Socialism and Democracy in Europe. Samuel Peter Orth

CHAPTER I

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INTRODUCTION—WHY DOES SOCIALISM EXIST?ToC

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      The answer to this question will bring us nearer to the core of the social movement than any attempted definition. The French Socialist program begins with the assertion, "Socialism is a question of class." Class distinction is the generator of Socialism.

      The ordinary social triptych—upper, middle, and lower classes—will not suffice us in our inquiry. We must distinguish between the functions of the classes. The upper class is a remnant of the feudal days, of the manorial times, when land-holding brought with it social distinction and political prerogative. In this sense we have no upper class in America. The middle class is composed of the business and professional element, and the lower class of the wage-earning element.

There are two words, as yet quite unfamiliar to American readers, which are met with constantly in European works on Socialism and are heard on every hand in political discussions—proletariat and bourgeois. The proletariat are the wage-earning class, the poor, the underlings. The bourgeois[1] are roughly the middle class. The French divide them into petits bourgeois and grands bourgeois. Werner Sombart divides them into lower middle class, the manual laborers who represent the guild system, and bourgeoisie, the representatives of the capitalistic system.[2]

      It will thus be seen that these divisions have a historical basis. The upper class reflect the days of feudalism, of governmental prerogative and aristocracy. The middle class are the representatives of the guild and mercantile systems, when hand labor and later business acumen brought power and wealth to the craftsman and adventurer. The lower class are the homologues of the slaves, the serfs, the toilers, whose reward has constantly been measured by the standard of bare existence. Socialism arises consciously out of the efforts of this class to win for itself a share of the powers of the other classes. It is necessary to understand that while this class distinction is historic in origin it is essentially economic in fact. It is not "social"; a middle-class millionaire may be congenial to the social circles of the high-born. It is not political; a workingman may vote with any party he chooses. He may ally himself with the conservative Center as he sometimes does in Germany, or with the Liberal Party as he sometimes does in England, or with either of the old parties as he does in the United States. On the other hand, a bourgeois may be a Socialist and vote with the proletarians. Indeed, many of the Socialist leaders belong to the well-to-do middle class.

      This class distinction, then, is economic. It is a distinction of function, the function of the capitalist and the function of the wage-earner. Let us go one step further; it is a distinction in property. The possessor of private wealth can become a capitalist by investing his money in productive enterprise. He then becomes the employer of labor. There are all grades of capitalists, from the master wagon-maker who works by the side of his one or two workmen, to the "captain" of a vast industry that gives employment to thousands of men and turns out a wagon a minute.

      The institution of private property is the basis of Socialism because it is the basis of capitalistic production. It places in one man's hands the power of owning raw material, machinery, land, factory, and finished product; and the power of hiring men to operate the machinery, and to convert the raw material into marketable wares. As long as this power was limited to hand industry the proletarian movement was abortive. When the industrial revolution linked the ingenuity of man to the power of nature it so multiplied the potency of the possessor that the proletarian movement by stress of circumstances became a great factor in industrial life.

      While the possession either of wealth or family tradition was always the basis of class distinction, the industrial revolution brought with it the enormously multiplied power of capital and the glorification of riches. The proletarians multiplied rapidly in number, and all the evils of sharp class distinction were heightened. In all lands where capitalistic production spread, the two classes grew farther apart, the distinction between possessor and wage-earner increased.

      It is not the mere possession of wealth, however, which forms the animus of the Socialist movement. It is probably not even the abuse of this wealth, although this is a large factor in the problem. It is the psychological effect of the capitalist system that is the real enginery of Socialism. It is the class feeling, the consciousness of the workingman that he is contributing muscle and blood and sweat to the perfection of an article whose possession he does not share. This feeling is aroused by the contrasts of life that the worker constantly sees around him. He feels that his own life energy has contributed to the magnificent equipages and the palatial luxuries of his employer. He compares his own lot and that of his family with the lot of the capitalist. This feeling of envy is not blunted by the kaleidoscopic suddenness with which changes of fortune can take place in America to-day. By some stroke of luck or piece of ingenious planning, a receiver of wages to-day may be the giver of wages to-morrow.

      Nor does the spread of education and intelligence dull the contrasts. It greatly heightens them. The workman can now begin to analyze the conditions under which he lives. He ponders over the distinctions that are actual and contrasts them with his imagined utopia. To him the differences between employer and employee are not natural. He does not attribute them to any fault or shortcoming or inferiority of his own, nor of his master, but to a flaw in the organization of society. The social order is wrong.

      The workingman has become the critic. Here you have the heart of Socialism. Whatever form its outward aspect may take, at heart it is a rebellion against things as they are. And whatever may be the syllogisms of its logic, or the formularies of its philosophy, they all begin with a grievance, that things as they are are wrong; and they all end in a hope for a better society of to-morrow where the inequalities shall somehow be made right.

      In his struggle toward a new economic ideal, the proletarian has achieved a class homogeneity and self-consciousness. The individuality that is denied him in industry he has sought and found among his own brethren. In the great factory he loses even his name and becomes number so-and-so. In his union and in his party he asserts his individuality with a grim and impressive stubbornness. The gravitation of common ideals and common protests draws these forgotten particles of industrialism into a massed consciousness that is to-day one of the world's great potencies. The very fact that we call this body of workers "the masses" is significant. We speak of them as a geologist speaks of his "basement complex." We recognize unconsciously that they form the foundation of our economic life.

      The class struggle, then, is between two clearly defined and self-conscious elements in modern industrial life that are the natural product of our machine industry. On the one hand is the business man pursuing with fevered energy the profits that are the goal of his activity; on the other hand are the workingmen who, more and more sullen in their discontent, are clamoring louder each year for a greater share of the wealth they believe their toil creates.

There is some reason to believe that this class basis of Socialism is vanishing. In England J. Ramsay MacDonald denies its significance.[3] Revisionists and progressive Socialists, who are throwing aside the Marxian dogmas, are also preaching the universality of the Socialist conception. However,