Socialists, on the contrary, believe that industrial reforms will never lead to equality of opportunity except when carried out wholly independently of the conservatives who will lose by them. They believe that such reforms as are carried out by the capitalists and their governments, beneficent, radical, and even stupendous as they may be, will not and cannot constitute the first or smallest step towards industrial democracy.
Mr. Roosevelt's views are identical on this point with those of Mr. Woodrow Wilson and other progressive leaders of the opposite party. Mayor Gaynor of New York, for example, was quoted explaining the great changes that took place in the fall elections of 1910 on these grounds: "We are emerging from an evil case. The flocking of nearly all the business men, owners of property, and even persons with $100 in the savings bank, to one party made a division line and created a contrast which must have led to trouble if much longer continued. The intelligence of the country is asserting itself, and business men and property owners will again divide themselves normally between the parties, as formerly." Here again is the fundamental antithesis to the Socialist view. Leaving aside for the moment the situation of persons with $100 in the savings bank, or owners of property in general (who might possess nothing more than a small home), Socialists are working, with considerable success, towards the day when at least one great party will take a position so radical that the overwhelming majority of business men (or at least the representatives of by far the larger part of business and capital) will be forced automatically into the opposite organization.
Without this militant attitude Socialists believe that even the most radical reforms, not excepting those that sincerely propose equal opportunity or the abolition of social classes as their ultimate aim, must fail to carry society forward a single step in that direction. Take, as an example, Dr. Lyman Abbott, whose advanced views I have already referred to (see Part I, Chap. III). Notwithstanding his advocacy of industrial democracy, his attack on the autocracy of capitalism and the wages system, and his insistence that the distinction between non-possessing and possessing classes must be abolished, Dr. Abbott opposes a class struggle. Such phrases amount to nothing from the Socialist standpoint, if all of these objects are held up merely as an ideal, and if nothing is said of the rate at which they ought to be attained or the means by which the opposition of privileged classes is to be overcome. No indorsement of any so-called Socialist theory or reform is of practical moment unless it includes that theory which has survived out of the struggles of the movement, and has been tested by hard experience—a theory in which ways and means are not the last but the first consideration,—namely, the class struggle.
Mr. Roosevelt and nearly all other popular leaders of the day denounce "special privilege." But the denouncers of special privilege, aside from the organized Socialists, are only too glad to associate themselves with one or another of the classes that at present possess the economic and political power. To the Socialists the only way to fight special privilege is to place the control of society in the hands of a non-privileged majority. The practical experience of the movement has taught the truth of what some of its early exponents saw at the outset, that a majority composed even in part of the privileged classes could never be trusted or expected to abolish privileges. Neither Dr. Abbott, Mr. Roosevelt, nor other opponents of the Socialist movement, are ready to indorse this practical working theory. For its essence being that all those who by their economic expressions or their acts stand for anything less than equality of opportunity should be removed from positions of power, it is directed against every anti-Socialist. Dr. Abbott, for example, demands only "opportunity," instead of equal opportunity, and Mr. Roosevelt wishes merely "to start all men in the race for life on a reasonable equality." (My italics.)[211]
Let us see what Marx and his successors say in explanation of their belief that the "class struggle" must be fought out to an end. Certainly they do not mean that each individual capitalist is to be regarded by his working people as their private enemy. Nor, on the other hand, can the expression "class struggle" be interpreted, as some Socialists have asserted, to mean that there was no flesh and blood enemy to be attacked, but only "the capitalist system." To Marx capitalism was embodied not merely in institutions, which embrace all classes and individuals alike, but also in the persons of the capitalist class. And by waging a war against that class he meant to include each and every member of it who remained in his class, and every one of its supporters. To Marx the enemy was no abstraction. It was, as he said, "the person, the living individual" that had to be contended with, but only as the embodiment of a class. "It is not sufficient," he said, "to fight the general conditions and the higher powers. The press must make up its mind to oppose this constable, this attorney, this councilor."[212] These individuals, moreover, he viewed not merely as the servants or representatives of a system, but as part and parcel of a class.
The struggle that Marx had in mind might be called a latent civil war. It was not a mere preparation for revolution, since it was as real and serious in times of peace as in those of revolution or civil war. But it was a civil war in everything except the actual physical fighting, and he was always ready to proceed to actual fighting when necessary. Throughout his life Marx was a revolutionist. And when his successors to-day speak of "the class struggle," they mean a conflict of that depth and intensity that it may lead to revolution.
None of the classical Socialist writers, however, has failed to grasp the absolute necessity to a successful social movement, and especially to a revolutionary one, of making the class struggle broad, inclusive, and democratic. In 1851 Marx wrote to the Socialists: "The forces opposed to you have all the advantages of organization, discipline, and habitual authority; unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined." (The italics are mine.)