Violence and the Labor Movement

by Robert Hunter

Let us try to grasp the immensity of the task actually executed by Marx. First, consider his scientific work. During all the period of these many battles every leisure moment was spent in study. While others were engaged in organizing what they were pleased to call the "Revolution" and waiting about for it to start, Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, and all this group were spending innumerable hours in the library. We see the result of that labor in the three great volumes of "Capital," in many pamphlets, and in other writings. By this painstaking scientific work of Marx the nature of capitalism was made known and, consequently, what it was that should be combated, and how the battle should be waged. In addition to these studies, which have been of such priceless value to the labor and socialist movements of the world, Marx, by his pitiless logic and incessant warfare, destroyed every revolution-maker, and then, by an act of surgery that many declared would prove fatal, cut out of the labor movement the "pan-destroyers." Once more, by a supreme effort, he turned the thought of labor throughout the world to the one end and aim of winning its political weapons, of organizing its political armies, and of uniting the working classes of all lands. Here, then, is a brief summary of the work of this genius, who fertilized with his powerful thoughts the proletarian movements of both worlds. The most wonderful thing of all is that, in his brief lifetime, he should not only have planned this gigantic task, but that he should have obtained the essentials for its complete accomplishment.

And, as we look out upon the world to-day, we find it actually a different world, almost a new world. The present-day conflict between capital and labor has no more the character of the guerilla warfare of half a century ago. It is now a struggle between immense organizations of capital and immense organizations of labor. And not only has there been a revolution in ideas concerning the nature of capitalism but there has been as a consequence a revolution in the methods of combat between labor and capital. While all the earlier and more brutal forms of warfare are still used, the conflict as a whole is to-day conducted on a different plane. The struggle of the classes is no longer a vague, undefined, and embittered battle. It is no longer merely a contest between the violent of both classes. It is now a deliberate, and largely legal, tug-of-war between two great social categories over the ends of a social revolution that both are beginning to recognize as inevitable. The representative workers to-day understand capitalism, and labor now faces capital with a program, clear, comprehensive, world-changing; with an international army of so many millions that it is almost past contending with; while its tactics and methods of action can neither be assailed nor effectively combated. From one end of the earth to the other we see capital with its gigantic associations of bankers, merchants, manufacturers, mine owners, and mill owners striving to forward and to protect its economic interests. On the other hand, we see labor with its millions upon millions of organized men all but united and solidified under the flag of international socialism.

And, most strange and wondrous of all—as a result of the logic of things and of the logic of Marx—the actual positions of the two classes have been completely transposed. Marx persuaded the workers to take up a weapon which they alone can use. Like Siegfried, they have taken the fragments of a sword and welded them into a mighty weapon—so mighty, indeed, that the working class alone, with its innumerable millions, is capable of wielding it. The workers are the only class in society with the numerical strength to become the majority and the only class which, by unity and organization, can employ the suffrage effectively. While fifty years ago the workers had every legal and peaceable means denied them, to-day they are the only class which can assuredly profit through legal and peaceable means. It is obvious that the beneficiaries of special privilege can hope to retain their power only so long as the working class is divided and too ignorant to recognize its own interests. As soon as its eyes open, the privileged classes must lose its political support and, with that political support, everything else. That is absolutely inevitable. The interests of mass and class are too fundamentally opposed to permit of permanent political harmony.

Nobody sees this more clearly than the intelligent capitalist. As the workers become more and more conscious of their collective power and more and more convinced that through solidarity they can quietly take possession of the world, their opponents become increasingly conscious of their growing weakness, and already in Europe there is developing a kind of upper-class syndicalism, that despairs of Parliaments, deplores the bungling work of politics, and ridicules the general incompetence of democratic institutions. At the same time, however, they exercise stupendous efforts, in the most devious and questionable ways, to retain their political power. Facing the inevitable, and realizing that potentially at least the suffrages of the immense majority stand over them as a menace, they are beginning to seek other methods of action. Of course, in all the more democratic countries the power of democracy has already made itself felt, and in America, at any rate, the powerful have long had resort to bribery, corruption, and all sorts of political conspiracy in order to retain their power. Much as we may deplore the debauchery of public servants, it nevertheless yields us a certain degree of satisfaction, in that it is eloquent testimony of this agreeable fact, that the oldest anarchists are losing their control over the State. They hold their sway over it more and more feebly, and even when the State is entirely obedient to their will, it is not infrequently because they have temporarily purchased that power. When the manufacturers, the trusts, and the beneficiaries of special privilege generally are forced periodically to go out and purchase the State from the Robin Hoods of politics, when they are compelled to finance lavishly every political campaign, and then abjectly go to the very men whom their money has put into power and buy them again, their bleeding misery becomes an object of pity.

