Socialism as it is

by William English Walling

These conclusions as to the possibilities and limitations of the general strike are based on a careful study of the military and other powers of the existing governments. "The power of the modern State," says Roland-Holst, "is superior to that of the working class in all its material bases either of a political or of an economic character. The fact of political strikes can change this in no way. The working class can no more conquer economically, through starvation, than it can through the use of powers of the same kind which the State employs, that is, through force. In only one point is the working class altogether superior to the ruling class—in purpose.... Governmental and working class organizations are of entirely different dimensions. The first is a coercive, the second a voluntary, organization. The power of the first rests primarily on its means of physical force; that of the latter, which lacks these means, can break the physical superiority of the State only by its moral superiority." It is almost needless to add that by "moral superiority" Roland-Holst means something quite concrete, the willingness of the working people to perform tasks and make sacrifices for the Socialist cause that they would not make for the State even under compulsion. It is only through advantages of this kind, which it is expected will greatly increase with the future growth of the movement, that Socialists believe that, supported by an overwhelming majority of the people, a time may arrive when they can make a successful use of the nation-wide general strike. It is hoped that the support of the masses of the population will then make it impossible for governments to operate the railroads by military means, as they have hitherto done in Russia, Hungary, France, and other countries. It is thought by many that the general strike of 1905 in Russia, for example, might have attained far greater and more lasting results if the peasants had been sufficiently aroused and intelligent to destroy the bridges and tracks, and it is not doubted that a Socialist agricultural population consisting largely of laborers (see [Chapter II]) would do this in such a crisis.

Here, then, are the two conditions under which it is thought by Roland-Holst and the majority of Socialists that the general strike may some day prove the chief means of bringing about a revolution: the active support of the majority of the people, and the superior organization and methods and the revolutionary purpose of the working classes.

In the preparation of the working people to bring about a general strike when the proper time arrives, lies a limitless field for immediate Socialist activity. Both Jaurès and Bebel feel that it is even likely that the general strike will also have to be used on a somewhat smaller scale even before the supreme crisis comes. Jaurès thinks that it will be needed to bring about essential reforms or to prevent war, and Bebel believes that it will very likely have to be used to defend existing political and economic rights of the working class; in other words, to protect the Party and the unions from destruction. At the Congress at Jena in 1905 the conservative trade union official, von Elm, together with a majority of the speakers, argued that it was possible that an attempt would be made to take away from the German working people the right of suffrage, the freedom of the press and assemblage and the right of organization. In such a case he and others advocate a general strike, though he said he fully realized it would be a bloody one. "We must reckon with this," he said. "As a matter of course, we wish to shed no blood, but our enemies drive us into the situation.... The moment comes when you must be ready to give up your blood and your property [here he was interrupted by stormy applause]. Prepare yourselves for this possibility. Our youths must be brought up so that among the soldiers here and there will be a man who will think twice before he shoots at his father and mother [as Kaiser Wilhelm publicly insists he must], and at the same time at freedom." The reception of von Elm's speech showed that his words represented the feeling of the whole German movement. Bebel spoke with the same decision, advocating the use of the general strike under the same conditions as did von Elm, while at the next congress at Mannheim he declared that it would also be justified, under certain circumstances, not only for protecting existing rights, but for extending them, e.g. for the purpose of obtaining universal and equal suffrage in Prussia. Bebel did not think that the party or the unions were strong enough at that moment to use the general strike for other than defensive purposes, but he said that, if they were able to double their strength,—and it now seems they will have accomplished this within a very few years,—then the time would doubtless arrive when it would be worth while to risk the employment of this rather desperate measure for aggressive purposes also.

While Socialism is thus traveling steadily in the direction of a revolutionary general strike, capitalist governments are coming to regard every strike of the first importance as a sort of rebellion. In discussing the Socialist possibilities of a national railroad strike, Roland-Holst, representing the usual Socialist view, says that it makes very little difference whether the roads are nationally or privately owned; in either case such a strike is likely to be considered by capitalistic governments as something like rebellion.

But while this applies only to the employees of the most important services like railroads, when privately operated, it applies practically to all government employees; there is an almost universal tendency to regard strikes against the government as being mutiny—an evidence of the profoundly capitalistic character of government ownership and "State Socialism" which propose to multiply the number of such employees. Here, too, the probable governmental attitude towards a future general strike is daily indicated.

President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, has written that any strike of "servants of the State, in any capacity—military, naval, or civil," should be considered both treason and mutiny.

"In my judgment loyalty and treason," he writes, "ought to mean the same thing in the civil service that they do in military and naval services. The door to get out is always open if one does not wish to serve the public on these terms. Indeed, I am not sure that as civilization progresses loyalty and treason in the civil services will not become more important and more vital than loyalty and treason in the military and naval services. The happiness and the prosperity of a community might be more easily wrecked by the paralysis of its postal and telegraph services, for example, than by a mutiny on shipboard.... President Roosevelt's attitude on all this was at times very sound, but he wabbled a good deal in dealing with specific cases. In the celebrated Miller Case at the Government Printing Office he laid down in his published letter what I conceive to be the sound doctrine in regard to this matter. It was then made plain to the printers that to leave their work under pretense of striking was to resign, in effect, the places which they held in the public service, and that if those places were vacated they would be filled in accordance with the provisions of the civil service act, and not by reappointment of the old employees after parley and compromise.... To me the situation which this problem presents is, beyond comparison, the most serious and the most far-reaching which the modern democracies have to face." Dr. Butler concludes that this question "will wreck every democratic government in the world unless it is faced sturdily and bravely now, and settled on righteous lines." (My italics.)[272]

Our Ex-President, however, has ceased apparently to "wabble." In Mr. Roosevelt's medium, the Outlook, an editorial on the strike of the municipal street cleaners of New York City reads in part as follows:—

Men who are employed by the public cannot strike. They can, and sometimes they do, mutiny. When they should be treated not as strikers but as mutineers.

This issue was presented by the refusal of the men to do what they were ordered to do. When soldiers do that in warfare they are given short shrift. Of course, in combating accumulating dirt and its potent ally, disease, an army of street cleaners is not face to face with any such acute public dangers as those confronting a military force; and therefore insubordination among street cleaners does not call for any such severity as that which is absolutely necessary in war times; but the principle in the one case is the same as that in the other—those who disrupt the forces of public defense range themselves on the side of the public enemy. They are not in any respect on the same basis as the employees of a private employer. They are wage earners only in the sense that soldiers are wage earners.[273]