Socialists have always taught that Socialism can develop only out of the full maturity of capitalism, and so favor the normal advance of capitalist industry and government and the reforms of capitalist collectivism—on their constructive side. But if capitalism in its highest form of "State Socialism" is the only foundation upon which the Socialism can be built, it is at the same time that form of capitalism which will prevail when Socialism reaches maturity and is ready for decisive action; and it is, therefore, the very enemy against which the Socialist hosts will have been drilled and the Socialist tactics evolved.

The older capitalism, which professed to oppose all industrial activities of the government, must disappear, but it is not the object of attack, for the capitalists themselves will abandon it without Socialist intervention in any form. Socialists have urged on this evolution from the older to the newer capitalism by taking the field against the reactionaries, but they do not, as a rule, claim that by this action they are doing any more for Socialism than they are for progressive capitalism.

Socialism can only do what capitalism, after it has reached its culmination in State capitalism, leaves undone; namely, to take effective measures to establish equal opportunity and abolish class government. To accomplish this, Socialists realize they must reckon with the resistance of every element of society that enjoys superior opportunities or profits from capitalist government, and they must know just which these elements are. It must be decided which of the non-privileged classes are to be permanently relied upon in the fight for this great change, to what point each will be ready to go, and of what effective action it is capable. Next, the classes upon which it is decided to rely must be brought together and organized. And, finally, the individual members of these classes must be developed, by education and social struggles, until they are able to overcome the resistance of the classes now in control of industry and government.

The popular conviction that the very existence of social classes is in complete contradiction with the principles of democracy, no amount of contrary teaching has been able to blot out. What has not been so clearly seen is the active and constant resistance of the privileged classes to popular government and industrial democracy, i.e. the class struggle.

"We have long rested comfortably in this country on the assumption," says Senator La Follette, "that because our form of government was democratic, it was therefore automatically producing democratic results. Now there is nothing mysteriously potent about the forms and names of democratic institutions that should make them self-operative. Tyranny and oppression are just as possible under democratic forms as under any other. We are slowly realizing that democracy is a life, and involves continual struggle."[207]

Senator La Follette fails only to note that this struggle to make democracy a reality is not a struggle in the heart of the individual, but between groups of individuals, that these groups are not formed by differences of temperament or opinion, but by economic interests, and that nearly every group falls into one of two great classes, those whose interests are with and those whose interests are against the capitalists and capitalist government.

Why is the sinister rÔle of the upper classes not universally grasped? Because the ideas and teachings of former generations still survive, however much contradicted by present developments. At the time of the American and French Revolutions and for nearly a century afterwards, when political democracy was first securing a world-wide acceptance as an ideal, it was looked upon as a creed which had only to be mentally accepted in order to be forthwith applied to life. The only forces of resistance were thought to be due to the ignorance or possibly to the unregenerate moral character of the unconverted. The democratic faith was accepted and propagated by the French and others almost exactly as religion had been. As late as the middle of the last century this conception of democracy, due to the wide diffusion of small and in many localities approximately equal farms and small businesses, continued to prevail.

About the middle of the nineteenth century the first advance was made. It became recognized with the coming of railroads and steamships that society could never become fixed as a Utopia or in any other form, but must always be subject to change,—and the ideal of social evolution gained a considerable acceptance even before the evolution theory had been generally applied to biology. It was seen that if the ideal of democracy was to become a reality, a certain degree of intellectual and material development was required,—but it was thought that this development was at hand. It was a period when wealth was rapidly becoming more equally distributed, when plenty of free land remained, and when it was commonly supposed that universal free trade and universal peace were about to dawn upon the nations, and equal opportunity, if not yet achieved, was not far away. The obstacles in the way of progress were not the resistance of privileged classes, but the time and labor required for mankind to conquer the world and nature. With the establishment of so-called democratic and constitutional republics in the place of monarchies and landlord aristocracies, and the abolition of slavery in the United States, all systematic opposition to social progress, except in the minds of a few perverted or criminal individuals, was supposed to be at an end.

A generation or two ago, then, though it was now recognized that the golden age could not be attained immediately by merely converting the majority to a wise and beneficent social system (as had been proposed in the first half of the century), yet it was thought that, with the advance of science and the conquest of nature, and without any serious civil strife, "equality of opportunity" was being gradually and rapidly brought to all mankind. This state of mind has survived and is still that of the majority to-day, when the conditions that have given rise to it have disappeared.