This really amounts to an almost absolute transposition of the classes. In the early nineties Engels saw the beginning of this change, and, in what Sombart rightly says may be looked upon as a kind of "political last will and testament" to the movement, Engels writes: "The time for small minorities to place themselves at the head of the ignorant masses and resort to force in order to bring about revolutions is gone. A complete change in the organization of society can be brought about only by the conscious coöperation of the masses; they must be alive to the aim in view; they must know what they want. The history of the last fifty years has taught that. But, if the masses are to understand the line of action that is necessary, we must work hard and continuously to bring it home to them. That, indeed, is what we are now engaged upon, and our success is driving our opponents to despair. The irony of destiny is turning everything topsy-turvy. We, the 'revolutionaries,' are profiting more by lawful than by unlawful and revolutionary means. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are being slowly destroyed by their own weapons. Their cry is that of Odilon Barrot: 'Lawful means are killing us.'... We, on the contrary, are thriving on them, our muscles are strong, and our cheeks are red, and we look as though we intend to live forever!" [(8)]

And if lawful means are killing them, so are science and democracy. We no longer live in an age when any suggestion of change is deemed a sacrilege. The period has gone by when political, social, and industrial institutions are supposed to be unalterable. No one believes them fashioned by Divinity, and there is nothing so sacred in the worldly affairs of men that it cannot be questioned. There is no law, or judicial decision, or decree, or form of property, or social status that cannot be critically examined; and, if men can agree, none is so firmly established that it cannot be changed. It is agreed that men shall be allowed to speak, write, and propagate their views on all questions, whether religious, political, or industrial. In theory, at least, all authority, law, administrative institutions, and property relations are decided ultimately in the court of the people. Through their press these things may be discussed. On their platform these things may be approved or denounced. In their assemblies there is freedom to make any declaration for or against things as they are. And through their votes and representatives there is not one institution that cannot be molded, changed, or even abolished. Upon this theory modern society is held together. It is a belief so firmly rooted in the popular mind that, although everything goes against the people, they peacefully submit. So firmly established, indeed, is this tradition that even the most irate admit that where wrong exists the chief fault lies with the people themselves.

Whatever may be said concerning its limitations and its perversions, this, then, is an age of democracy, founded upon a widespread faith in majority rule. Whether it be true or not, the conviction is almost universal that the majority can, through its political power, accomplish any and every change, no matter how revolutionary. Our whole Western civilization has had bred into it the belief that those who are dissatisfied with things as they are can agitate to change them, are even free to organize for the purpose of changing them, and can, in fact, change them whenever the majority is won over to stand with them. This, again, is the theory, although there is no one of us, of course, but will admit that a thousand ways are found to defeat the will of the majority. There are bribery, fraudulent elections, and an infinite variety of corrupting methods. There is the control of parliaments, of courts, and of political parties by special privilege. There are oppressive and unjust laws obtained through trickery. There is the overwhelming power exercised by the wealthy through their control of the press and of nearly all means of enlightenment. Through their power and the means they have to corrupt, the majority is indeed so constantly deceived that, when one dwells only on this side of our political life, it is easy to arrive at the conviction that democracy is a myth and that, in fact, the end may never come of this power of the few to divert and pervert the institutions for expressing the popular will.

