those are the conditions on which I say I am a Socialist. Those are the conditions on which Society should stand. The point is not whether they are reasonable conditions or not. They are the only workable conditions.”

Mr. Shaw seemed to think it necessary to disarm possible criticism by admitting that the conditions he proposes might be called “unreasonable.” His fears are groundless. We do not dub his proposition “unreasonable”—indeed, it embodies the only reasonable conditions under which Socialism could be operated. The only unreasonable thing about it is that it absolutely defies any attempt to bring it into harmony with that other working proposition of Marxism: that every worker shall receive the full products of his labor. If all are to get the same reward, whether idle or industrious, whether valuable or valueless to the community, it necessarily follows that some portion of the proceeds of the industrious workers’ labor must go to the worker whose labor has been profitless.