"For how many years have we been telling the workingman, especially the trade unionist," wrote the late Benjamin Hanford, on two successive occasions Socialist candidate for Vice President of the United States "that it was folly for him to beg in the halls of a capitalist legislature and a capitalist Congress? Did we mean what we said? I did, for one.... I not only believed it—I proved it." Obviously there are many political measures, just as there are many improvements in industry and industrial organization, that may be beneficial to the workers as well as the capitalists, but it is also clear that such changes will in most instances be brought about by the capitalists themselves. On the other hand, even where they have a group of independent legislators of their own, however large a minority it may form, the Socialists can expect no concessions of political or economic power until social revolution is at hand.
The municipal platform adopted by the Socialist Party in New York City in 1909 also appealed to workingmen not to be deluded into the belief "that the capitalists will permit any measures of real benefit to the working class to be carried into effect by the municipality so long as they remain in undisputed control of the State and federal government and especially of the judiciary." This statement is slightly inaccurate. The capitalists will allow the enactment of measures that benefit the working class, provided those measures do not involve loss to the capitalist class. Thus sanitation and education are of real benefit to the workers, but, temporarily at least, they benefit the capitalist class still more, by rendering the workers more efficient as wealth producers.
The Socialist platforms of the various countries all recognize, to use the language of that of the United States, that all the reforms indorsed by the Socialists "are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole power of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance." (Italics are mine.) This might be interpreted to mean that through such reforms the Socialists are gaining control over parts of industry and government. Marx took the opposite view; "the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling power...." He left open no possibility of saying that the Socialists thought that without overthrowing capitalism they could seize a part of the powers of government (though they were already electing legislative minorities and subordinate officials in his day).
Sometimes there are still more ambiguous expressions in Socialist platforms which even make it possible for social reformers who have joined the movement to confess publicly that they use it exclusively for reform purposes, and still to claim that they are Socialists (see Professor Clark's advice in the following chapter). For example, instead of heading such proposals as the nationalization of the railroads and "trusts" and the State appropriation of ground rent "reforms indorsed by Socialists," they have called such reforms, perhaps inadvertently, "Immediate Demands," and the American platform has referred to them as measures of relief which "we may be able to force from capitalism." There can be no doubt that Marx and his chief followers, on the contrary, saw that such reforms would come from the capitalists without the necessity of any Socialist force or demand—though this pressure might hasten their coming (see [Part I, Chapter VIII]). They are viewed by him and an increasing number of Socialists not as concessions to Socialism forced from the capitalists, but as developments of capitalism desired by the more progressive capitalists and Socialists alike, but especially by the Socialists owing to their desire that State capitalism shall develop as rapidly as possible—as a preliminary to Socialism,—and to the fact that the working people suffer more than the capitalists at any delay in the establishment even of this transitional state.
The platform of the American Party just quoted classes such reforms as government relief for the unemployed, government loans for public work, and collective ownership of the railways and trusts, as measures it may be able "to force from capitalism," as "a preparation of the workers to seize the whole power of government." But if the capitalists do enact such reforms as these, not on the independent grounds I have indicated, but out of fear of Socialism, as is here predicted, why should not the process of coercing capitalism continue indefinitely until gradually all power is taken away from them? Why should there be any special need to "seize" the whole power, if the capitalists can be coerced even now, while the government is still largely theirs?
