Chapter XIV Marx and Socialistic Social Thought
Socialism proper had its beginning in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century. It developed primarily in continental Europe and in England. Although Plato’s communism and More’s utopianism were forerunners of socialism, the social unrest in Europe in the early years of the nineteenth century was the direct causal factor. Socialism also represented a reaction against the prevailing laissez faire thought regarding the evils of society and the suffering of the poorer classes.
Socialism began with the concepts and experiments of Saint Simon and Fourier in France, of Robert Owen in England, and of Rodbertus, Lassalle, Marx, and Engels in Germany. In France the movement was carried forward by Proudhon and Blanc; and in England by the Christian socialists, chiefly Maurice and Kingsley. In Germany, Marx maintained the position of leadership for many decades, and finally became the best known exponent of socialist thought in the world.
In his New Christianity, Saint Simon, who was referred to in the preceding chapter, made a unique contribution to social thought. His thinking was not deep, or systematic, but characterized by ingenuity. Saint Simon advocated a society in which only useful things are produced. In this industrial order, men of science will be in control. Saint Simon was greatly interested in the welfare of the poorest classes. His New Christianity was essentially a plea that the whole world devote itself to the improvment of the living conditions of the very poor. The influence which Saint Simon had upon Comte has already been mentioned.
Another important socialistic ideal was developed by Fourier (1772–1837), who worked out a social system in which the phalange is the chief instrument in securing a perfect society. The phalange is composed of from twenty-four to thirty-two groups of people. Each group comprises from seven to nine individuals. The unifying bond is natural attraction, or free elective love and sympathy. The members of each phalange live communistically in a large commodious structure called a phalanstère. The phalanges were to unite in one large world federation, with headquarters at Constantinople.
The people work according to their interests, frequently changing occupations. The products of labor are subdivided; a minimum goes equally to all, irrespective of any conditioning factors; of the remainder five-twelfths goes to labor, three-twelfths to special ability, and four-twelfths to capital. Difficult common labor is paid the most, on the assumption that he who does pleasant labor receives pay in mental ways. Every individual should have an opportunity to become a capitalist; and every woman should be enabled to become independent economically. These utopian plans of Fourier called for a sudden and complete transformation of human nature. They underestimated the force of human selfishness.
Socialistic thought was carried into politics by Louis Blanc (1811–1882). He declared that no genuine reformation of society could take place until political machinery was organized democratically. The democratic state would endow national workshops. These workshops would be operated by industrial associations composed of workingmen, who would elect their own officers, regulate their own industries, and provide for the distribution of the returns from industry. Once started by the state these industrial associations will expand and increase in number until the whole nation, and then the world, will be organized in this way.
Blanc participated in the French Revolution of 1848 and became a member of the provisional government. His national workshop idea failed in practice. His enemies were partly responsible for this defeat, because the essentials of productive work and guarantees of character which Blanc urged were disregarded. The fact, however, that these two essentials were considered necessary for the successful development of national workshops indicates that the system, under average conditions, might not be a success.
Nearly all the early socialists were evolutionists rather than revolutionists. They did not advocate class struggle theories. They developed bourgeois rather than proletariat ideas. An outstanding exception to these statements is found in the radical attitude of Babeuf (1760–1797), who was essentially a forerunner of Marxian socialism and also of the anarchistic philosophy of Proudhon and Bakunin. Babeuf vigorously proclaimed the sovereignty of the proletariat, and advocated the abolition of inheritance laws and of private property. He urged that the property of corporations be confiscated, and that a communistic state be established.
The well-known principles of justice, liberty, and equality were utilized by Proudhon (1809–1865), a philosophic anarchist. He would have the same wages paid to an unskilled workman as to a successful business or professional man. He predicted that equalization of opportunity would bring about an equalization of ability.
Proudhon attacked property rights. He declared that property is theft. In itself property is lifeless, but it nevertheless demands rent, interest, or profits, or all three. It protects itself behind law, and in order to guarantee its alleged rights, it calls out the militia, evicts families, and takes bread from the mouths of little children. It robs labor of its just returns.XIV-1
By unsatisfactory reasoning Proudhon urged the free development of individuals in society, whereby each individual would learn to govern himself so well in society that government would no longer be needed. This theory is Proudhon’s concept of anarchy. In this doctrine Proudhon neglects to provide an adequate dynamic or to foresee the ultimate complexity of human relations.
