"Equal opportunities for all" would also mean Socialism. But equal opportunities for a limited number, no matter if that number be much larger than at present, may merely strengthen capitalism by drawing the more able of the workers away from their class and into the service of capitalism. Or opportunities more equal for all, without a complete equalization, may merely increase the competition of the lower classes for middle-class positions and so secure to the capitalists cheaper professional service. So-called steps towards equal opportunities, even if rapid enough to produce a very large surplus of trained applicants for whom capitalism fails to provide and so increase the army of malcontents, may simply delay the day of Socialism.
I have spoken of Socialists whose underlying object is opportunistic—to obtain immediate results in legislation no matter how unrelated they may be to Socialism. Others are impelled either by an inactive idealism, or by attachment to abstract dogma for its own sake. Their custom is in the one instance to make the doctrine so rigid that it has no immediate application, and in the other to "elevate the ideal" so high, to remove it so far into the future, that it is scarcely visible for the present-day purposes, and then to declare that present-day activity, even if theoretically subject to an ideal or a doctrine, must be guided also by quite other and "practical" principles, which are never clearly defined and sometimes are scarcely mentioned. Mr. Edmond Kelly, for instance, puts his "Collectivism Proper," or Socialism, so far into the future that he is forced to confess that it will be attained only "ultimately," or perhaps not at all, while "Partial Collectivism may prove to be the last stage consistent with human imperfection."[100] He acknowledges that this Partial Collectivism ("State Socialism") is not the ideal, and it is evident that his ideal is too far ahead or too rigid or theoretical, to have any connection with the ideals of the Socialist movement, which arise exclusively out of actual life.
This opportunism defends itself by an appeal to the "evolutionary" argument, that progress must necessarily be extremely slow. Progress in this view, like Darwin's variations, takes place a step at a time, and its steps are infinitesimally small. The Worker of Brisbane, Australia, says: "The complicated complaint from which society suffers can only be cured by the administration of homeopathic doses.... Inculcate Socialism? Yes, but grab all you can to be going on with. Preach revolutionary thoughts? Yes, but rely on the ameliorative method.... The minds of men are of slow development, and we must be content, we fear, to accomplish our revolution piecemeal, bit by bit, till a point is come to when, by accumulative process, a series of small changes amounts to the Great Change. The most important revolutions are those that happen quietly without anything particularly noticeable seeming to occur."
What is a Great Change depends entirely, in the revolutionist's view, on how rapidly it is brought about, and "revolutionary thoughts" are empty abstractions unless accompanied by revolutionary methods. Once it is assumed that there is plenty of time, the difference between the conservative and the radical disappears. For even those who have the most to lose realize in these days the inevitability of "evolution." The radical is not he who looks forward to great changes after long periods of time, but he who will not tolerate unnecessary delay—who is unwilling to accept the so-called installments or ameliorations offered by the conservative and privileged (even when considerable) as being satisfactory or as necessarily contributing to his purpose at all. The radical spirit is rather that of John Stuart Mill, when he said, "When the object is to raise the permanent condition of a people, small means do not merely produce small effects; they produce no effect at all."
Some political standard and quantitative measure is as necessary to social progress as similar standards are necessary in other relations. If the political standard of the Socialists is so low as to regard social reform programs which on the whole are more helpful to the capitalists than to other classes—and therefore "produce no effect at all" as far as the Socialist purpose is concerned—as if they were concessions, then it follows naturally that the Socialists will be ready to pay a price for such concessions. They will not only view as a relative gain over the capitalists measures which are primarily aimed at advancing capitalist interests, but they will inevitably be ready at a price to relax to some extent the intensity of their opposition to other measures that are capitalistic and antipopular. For instance, if old age pensions are considered by the workers to be an epoch-making reform and a concession, they may be granted by the capitalists all the more readily. But if thus overvalued, advantage will be taken of this feeling, and they will in all probability be accompanied by restrictions of the rights of labor organizations. On the other hand, if such pensions, however desirable, are considered as a reform which will result indirectly in great savings to the capitalist classes, to public and private charitable institutions, to employers, etc., then the Socialists will accept them and, if possible, hasten their enactment,—but, like the French, will refuse to pay for them out of their own pockets (even through indirect taxation, as the British workingmen were forced to do) and will allow them neither to be used as a cloak for reaction, nor as a substitute for more fundamental reforms.
In other words, a rational political standard would teach that a certain measure of political progress is normal in capitalist society as a result of the general increase of wealth and the general improvement in political and economic organization, especially now that the great change to State capitalism is taking place; while reforms of an entirely different character are needed if there is to be any relative advance of the political and economic power of the masses, any tendency that might lead in the course of a reasonable period of time to economic and social democracy.
"A new and fair division of the goods and rights of this world should be the main object of all those who conduct human affairs," said De Tocqueville. The economic progress and political reforms of this capitalistic age are doubtless bringing us nearer to the day when a new and fair division of goods and rights can take place, and they will make the great transformation easier when it comes, but this does not mean that in themselves they constitute even a first step in the new dispensation. That they do is denied by all the most representative Socialists from Marx to Bebel.
The most bitter opponents of Socialism, like its most thoroughgoing advocates, have come to see that the whole character of the movement has grown up from its unwillingness to compromise the aggressive tactics indispensable for the revolutionary changes it has in view, until it has become obvious that, just as Socialism as a social movement is the opposite pole to State capitalism, so Socialism as a social method is the opposite pole to opportunism.
FOOTNOTES:
[93] The Communist Manifesto.