[113] The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States, by Charles B. Spahr (1896).
[114] Writings and Speeches of John J. Ingalls, page 320.
[115] Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society, page 265.
CHAPTER VI
THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY
I
No part of the theory of modern Socialism has called forth so much criticism and opposition as the doctrine of the class struggle. Many who are otherwise sympathetic to Socialism denounce this doctrine as narrow, brutal, and productive of antisocialistic feelings of class hatred. Upon all hands the doctrine is condemned as an un-American appeal to passion and a wicked exaggeration of social conditions. When President Roosevelt attacks the preachers of the doctrine, and wrathfully condemns class-consciousness as "a foul thing," he doubtless expresses the views of a majority of American citizens. The insistence of Socialists upon this aspect of their propaganda is undoubtedly responsible for keeping a great many outside of their movement who otherwise would be identified with it. If the Socialists would repudiate the doctrine that Socialism is a class movement, and make their appeal to the intelligence and conscience of all classes, instead of to the interests of a special class, they could probably double their numerical strength at once. To many, therefore, it seems a fatuous and quixotic policy to preach such a doctrine, and it is very often charitably ascribed to the peculiar intellectual and moral myopia of fanaticism.
Before accepting this conclusion, and before indorsing the Rooseveltian verdict, the reader is bound as a matter of common fairness, and of intellectual integrity, to consider the Socialist side of the argument. There is no greater fanaticism than that which condemns what it does not take the trouble to understand. The Socialists claim that the doctrine is misrepresented; that it does not produce class hatred; and that it is a vital and pivotal point of Socialist philosophy. The class struggle, says the Socialist, is a law of social development. We only recognize the law, and are no more responsible for its existence than for the law of gravitation. The name of Marx is associated with the law in just the same manner as the name of Newton is associated with the law of gravitation, but Marx is no more responsible for the social law he discovered than was Newton for the physical law he discovered. There were class struggles thousands of years before there was a Socialist movement, thousands of years before Marx was born, and it is therefore absurd to charge us with the creation of the class struggle, or class hatred. We realize perfectly well that if we ignored this law in our propaganda, making our appeal to a universal sense of abstract justice and truth, many who now hold aloof from us would join our movement. But we should not gain strength as a result of their accession to our ranks. We should be obliged to emasculate Socialism, to dilute it, in order to win a support of questionable value. History teems with examples of the disaster which inevitably attends such a course. We should be quixotic and fatuous indeed if we attempted anything of the kind. Such, briefly stated, are the main outlines of the reply which the average Socialist gives to the criticism of the class struggle doctrine described.