In England, Robert Owen (1771–1858) became a founder of socialism. As a factory manager, Owen developed social ideas. Living in an age of long hours, woman and child labor of the worst forms, and deplorable housing conditions, Owen deserves the credit of inaugurating a twentieth century program of welfare work. It was Owen’s theory that the workingman is so subject to his environment that even his character is determined for him. Owen attempted in theory and practice to prevent the impingement of the economic environment upon the workers. He believed in self-governing organizations of labor. He inaugurated the co-operative movement as a means of securing industrial justice and of giving the workingman a chance at the free development of his personality.
Owen objected to Malthus’ doctrine of population on the ground that it failed to consider the marvelous increase in the means of subsistence which might come from the application of inventive genius to the sources of the food supply. He also protested against the Malthusian argument for the restriction of population, because this argument did not give due weight to the unjust distribution of wealth and to the enslaving social organization to which labor is subject.
Owen’s experiments, particularly at New Harmony, Indiana, demonstrated that a communistic organization of society in itself cannot save society. The strength of Owen’s social thought lay in its accentuation of the need for providing labor with opportunities of industrial initiative and co-operation.
During the middle of the nineteenth century in England, the Christian socialists flourished. The founders of this movement were Frederick Maurice and Charles Kingsley. These men were clergymen who became greatly interested in the welfare of the working classes. They made clear the evils of the prevailing economic order, the formality of the Manchester school of economics, and proposed to apply the principles of Christianity to the economic system of the day. They opposed economic competition. For this method they urged the substitution of the ethical and spiritual principles of co-operation and love in industrial relationships—for both employer and employee in all their dealings with each other. Their socialism is essentially a vigorous application of Christian love to every-day relationships.
The influence of Christian socialism strengthened the experiment of the Rochdale weavers who in 1844 had organized a consumers’ co-operative society. The concept of consumers’ co-operation received its original impetus from the thought and practice of Robert Owen, achieved a measurable degree of concreteness under the efforts of the Rochdale weavers, and through Maurice and Kingsley won the assistance of Christianity.
In Germany, Rodbertus, Lassalle, Marx and Engels molded the thinking of socialists about the nature of human society. Rodbertus (1805–1875), the son of a university professor, was a quiet, deep thinker about social processes. According to his analysis of social development, three stages may be pointed out. The first was marked by slavery, or by private property in human beings. The second state is an indirect form of the first, namely, one of private property in land and capital. Through this type of ownership the economically fortunate or shrewd are able to exercise widespread power over the unfortunate and the uneducated. In the third state, toward which society is trending, the concept of service will rule, and private property as a dominant concept will be compelled to take a thoroughly subordinate place in human activities. The ultimate goal, according to Rodbertus, is a world communist society, with land and capital as national property, and with labor rewarded according to its productiveness.XIV-2
Rodbertus denied the validity of the wages fund theory and argued that wages are not paid by capital; it is that part of the productive earnings of labor which labor receives. His fundamental thesis is that labor is the source and measure of all value. He advocated an evolutionary procedure whereby the state should pass legislation that would guarantee just returns to labor. This form of state socialism is to be gradually developed, until a scientific socialism is reached with its emphasis upon a government of labor, for labor, and by labor.
The founder of Social Democracy in Germany, Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864), wrote two significant treatises, the Bastiat-Schulze and the Working Men’s Programme. Lassalle believed that natural conditions are productive of misery and vice, and that it is the chief business of the state to extricate men from this thraldom. The state should provide means for lifting the laboring man to a level of industrial freedom.
