Socialism as it is

by William English Walling

Mr. MacDonald, who is not only a leader of the Labour Party, but also one of the chief organizers also of the leading Socialist Party of that country, has given us by far the fullest and most significant discussion of that party's policy. He says that an enlightened bourgeoisie will be just as likely to be Socialist as the working classes, and that therefore the class struggle is merely "a grandiloquent and aggressive figure of speech."[114] Struggle of some kind, he concedes, is necessary. But the more important form of struggle in present-day society, he says, is the trade rivalry between nations and not the rivalry between social classes.[115] Here at the outset is a complete reversal of the Socialist attitude. Socialists aim to put an end to this overshadowing of domestic by foreign problems, principally for the very reason that it aids the capitalists to obscure the class struggle—the foundation, the guiding principle, and the sole reason for the existence of the whole movement.

Mr. MacDonald claims further that a class struggle, far from uniting the working classes, can only divide them the more; in other words, that it works in exactly the opposite direction from that in which the international organization believes it works. The only "natural conflicts" in the present or future, within any given society, according to the spokesman of the Labour Party, represent, not the conflicting interests of certain economic classes, but the "conflicting views and temperaments" of individuals.[116] And the chief divisions of temperament and opinion, he says, will be between the world-old tendencies of action and inaction—a view which does not differ one iota from that of Mr. Roosevelt.

Mr. MacDonald asserts that "it is the whole of society which is developing towards Socialism," and adds, "The consistent exponent of the class struggle must, of course, repudiate these doctrines, but then the class struggle is far more akin to Radicalism than to Socialism."[117] I have already pointed out how the older Radicalism, or political democracy, no matter how individualistic and anti-Socialist it may be, is often, as Mr. MacDonald says, more akin to International Socialism than that kind of "State Socialism" or State capitalism Mr. MacDonald represents.

Mr. MacDonald typifies the majority of British Socialists also in his opposition to every modern form of democratic advance, such as the referendum and proportional representation. Far from being disturbed, as so many democratic writers are, because minorities are suppressed where there is no plan of proportional representation, he opposes the second ballot, which has been adopted in the majority of the countries of Continental Europe—and, in the form of direct primaries, also in the United States. The principal thing that the electors are to do, he says, is to "send a man to support or oppose a government."

Mr. MacDonald finds that there is quite a sufficiency of democracy when the elector can decide between two parties; and far from considering the members of Parliament as delegates, he feels that they fill the chief political rôle, while the people perform the entirely subordinate task either of approving or of disapproving what they have already done. Parliament "first of all initiates ideas, suggests aims and purposes, makes proposals, and educates the community in these things with a view to their becoming the ideals and aims of the community itself."[118]

While Mr. MacDonald continues to receive the confidence of the trade union party, including its Socialistic wing, the Trade Union Congress votes down proportional representation by a large majority, apparently because it does not desire its members to be constituted into a truly independent group in Parliament, does not care to work for any political principle however concrete, but prefers to take such share of the actual powers of government as the Liberal Party is disposed to grant. Proportional representation would send for the first time a few outright Socialists to Parliament, but the election returns demonstrate that the trade unionists, if more independent of the Liberals, would be fewer in number than at present. A part of the Socialist voters desire this result and, of course, believe it is their right. The majority of the trade unionists, however, who have won a certain modicum of authority in spite of the undemocratic constitution of their party, do not care to grant it—as possibly conflicting with the relatively conservative plans of "the aristocracy of labor."

The Fabian Society's "Report on Fabian Policy" says that the referendum, "in theory the most democratic of popular institutions, is in practice the most reactionary."[119] Mr. MacDonald refers to it as a "crude Eighteenth Century idea of democracy," "a form of Village Community government."[120] At the Conference of the Labour Party at Leicester in 1911 he declared that it was "anti-democratic" and that if the government were to accept it, the Labour Party "would have to fight them tooth and nail at every step of that policy." As opposed to any plans for a more direct and more popular government, he defends the "dignity and authority" of Parliament and bespeaks the "reverence and deference" that the people ought to observe toward it.

Contrast with these views Mr. Hobson's presentation of the non-Socialist Radical doctrine. "Under a professed and real enthusiasm for a representative system," as opposed to direct government, Mr. Hobson finds that there is concealed "a deep-seated distrust of democracy." He acknowledges "that the natural conservatism of the masses of the people might be sufficient to retard some reforms." "But this is safer and better for democracy," he says, "than the alternative 'faking' of progress by pushing legislation ahead of the popular will. It is upon the whole far more profitable for reformers to be compelled to educate the people to a genuine acceptance of their reform than to 'work it' by some 'pull' or 'deal' inside a party machine."[121]

Mr. MacDonald not only puts a high value on British conservatism and a low one on the French Revolution and the Declaration of Independence, but declares that no change whatever in the mere structure of government can aid idealists and reformers in any way, and expects politics and parties to be much the same in the future as they are at the present moment. It is this attitude that Mr. Hobson has in mind when he protests that "the false pretense that democracy exists" in Great Britain has proved "the subtlest defense of privilege"—and that this has been the greatest cause of the waste of reform energy not only in England but also in France and in the United States.[122] Mr. MacDonald says explicitly, "The modern state in most civilized countries is democratic," and adds impatiently that "the remaining anomalies and imperfections" cannot prevent the people from obtaining their will.[123] To dismiss in so few words the monarchy, the restrictions of the suffrage, the unequal election districts and other shortcomings of political democracy in Great Britain, and to insist that the government is already democratic, is surely, as Mr. Hobson says, "the subtlest defense of privilege."

Mr. MacDonald comes out flatly with the statement that under what he calls the democratic parliamentary government of Great Britain it is practically impossible to maintain a pure and simple Socialist Party. He says proudly that "nothing which the Labour Parties of Australia or Great Britain have ever done or tried to do under their constitutions departs in a hair's breadth from things which the Liberal and the Tory Parties in these countries do every day."[124] "Indeed, paradoxical though it may appear," he adds, "Socialism will be retarded by a Socialist Party which thinks it can do better than a Socialistic Party."[125]