Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles

by John Spargo

IV

Although it is sometimes so interpreted, the theory that classes are based upon commonality of interests does not imply that men are never actuated by other than selfish motives; that a sordid materialism is the only motive force at work in the world. Marx and Engels carefully avoided the use of the word interests in such manner as to suggest that material interests control the course of history. They invariably used the term economic conditions, and the careful reader will not fail to perceive that although economic conditions produce interests which form the basis of class divisions, it is not unusual for men to act contrary to their personal interests as a result of existing conditions. In general, class interests and personal interests coincide, but there are certainly occasions when they conflict. Many an employer, having no quarrel with his employees and confident that he will be the loser thereby, joins in a fight upon labor unions because he is conscious that the interests of his class are involved. In a similar way, workingmen enter upon sympathetic strikes, consciously, at an immediate loss to themselves, because they place class loyalty before personal gain. It is significant of class feeling and temper that when employers act in this manner, and lock out employees with whom they have no trouble, simply to help other employers to win their battles, they are lauded by the very newspapers which denounce the workers when they adopt a like policy.

It is also true that there are individuals in both classes who never become conscious of their class interests, and steadfastly refuse to join with the members of their class. The workingman who refuses to join a union, or who "scabs" when his fellow-workers go out on strike, may act from ignorance or from sheer self-interest and greed. His action may be due to his placing personal interest before the larger interest of his class, or from being too shortsighted to see that ultimately his own interests and those of his class must merge. Many an employer, likewise, may refuse to join in any concerted action of his class for either of these reasons, or he may even rise superior to his class and personal interests and support the workers because he believes in the justness of their cause, realizing perfectly well that their gain means loss to him or to his class. This ought to be a sufficient answer to those shallow critics who think that they dispose of the class struggle theory of modern Socialism by enumerating those of its leading exponents who do not belong to the proletariat.

The influence of class environment upon men's beliefs and ideals is a subject which our most voluminous ethicists have scarcely touched upon as yet. It is a commonplace saying that each age has its own standards of right and wrong, but little effort has been made, if we except the Socialists, to trace this fact to its source, to the economic conditions prevailing in the different ages.[122] Still less effort has been made to account for the different standards held by the different social classes at the same time, and by which each class judges the others. In our own day the idea of slavery is generally held in abhorrence. There was a time, however, when it was almost universally looked upon as a divine institution, alike by slaveholder and slave. It is simply impossible to account for this complete revolution of feeling upon any other hypothesis than that slave-labor then seemed absolutely essential to the life of the world. The slave lords of antiquity, and, more recently, the Southern slaveholders in our own country, all believed that slavery was eternally right. When the slaves took an opposite view and rebelled, they were believed to be in rebellion against God and nature. The Church represented the same view just as vigorously as it now opposes it. The slave owners who held slavery to be a divine institution, and the priests and ministers who supported them, were just as honest and sincere in their belief as we are in holding antagonistic beliefs to-day.

What was accounted a virtue in the slave was accounted a vice in the slaveholder. Cowardice and a cringing humility were not regarded as faults in a slave. On the contrary, they were the stock virtues of the pattern slave and added to the estimation in which he was held, just as similar traits are valued in personal servants—butlers, waiters, valets, footmen, and other flunkies—in our own day. But similar traits in the slaveholder, or the "gentleman" of to-day, would be regarded as terrible faults. As Mr. Algernon Lee very tersely puts it, "The slave was not a slave because of his slavish ideals and beliefs; the slave was slavish in his ideals and beliefs because he lived the life of a slave."[123]

In the industrial world of to-day we find a similar divergence of ethical standards. What the laborers regard as wrong, the employers regard as absolutely and immutably right. The actions of the workers in forming unions and compelling unwilling members of their own class to join them, even resorting to the bitter expedient of striking against them with a view to starving them into submission, seem terribly unjust to the employers and the class to which the employers belong. To the workers themselves, on the other hand, such actions have all the sanctions of conscience. Similarly, many actions of the employers, in which they themselves see no wrong, seem almost incomprehensibly wicked to the workers.

Leaving aside the wholesale fraud of our ordinary commercial advertisements, the shameful adulteration of goods, and a multitude of other such nefarious practices, it is at once interesting and instructive to compare the employers' denunciations of "the outrageous infringement of personal liberty," when the "oppressor" is a labor union, with some of their everyday practices. The same employers who loudly, and, let it be said, quite sincerely, condemn the members of a union who endeavor to bring about the discharge of a fellow-worker because he declines to join their organization, have no scruples of conscience about discharging a worker simply because he belongs to a union, and so effectually "blacklisting" him that it becomes almost or quite impossible for him to obtain employment at his trade elsewhere. They do not hesitate to do this secretly, conspiring against the very life of the worker. While loudly declaiming against the "conspiracy" of the workers to raise wages, they see no wrong in an "agreement" of manufacturers or mine owners to reduce wages. If the members of a labor union should break the law, especially if they should commit an act of violence during a strike, the organs of capitalist opinion teem with denunciation, but there is no breath of condemnation for the outrages committed by employers or their agents against union men and their families.

During the great anthracite coal strike of 1903, and again during the disturbances in Colorado in 1904, it was evident to every fair-minded observer that the mine owners were at least quite as lawless as the strikers.[124] But there was hardly a scintilla of adverse comment upon the mine owners' lawlessness in the organs of capitalist opinion, while they poured forth torrents of righteous indignation at the lawlessness of the miners. When labor leaders, like the late Sam Parks, for example, are accused of extortion and receiving bribes, the employers and their retainers, through pulpit, press, and every other avenue of public opinion, denounce the culprit, the bribe taker, in unmeasured terms—but the bribe giver is excused, or, at worst, only lightly criticised. These are but a few common illustrations of class conscience. Any careful observer will be able to add almost indefinitely to the number.

It would be easy to compile a catalogue of such examples as these from the history of the past few years sufficient to convince the most skeptical that class interests do produce a class conscience. Mr. Ghent aptly expresses a profound truth when he says: "There is a spiritual alchemy which transmutes the base metal of self-interest into the gold of conscience; the transmutation is real, and the resulting frame of mind is not hypocrisy, but conscience. It is a class conscience, and therefore partial and imperfect, having little to do with absolute ethics. But partial and imperfect as it is, it is generally sincere."[125] No better test of the truth of this can be made than by reading carefully for a few weeks the comments of half a dozen representative capitalist newspapers, and of an equal number of representative labor papers, upon current events. The antithetical nature of their judgments of men and events demonstrates the existence of a distinct class conscience. It cannot be interpreted in any other way.