Your pay envelope

by John Richard Meader

You can divide the present-day Socialists into two classes. The best of them are utopian dreamers—theorists who hope that things will work out all right, and who are willing to take a chance. The worst of them are mere office-seekers, eager for place or pelf, and willing to become special pleaders for the oppressed in return for their votes.

There was a time when the Socialists were actuated by a high and unselfish ideal. It was a fallacious ideal, it is true. They were fighting for principles that would have worked the ruin of the nations had they been put into practice. But, as you know, a man can be both sincere and wrong at the same time. The early Socialists were sincere, even though they were wrong. But those Socialists of to-day who have turned the philosophy of Socialism into a purely political movement, and who do not ask you to believe as they do so long as you vote as they want you to vote, have neither high ideals nor good principles. They are just as bad political grafters as have ever been harbored by any of the old political parties.

If the Socialists do not know much about the practical operations of their utopian commonwealth, however, we can work out the problem for ourselves. All that it is necessary to do, John, is to collect the different pieces of the Socialist program and fit them together, just as you did the jig-saw puzzles with which you used to amuse yourself when a boy.

For example, let us take still another phase of the Socialist promise to see that every man shall get the full product of his labor.

The Socialists have been quick to realize that this fallacy is the best vote-catching device that they have yet invented. “You make it all,” they explain, “and it is all yours.”

“Yes, it is all yours!” they declare, “but do you get it? No, you do not begin to get all of your earnings. If you are very lucky you may get one-third of what you earn; if you are less lucky, you have to be content with one-fifth. It is only under Socialism that you will get all your earnings.”

This is the promise that Blatchford makes in “Merrie England” (p. 189). It is this that countless Socialist writers have promised. It is this promise that is used as a text by practically every soap-box orator in this country—or in any other, for that matter. “The right to the entire product of labor and capital together!” That is the main tenet of the gospel of Socialism.

Now, John, I am willing to admit for the sake of argument that there is considerable justice in the worker’s demand for a larger portion of the output of his industry. Of course, we cannot admit that he is entitled to the entire output of labor and capital combined; but this point need not delay us long, since he never will get it. He can’t expect to have the full product now, and he needn’t expect to have it, even if Socialism triumphs and the modern system of private ownership is buried six feet underground. Neither Socialism nor any other system of production will ever be able to make this promise good.

Do you see what this means? It simply shows that the Socialist is trying to fool you with promises that can never be kept. He tells you that he will give you the entire value of the product. He does not tell you how he is going to find out how much it is, and he is also very careful to conceal the fact that, even if he knew exactly how much the value of your labor-time amounted to, he couldn’t give you the full amount that you produce. He couldn’t do it to-day, nor a hundred years from to-day, nor a million years from to-day, simply because it is a proposition that is just as impossible as to make 2 plus 2 equal 5.

While the great mass of Socialist writers and speakers are so unscrupulous that they continue to agree to espouse a policy which they know they can never fulfil, there are other Socialists who are more honest and who frankly admit that this program is entirely impracticable. The latter are not the Socialists whose writings are exploited for the instruction of possible converts, however. When a man has caught Socialism and caught it bad, it is safe for him to read what they have written; but, for the beginner, it is best to feed him on the pre-digested and carefully censored output of the propaganda committees.