Lassalle objected to the theory known as the iron law of wages. He protested against the smallness of the share of his earnings which the laborer really receives. He advocated the establishment of productive associations wherein labor might perform the double function of workman and capitalist. In order that these productive associations might be started, the state should advance funds. After the productive associations have secured momentum they will continue by virtue of their own strength. Ultimately, industry will be conducted exclusively through productive associations; both industrial and social democracy will finally rule in political life. Lassalle became the founder of the Social Democratic party in Germany. Lassalle boldly denounced the reactionary classes that were in political power in his time and led the workers in a movement to overthrow the existing social order.XIV-3
The name of Karl Marx (1818–1883) is supreme on the list of socialists. Marx was born in Germany of Jewish parents, and educated at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He became a journalist, but the paper which he edited was considered too liberal and was suppressed. Marx went to Paris in 1842, where he continued editorial work. At this time he was influenced by French socialism and its leader, Proudhon. In 1845, he was expelled from Paris at the request of the Prussian government. He went to Brussels. In the meantime a deep friendship with Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) had been established.
In 1847, Marx and Engels issued the Communist Manifesto.XIV-4 This radical document was circulated widely and became extensively accepted by social revolutionists. Its doctrines were:
1. Abolition of property in lands; rents to be used for public purposes.
2. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
3. Progressive income tax.
4. Nationalization of the means of transportation and commerce.
5. Extension of productive enterprises by the state.
6. Compulsory labor.
7. Free education; no child labor.
8. Elimination of the distrust between town and country.
Marx returned to Germany and established the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne in 1848. Engels served as editor. Because of revolutionary activity, Marx was forced to leave Germany in 1849. He went to Paris and then to London, where he became a newspaper correspondent and where he lived until his death in 1883.
In 1859, the Kritik der politischen Oekonomie was published. It contains the essential principles of Marx’s system of thought. In 1864, Marx found the opportunity for which he had long been seeking, namely, to organize the workers of the world into one large association. On September 28, in St. Martin’s Hall, Marx in the presence of a vast concourse of people, he initiated the “International Workingmen’s Association.” The fundamental idea was to organize the societies of workingmen which have a common purpose, namely, the emancipation of the working classes, into a world or international union for co-operative purposes. The International proposes that governments shall put the interests of the working classes to the forefront of national concern, and subordinate the present attention they give to war, diplomacy, and national jealousies.
In 1869, Marx, aided by Karl Liebknecht (1826–1900), Engels and others, organized in Germany the Social Democratic Labor Party. The movement which Lassalle had started became united with the Marxian movement, and in 1875 the German Social Democracy presented a united front to capitalism. Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, and Bebel are its best-known leaders. Bismarck was forced to acknowledge its power, and condescended to inaugurate a system of social insurance in order to appease its rank and file.
In 1867, 1885, and 1895, the three volumes of Das Kapital appeared, in chronological order.XIV-5 By this work, Capital, Marx is known throughout the world. The style is laborious; the analyses are minute and in places difficult to follow. The method is historical. Marx analyzes social evolution. He traces the rise of capitalism from its humble beginnings to its autocratic fruition. In this development the instruments of capital showed a tendency to congregate in a decreasing number of hands. By this token it will be seen that the number of the propertyless ever increases. Likewise, their influence decreases. In this way, the proletariat is developed, a product of capitalism.
A definite class, the capitalist, acquires increasing industrial, political, and social power. The proletariat suffer increasing misery. They own nothing except their ability to labor. They are forced to throw this human quality on the commercial market and sell it to the highest bidder. But capitalism increases the number of the proletariat. This tendency, together with the increase in population, creates a superabundance of labor. Laborers are forced to compete in the labor market. The laborers who will sell their labor for the least wages will be employed. Capitalism thus forces wages to a mere subsistence level, with the result that the misery and suffering of the proletariat are greatly augmented. In this way the laborer is crushed by the operation of the iron law of wages.
By the operation of the iron law, the capitalist is enabled to appropriate to himself an increasing amount of the earnings of labor. This appropriated amount is called the surplus value. Marx developed at length the concept of surplus value. Capitalism exploits the laborer by taking possession of as large a proportion of the earnings of labor as it can obtain—through its might and its shrewdness.
The growth of capitalism, also, causes a class consciousness to develop among the members of the proletariat. This class consciousness is increasing. It produces labor organizations; these organizations are acquiring vast power. The struggles between them and the capitalistic classes go on. The two groups have little in common. By force of numbers the proletariat are bound finally to win, and to overthrow the capitalistic classes which are now in power. They will seize the means of production and manage them for the good of all.
