It is such scenes of bloodshed and injustice—just this kind of triumph of might over right—that Socialists would have repeated. They cannot deny this, John, because this program, horrible as it may seem to us, is perfectly logical from the Socialist point of view. “According to Socialist ethics,” says Ming (“The Morality of Modern Socialism,” p. 344), “all means are morally good which lead to the victory of the proletariat. Why, then, should violence not be justified if it brings success? The working class is the only class that has the right and power to be; it is society, the nation, the true public, while capitalism is but a cancer of the social organism. Why should it not employ violence when deemed an effective means for emancipation, conquest of power and introduction of collectivism?”
No, John, it is not when Socialists advocate violence that they are illogical; it is when they deny that they advocate and plan to resort to violence in accomplishing their purposes that they show a lack of logic.
CHAPTER XV
WHAT WE ARE PROMISED
My dear John,
We have already seen how impossible many of the basic theories of Socialism are; but, heretofore, we have been dealing with definite proposals, and not with the general application of the Socialist ideas. To return to the simile of the jig-saw puzzle, John, we may say that we now have all the pieces properly cut out before us. What we have to do is to fit them together and see what kind of a picture they give us.
Of course, we shall not be able to do this without some protests from Socialists. They do not like us to test their theories by constructing an imaginary Commonwealth, even though we use no other material than the facts which they themselves have given us—the admitted principles of international Socialism—in its construction. Indeed, Socialists insist that it is a mark of imbecility for anyone to ask for such a picture to say nothing of complaining because it is not available. “Only the ignorant would ask for a cut-and-dried plan of a state that can exist only in its completeness in the distant future,” says Suthers, in his popular propaganda booklet, “Common Objections to Socialism Answered.” “Why is it impossible to produce a cut-and-dried plan? Simply because comprehensive prophesy of the future is beyond human power.... Is there a man alive to-day who can forecast the details of all the events that will register themselves in his single consciousness to-morrow?... It were a silly waste of time for any Socialist to spend his life in drawing up cut-and-dried plans of a distant future.... They (the critics) say that one says one thing and one another. God of brains, what else do they expect?”
“For all his heat,” says Kelleher (“Common Ownership,” p. 105), “Mr. Suthers is far from answering a very serious objection, or rather, consciously or unconsciously, from dealing with the real point of the objection at all. It is not the mere details of the socialistic state that the critics of Socialism are demanding to have explained, but its essential constitution. It is no reply to say that we do not require or expect to know the details about the future under the existing system. We do not, but we know the conditions in which these details will work themselves out, and rightly or wrongly we accept them, because, with all their faults, we are convinced that they are the best that are available for us.”
Moreover, not all the Socialists have been as loath to forecast the details of the proposed Co-operative Commonwealth as Mr. Suthers. H. G. Wells has given us a rather elaborate series of prognostications in his “New Worlds for Old,” and the following—Mrs. Besant’s picture of the future which Socialism proposes—is said by Bliss to be “one of the best short ideals of Socialism yet written.” In quoting this “prophecy” I have found it necessary to abridge it slightly, but you will find all the details that have been omitted in Mrs. Besant’s contribution to the “Fabian Essays.”
“The unemployed have been transformed into communal workers—in the country on great farms, improvements of the bonanza farms in America—in the towns in various trades. Public stores for agricultural and industrial products are open in all convenient places, and filled with the goods thus communally produced. The great industries, worked as Trusts, are controlled by the state instead of by capitalist rings.... After a while the private producers will disappear, not because there will be any law against individualistic production, but because it will not pay. The best form of management during the transition period, and possibly for a long time to come, will be through the Communal Councils which will appoint committees to superintend the various branches of industry. These committees will engage the necessary manager and foreman for each shop, factory, etc., and will hold power of dismissal as of appointment.... This (making the worker accommodate himself to the demand for labor), however, hardly solves the general question as to the apportioning of laborers to the various forms of labor. But a solution has been found by the ingenious author of ‘Looking Backward.’ Leaving young men and women free to choose their employments, he would equalize the rates of volunteering by equalizing the attractions of the trades.... But there are unpleasant and indispensable forms of labor which, one would imagine, can attract none—mining, sewer-cleaning, etc. These might be rendered attractive by making the hours of labor in them much shorter than the normal working day of pleasanter occupations.... Further, much of the most disagreeable and laborious work might be done by machinery, as it would be now if it were not cheaper to exploit a helot class.... In truth, the extension of machinery is very likely to solve many of the problems connected with differential advantages in employment; and it seems certain that in the very near future the skilled worker will not be the man who is able to perform a particular set of operations, but the man who has been trained in the use of machinery.... Out of the value of the communal produce ... all charges and expenses are deducted, and the remaining value should be divided among the communal workers as a ‘bonus.’ It would be obviously inconvenient, if not impossible, for the district authority to sub-divide this value and allot so much to each of its separate undertakings—so much left-over from gas works for the men employed there, so much from the tramways for the men employed on them, and so on. It would be far simpler and easier for the municipal employes to be regarded as a single body, in the service of a single employer, the local authority; and that the surplus from the whole businesses carried on by the Communal Council should be divided without distinction among the whole of the communal employes.”
Taking Mrs. Besant as a guide and calling upon other Socialist authorities for further directions, let us see if we can put our jig-saw puzzle together and thus ascertain what kind of a place the Co-operative Commonwealth is likely to be.