But there is no way of achieving democracy in any form except through democracy, and we have found that he who rejects political action finds himself irresistibly drawn into the use of means that are both indefensible and abortive. Curiously enough, in this use of methods, as in other ways, extremes meet. Both the despot and the terrorist are anti-democrats. Neither the anarchist of Bakounin's type nor the anarchist of the Wall Street type trusts the people. With their cliques and inner circles plotting their conspiracies, they are forced to travel the same subterranean passages. The one through corruption impresses the will of the wealthy and powerful upon the community. The other hopes that by some dash upon authority a spirited, daring, and reckless minority can overturn existing society and establish a new social order. The method of the political boss, the aristocrat, the self-seeker, the monopolist—even in the use of thugs, private armies, spies, and provocateurs—differs little from the methods proposed by Bakounin in his Alliance. And it is not in the least strange that much of the lawlessness and violence of the last half-century has had its origin in these two sources. In all the unutterably despicable work of detective agencies and police spies that has led to the destruction of property, to riots and minor rebellions that have cost the lives of many thousands in recent decades, we find the sordid materialism of special privilege seeking to gain its secret ends. In all the unutterably tragic work of the terrorists that has cost so many lives we find the rage and despair of self-styled revolutionists seeking to gain their secret ends. After all, it matters little whether the aim of a group of conspirators is purely selfish or wholly altruistic. It matters little whether their program is to build into a system private monopoly or to save the world from that monopoly. Their methods outrage democracy, even when they are not actually criminal. The oldest anarchist believes that the people must be deceived into a worse social order, and that at least is a tribute to their intelligence. On the other hand, the Bakouninists, old and new, believe that the people must be deceived into a better social order, and that is founded upon their complete distrust of the people.

And, rightly enough, the attitude of the masses toward the secret and conspiratory methods of both the idealist anarchist and the materialist anarchist is the same. If the latter distrust the people, the people no less distrust them. If the masses would mob the terrorist who springs forth to commit some fearful act, the purpose of which they cannot in the least understand, they would, if possible, also mob the individual responsible for manipulation of elections, for the buying of legislatures, and for the purchasing of court decisions. They fear, distrust, and denounce the terrorist who goes forth to commit arson, pillage, or assassination no less than the anarchist who purchases private armies, hires thugs to beat up unoffending citizens, and uses the power of wealth to undermine the Government. In one sense, the acts of the materialist anarchist are clearer even than those of the other. The people know the ends sought by the powerful. On the other hand, the ends sought by the terrorist are wholly mysterious; he has not even taken the trouble to make his program clear. We find, then, that the anarchist of high finance, who would suppress democracy in the interest of a new feudalism, and the anarchist of a sect, who would override democracy in the hope of communism, are classed together in the popular mind. The man who in this day deifies the individual or the sect, and would make the rights of the individual or the sect override the rights of the many, is battling vainly against the supreme current of the age.

Democracy may be a myth. Yet of all the faiths of our time none is more firmly grounded, none more warmly cherished. If any man refuses to abide by the decisions of democracy and takes his case out of that court, he ranges against himself practically the entire populace. On the other hand, the man who takes his case to that court is often forced to suffer for a long time humiliating defeats. If the case be a new one but little understood, there is no place where a hearing seems so hard to win as in exactly that court. Universal suffrage, by which such cases are decided, appears to the man with a new idea as an obstacle almost overwhelming. He must set out on a long and dreary road of education and of organization; he must take his case before a jury made up of untold millions; he must wait maybe for centuries to obtain a majority. To go into this great open court and plead an entirely new cause requires a courage that is sublime and convictions that have the intensity of a religion. One who possesses any doubt cannot begin a task so gigantic, and certainly one who, for any reason, distrusts the people cannot, of course, put his case in that court. It was with full realization of the difficulties, of the certainty of repeated defeats, and of the overwhelming power against them that the socialists entered this great arena to fight their battle. Universal suffrage is a merciless thing. How often has it served the purpose of stripping the socialist naked and exposing him to a terrible humiliation! Again and again, in the history of the last fifty years, have the socialists, after tremendous agitation, gigantic mass meetings, and widespread social unrest, marched their followers to the polls with results positively pitiful. A dozen votes out of thousands have in more cases than one marked their relative power. There is no other example in the world of such faith, courage, and persistence in politics as that of the socialists, who, despite defeat after defeat, humiliation after humiliation, have never lost hope, but on every occasion, in every part of the modern world, have gone up again and again to be knocked down by that jury.