Marx did not outline an utopia. He described the historical evolution of society as he saw it, and he participated in plans for the organization of all laborers for their common good. Inasmuch as Marx advocated compulsory labor, the laboring class under Marxian socialism would include all people. Marx advocated an equal distribution of wealth, not in the sense of the popular misconception of that term, but in the sense that the earnings from the industry shall be distributed to the workers in proportion to their achievements.
In Russia, Marxian socialism in 1918 came into power. The Bolsheviki represent the radical wing of the Marxian followers. They established essentially a dictatorship of the proletariat, substituting it for the dictatorship of capitalists which existed under the reign of the czars. Bolshevism substitutes occupation for geographic area as a basis of representative government. This program is deficient and sociologically untenable, because occupational groups do not encompass all phases of human personality. A government based on occupational group needs is representative of only a portion of the elements of human life. When seventy-five per cent of the people are illiterate, as has been the case in Russia, no form of government whether democratic or not can be other than a dictatorship.
Revolutionary socialism coincides, in part, with syndicalism, a movement which developed in France and England. Syndicalism is a radical form of trade unionism. It declares that workingmen cannot hope for genuine betterment through politics. They must organize and inaugurate a general strike. This universal strike will paralyze the present régime and render it helpless. As a result the workers will come into power. In the meantime, the workers must keep up a running warfare with capitalists and the government which supports capitalism. Sabotage is a common concept among syndicalists. It implies a program of destroying machinery, hindering the production of economic goods, and creating inefficiency in capitalistic industry. In both England and the United States, syndicalism has appeared. In the United States, the Industrial Workers of the World, or I. W. W., confess to doctrines similar to those which have been espoused in Europe under the name of syndicalism. The philosophic exponent of syndicalism has been George Sorel.
Revolutionary socialism has been paralleled in certain ways by anarchism. These teachings first acquired force through the writings of Proudhon. Another leading anarchist was the Russian nobleman and military officer, Michael Bakunin (1814–1876). Although of aristocratic birth, Bakunin became furious when he observed the human misery among the masses which Russian autocracy was producing. He became an agitator. He was confined in dungeons and exiled to Siberia. He escaped from Siberia, and by way of California went to England and then to Switzerland. His chief work is God and the State. Vital, vigorous, magnetic, fearless—these are the adjectives which describe the personality of Bakunin.
Bakunin scorned rank, birth, and fortune. He attacked external authority of all kinds. He denied the validity of concepts such as “God” and the “state”; they are parts of systems which enslave the free will of man. Classes must be abolished and the masses of individuals freed from all enslaving institutions, such as marriage, the church, the state.
In a related way Prince Kropotkin (1842–1921) developed anarchistic principles. Peter A. Kropotkin was of aristocratic Russian birth and a person of mild, courteous manners. His father was a serf owner; the son could not bear to see the sufferings which the serfs underwent. He threw away the privileges of rank and became a defender of the oppressed. He attempted to correlate the theories of anarchism with those of mutual aid, and fought socialism with the concept of centralized control on the ground that it would destroy individual liberty.XIV-6 In Chapter XXII, Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid will be analyzed.
Anarchism and socialism make similar attacks upon the evils of capitalism. Both are determined to overthrow capitalism. Both believe in revolt. They part ways when they advocate a constructive program for the new order which shall follow the violent overthrow of capitalism. Unlike socialism, anarchism holds that all government is an evil and that industry can go on without organization. It advocates a free communism.
One of the essentials in the Communist Manifesto was the appropriation of rents for public purposes. Starting from a viewpoint distinctly different from that of Karl Marx, Henry George (1839–1897) became the founder of single tax propaganda. In early manhood Henry George came to San Francisco and established a struggling newspaper. At once he found himself practically overwhelmed by the brutal competition of the metropolitan press and telegraphic news service. George was crushed by monopoly. It was this defeat which gave him a new idea—an idea that was to command the attention of the world.
