Socialism as it is

by William English Walling

After Mr. Debs, Mr. Charles Edward Russell is now, perhaps, the most trusted of American Socialists. His statement, made a few months later (see the International Socialist Review for March, 1912), reaches identical conclusions. As it is made from the entirely independent standpoint of the observations of a practical journalist as to political methods, it strongly reënforces and supplements Mr. Debs's conclusions, drawn chiefly from labor union experience. As I have already quoted Mr. Russell at length in the previous chapter, a few paragraphs will give a sufficient idea of this important declaration:—

"Let us suppose in this country," writes Mr. Russell, "a political party with a program that proposes a great and radical transformation of the existing system of society, and proposes it upon lofty grounds of the highest welfare of mankind. Let us suppose that it is based upon vital and enduring truth, and that the success of its ideals would mean the emancipation of the race.

"If such a party should go into the dirty game of practical politics, seeking success by compromise and bargain, striving to put men into office, dealing for place and recognition, concerned about the good opinion of its enemies, elated when men spoke well of it, depressed by evil report, tacking and shifting, taking advantage of a local issue here and of a temporary unrest there, intent upon the goal of this office or that, it would inevitably fall into the pit that has engulfed all other parties. Nothing on earth could save it.

"But suppose a party that kept forever in full sight the ultimate goal, and never once varied from it. Suppose that it strove to increase its vote for this object and for none other.... Suppose it regarded its vote as the index of its converts, and sought for such votes and for none others. Suppose the entire body was convinced of the party's full program, aims, and philosophy. Suppose that all other men knew that this growing party was thus convinced and thus determined, and that its growth menaced every day more and more the existing structure of society, menaced it with overthrow and a new structure. What then?

"Such a party would be the greatest political power that ever existed in this or any other country. It would drive the other parties before it like sand before a wind. They would be compelled to adopt one after another the expedients of reform to head off the increasing threat of this one party's progress towards the revolutionary ideal. But this one party would have no more need to waste its time upon palliative measures than it would have to soil itself with the dirt of practical politics and the bargain counter. The other parties would do all that and do it well. The one party would be concerned with nothing but making converts to its philosophy and preparing for the revolution that its steadfast course would render inevitable. Such a party would represent the highest possible efficiency in politics, the greatest force in the State, and the ultimate triumph of its full philosophy would be beyond question."

Thus we see that in America reformism is regarded as a dangerous innovation, and that, before it had finished its second prosperous year, it had been abjured by those who have the best claim to speak for the American Party. Nevertheless it still persists and, indeed, continues to develop rapidly—if less rapidly than the opposite, or revolutionary, policy—and deserves the most careful consideration.

While "reformism" only became a practical issue in the American Party in 1910, it had its beginnings much earlier. The Milwaukee Socialists had set on the "reformist" course even before the formation of the present national party (in 1900). Even at this early time they had developed what the other Socialists had sought to avoid, a "leader"—in the person of Mr. Victor Berger. At first editor of the local German Socialist organ, the Vorwaerts, then of the Social-Democratic Herald, acknowledged leader at the time of the municipal victory in the spring of 1910, and now the American Party's first member of Congress, Mr. Berger has not merely been the Milwaukee organization's chief spokesman, organizer, and candidate throughout this period, but he has come to be the chief spokesman of the present reformist wing of the American Party. His editorials and speeches as Congressman, and the policies of the Milwaukee municipal administration, now so much in the public eye, will afford a fairly correct idea of the main features both of the Socialism that has so far prevailed in Milwaukee, and of American "reformism" in general.

"Socialism is an epoch of human history which will no doubt last many hundred years, possibly a thousand years," wrote Mr. Berger, editorially, in 1910. "Certainly a movement whose aims are spread out over a period like that need have no terrors for the most conservative," commented Senator La Follette, with perhaps justifiable humor.

If Socialism is to become positive, said Mr. Berger again, it must "conduct the everyday fight for the practical revolution of every day." Like the word "Socialism," Mr. Berger retains the word "revolution," but practically it comes to mean much the same as its antithesis, everyday reform.

It has been Mr. Berger's declared purpose from the beginning to turn the Milwaukee Party aside from the tactics of the International movement to those of the "revisionist" minority that has been so thoroughly crushed at the German and International Congresses. (See [Chapter VII.]) "The tactics of the American Socialist Party," he wrote editorially in 1901, "if that party is to live and succeed—can only be the much abused and much misunderstood Bernstein doctrine."

"In America for the first time in history," he added, "we find an oppressed class with the same fundamental rights as the ruling class—the right of universal suffrage...."[147]

It was the impression of many of the earlier German Socialists in this country that political democracy already existed in America and that it was only necessary to make use of it to establish a new social order. The devices the framers of our Constitution employed to prevent such an outcome, the widespread distribution of property, especially of farms, disfranchisement in the South and elsewhere, etc., were all considered as small matters compared to the difficulties Socialists faced in Germany and other countries. Many have come more recently to recognize, with Mr. Louis Boudin, that the movement "will have to learn that in this country, as in Germany or other alien lands, the fight is on not only for the use of its power by the working class, but for the possession of real political power by the masses of the people." Neither in this country nor in any other does the oppressed class have "the same fundamental rights as the ruling class." In America the working class have not even an approximately equal right to the ballot, because of local property, literacy, residence, and other qualifications, as alluded to in an earlier chapter, and it is at least doubtful whether the workers are in a more favorable position here than elsewhere to gain final and effective control of the government without physical revolution (as Mr. Berger himself has admitted; see [Chapter VI]).