Some "reformists" do not hesitate to answer frankly that there is indeed no ground for expecting any revolutionary crisis. Mr. John Spargo feels that reforms "will prove in their totality to be the Revolution itself," and that if the Socialists keep in sight this whole body of reforms, which he calls the Revolution, "as the objective of every Reform," this will sufficiently distinguish them from non-Socialist reformers. Mr. Morris Hillquit also speaks for many other influential Socialists when he insists that the Socialists differ from other Parties chiefly in that they alone "see the clear connection and necessary interdependence" between the various social evils. That there is no ground for any such assertion is shown by the fact that the social evils discussed in the capitalist press, and all the remedies which have any practical chance of enactment, as is now generally perceived, are due to extreme poverty, the lack of order in industry, and the need of government regulations, guided by a desire to promote "efficiency," and to perfect the capitalist system. Non-Socialist reformers have already made long strides toward improving the worst forms of poverty, without taking the slightest step towards social democracy. These reforms are being introduced more and more rapidly and are not likely to be checked until what we now know as poverty and its accompanying evils are practically abolished by the capitalist class while promoting their own comfort and security. This, for example, is, as I have shown, the outspoken purpose of Mr. Lloyd George and his capitalistic supporters in England. Similarly, it is the outspoken purpose of the promoters of the present "efficiency" movement among the business men of America. However the material conditions of the working classes may be bettered by such means, their personal liberty and political power may be so much curtailed in the process as to make further progress by their own associated efforts more difficult under "State Socialism" than it is to-day.
The State platform of the Socialist Party of New York in 1910, while seemingly self-contradictory in certain of its phrases, makes the sharpest distinctions between Socialism and "State Socialist" reform. Its criticism of reform parties is on the whole so vigorous and its insistence on class struggle tactics so strong as to make it clear that there is no expectation of reaching Socialism through reforms granted, from whatever motive, by a non-Socialist majority. I have italicized some significant phrases:—
"The two dominant political parties pretend to stand for all the people; the so-called reform parties claim to speak for the good people; the Socialist party frankly acknowledges that it is concerned chiefly with the working people....
"The great fortunes of the wealthy come from the spoliation of the poor. Large profits for the manufacturers mean starvation wages for the workers; the princely revenues of the landlords are derived from excessive rents of the tenants, and the billions of watered stock and bonds crying for dividends and interest are a perpetual mortgage upon the work and lives of the people of all generations to come....
"No political party can honestly serve all the people of the state—those who prey and those who toil; those who rob and those who are robbed. The parties as well as the voters of this state must take their stand in the conflict of interests of the different classes of society—they must choose between the workers and their despoilers.
"The Republican and Democratic Parties alike always have been the tools of the dominating classes. They have been managed, supported, and financed by the money powers of the State, and in turn they have conducted the legislatures, courts, and executive offices of the State as accessories to the business interests of those classes.
"These vices of our government are not accidental, but are deeply and firmly rooted in our industrial system. To maintain its supremacy in this conflict the dominating class must strive to control our government and politics, and must influence and corrupt our public officials.
"The two old parties as well as the so-called reform parties of the middle classes, which spring up in New York politics from time to time, all stand for the continuance of that system, hence they are bound to perpetuate and to aggravate its inevitable evils...."
The New York Party had immediately before it the example of Mr. Hearst, who has gone as far as the radicals of the old parties in Wisconsin, or Kansas, Oklahoma, California, or Oregon in verbally indorsing radical reform measures, and also of Mr. Roosevelt, who occasionally has gone almost as far. Day after day the Hearst papers had sent out to their millions of readers editorials which contain every element of Socialism except its essence, the class struggle. The New York Party, like many in other Socialist organizations, found itself compelled by circumstances to take a revolutionary stand.
For when opportunistic reformers opposed to the Socialist movement go as far as the Hearst papers in indorsing "State Socialist" reforms, what hope would there be for Socialists to gain the public ear if they went scarcely farther, either as regards the practical measures they propose or the phrases they employ? If the "reformist" Socialists answer that their ultimate aim is to go farther, may they not be asked what difference this makes in present-day affairs? And if they answer that certain reforms must be forced through by Socialist threats, political or revolutionary, will they not be told, first that it can be shown that the whole "State Socialistic" reform program, if costly to many individual capitalists, promises to prove ultimately profitable to the capitalist class, and second, that it is being carried out where there is no present menace either of a Socialist revolution or even of a more or less Socialistic political majority.