As George walked the streets of New York City he puzzled over the existence of indescribable destitution and suffering in the shadow of the princely rich with their ostentatious luxuries.XIV-7 Why in a land blessed with generous natural resources should there be such poverty? Although discovery has followed discovery and invention has followed invention, neither has lessened the toil of those who most need respite. With material progress poverty takes on a larger aspect. Material progress may be likened to an immense wedge which is being forced, not underneath society, but through society. “Those who are above the point of separation are elevated, but those who are below are crushed down.”XIV-8 George set himself the task of finding out why poverty is associated with progress.
This cause George found in the land situation. As land increases in value, poverty increases. The price of land is an index of the disparity in the economic conditions of the people at the extremes of the social scale. Land is more valuable in New York City than in San Francisco, and there is more squalor and misery in New York City than in San Francisco. Land is more valuable in London than in New York City, and likewise there is more squalor and destitution in London than in New York City.
When increasing numbers of people live in a limited area under a system of private property in land, rents are raised and land values go up. The cost of living mounts, wages are kept to a minimum, overcongestion of population ensues; and again, rents and land values are increased.
Upon what does title to land rest? Where did it originate? In force. But has the first comer at a banquet the right to turn back all the chairs, and claim that none of the other guests shall partake of the food that has been provided? Does the first passenger who enters a railroad car thereby possess the right to keep out all other persons, or admit them only upon payment to him of sums of money? “We arrive and we depart, guests at a banquet continually spread, spectators and participants in an entertainment where there is room for all who come.”XIV-10 These illustrations are pertinent to the unjust elements in the present economic order.
As a result of private property in land, the owner possesses power over the tenant, a power which is tantamount to a system of slavery. There is nothing strange, therefore, in the poverty phenomena of the world. The Creator has not placed in the world the taint of injustice. The fact that amid our highest civilization men faint and die with want, is not because of the niggardliness of nature or the injustice of the Creator, but is due to the injustice of man.XIV-11 Since the owner of land receives wealth without labor to an increasing degree, so there is an increasing robbery of earnings of those who labor.
George attacked Malthusianism, and pointed out the deficiencies in the proposed remedies for poverty, such as greater economy in government, diffusion of knowledge, and improved habits of industry. He then proceeded to give his own and well known solution, namely, making land common property through a system of taxation of land values alone. Since land, not labor, is the source of all wealth, it is just and necessary to make land common property.
The weakness of Henry George’s argument lies in his single panacea for securing justice. He over-emphasized the importance of one line of procedure. He neglects other important factors, such as a selfish human nature. He rendered, however, a splendid service in showing the weaknesses in the system of private property in land. In this connection he has been unequaled in his contribution to social thought.
In this discussion of the contributions of socialism to social thought, many types or expressions of socialism have not been presented. The educational propaganda of the Fabian socialists in England should be mentioned as being very effective. Although small in number this group of intellectuals, the best known being Sidney and Beatrice Webb, have exerted a constructive and practical influence upon social thought.
Socialism has assumed various phases. (1) It originated in utopianism and in a loose, broad type of communism. (2) It then took the form of associationism, urging the organization of groups of associated individuals, such as phalanges. As utopianism was in part the expression of a poetic imagination, so associationism represented a bourgeois philosophy. (3) In the next place socialism assumed political aspirations, and advocated a governmental program whereby the existing governments shall gradually extend their power until they exercise control over rent-producing land and interest-producing capital. (4) State socialism, however, was supplanted in many minds by ideas of more radical procedure. Marxian socialism holds that a class conflict is inevitable and that the workers must overthrow the capitalists, together with the governments which they control. (5) To the other radical extreme is philosophic anarchism, with its emphasis upon the abolition of all existing governments and the establishment of individual autonomy.
Socialism has made several contributions to social thought. (1) It has called the attention of civilized mankind, and particularly of the economically wealthy classes, to the needs of the weaker classes. It has introduced humanitarian concepts into the minds of the socially unthinking educated classes. (2) It has jolted many economic autocrats from their thrones of power. It has thrown the spot light of publicity upon the selfish and wicked ostentation of the hereditary leisure classes. (3) It has held social theory to a more practical course and to developing more immediate social solutions than it otherwise would have achieved. (4) It has developed a power equal to that held by individualism. It has helped to demonstrate the dualistic nature of social evolution, that is, that there are two poles to human life rather than one.