Not all previous history has a greater economic change to show than the latter half of the nineteenth century, which converted all the leading countries from nations of small capitalists into nations of hired employees. Even such a far-sighted and broad-minded statesman as Lincoln, for example, had no idea of the future of his country, and regarded the slaveowners and their supporters as the only classes that dreamed that we could ever become a nation of "hired laborers" (the capitalism of to-day), any more than we could remain in part a nation of "bought laborers." Lincoln puts a society based on hired labor in the same class with a society based on owned labor, on the ground that both lead to an effort "to place capital on an equal footing, if not above labor in the structure of the government." This effort, marked by the proposal of "the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of the right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative" (so similar to tendencies prevailing to-day), he calls "returning despotism." And so inevitable did it seem to Lincoln that a nation based on hired labor would evolve a despotic government, that he fell back on the fact that the population was composed chiefly not of laborers, but of small capitalists, and would probably remain so constituted, as the only convincing ground that our political democracy would last. In a word, our greatest statesman recognized that our political democracy and liberty were based on the wide distribution of the land and other forms of capital. (See Lincoln's Message of December 3, 1861.) If Lincoln foresaw no class struggle between "hired labor" and the "returning despotism," this was only because he mistakenly expected that the nation would continue to consist chiefly of small capitalists. Yet his conclusions and those of his contemporaries, so clearly limited to conditions that have passed away, are taught like a gospel to the children in our public schools to-day.

The present generation, however, is slowly realizing, through the development of organized capitalism in industry and government, and the increase of hired laborers, that it is not nature alone that civilization must contend against, not merely ignorance or poverty or the backwardness of material development, but, more important than all these, the systematic opposition of the employing and governing classes to every program of improvement, except that which promises still further to increase their own wealth and power.

The Socialist view of the evolution of society is that the central fact of history is this struggle of classes for political and economic power. The governing class of any society or period, Marx taught, consists of the economic exploiters, the governed class of the economically exploited. The governing class becomes more and more firmly established in power, until it begins to stagnate, but the machinery of production continues to evolve, and falls gradually into the hands of some exploited element which is able to use this economic advantage as a means for overthrowing its rulers. Marx felt that with the vast revolution in society marked by modern science and modern machinery, the time is fast approaching when the exploited classes of to-day will be able to overthrow the present ruling class, the capitalists, and at the same time establish an industrial democracy, where all class oppression will be brought to an end.

However his predictions may turn out in the future, Marx's view of the past is rapidly gaining ground and is possibly accepted by the majority of those most competent to speak on these questions to-day, including many leading economists and sociologists and prominent figures in practical political life. Winston Churchill, for example, says that "the differences between class and class have been even aggravated in the passage of years," that while "the richer classes [are] ever growing in wealth and in numbers, and ever declining in responsibility, the very poor remain plunged or plunging even deeper into helpless, hopeless misery." This being the case, he predicts "a savage strife between class and class," unless the most radical measures are taken to check the tendency. Nor are his statements mere rhetoric, for he shows statistically "that the increase of income assessable to income tax is at the very least more than ten times greater than the increase which has taken place in the same period in the wages of those trades which come within the Board of Trade returns."[208] In other words, the income of the well-to-do classes (which increased nearly half a billion pounds, that is, almost doubled, in ten years) is growing ten times more rapidly than that even of the organized and better paid workmen, who alone are considered in the Board of Trade returns.

Here is a situation which is world-wide. The position of the working class, or certain parts of it, may be improving; the income of the employing and capitalist class is certainly increasing many fold more rapidly. Here is the financial expression of the growing divergence of classes which Marx had in mind, a divergence that we have no reason whatever for supposing will be checked, as Mr. Churchill suggests, even by his most "Socialistic" reforms, short of surrendering the political and economic power to those who suffer from this condition.

At the German Socialist Congress at Hanover in 1899, Bebel said that even if the income of the working class was increasing, or even if the purchasing power of total wages was becoming greater, the income of the nation as a whole was increasing much more rapidly and that of the capitalist class at a still more rapid rate. The great Socialist statesman laid emphasis on the essential point that capitalists are absorbing continually a greater and a greater proportion of the national income.

The class struggle, says Kautsky, rests not upon the fact that the misery of the proletariat is growing greater, but on its need to annihilate a pressure that it feels more and more keenly.

"The class struggle," he writes, "becomes more bitter the longer it lasts. The more capable of struggle the opponents become in and through the struggle itself, the more important become the differences in their conditions of life, the more the capitalists raise themselves above the proletariat by the ever growing exploitation."[209]

This feature of present-day (capitalistic) progress, Socialists view as the very essence of social injustice, no matter whether there is a slight and continuous or even a considerable progress of the working class. The question for them is not whether from time to time something more falls to the workingman, but what proportion he gets of the total product. It would never occur to any one to try to tell a business man that he ought not to sell any more goods because his profits were already increasing "fast enough." It is as absurd to tell the workingman that the moderate advance he is making either through slight improvements as to wages and hours, or through political and social reforms, ought to blind him to all the possibilities of modern civilization from which he is still shut off, and which will remain out of his reach for generations, unless his share in the income of society is rapidly increased to the point that he (and other non-capitalist producers) receive the total product.

The conflict of class interests is not a mere theory, but a widely recognized reality, and the worst accusation that can be made against Socialists is not that they are trying to create a war of classes where none exists, but that some of them at times interpret the conflict in a narrow or violent sense (I shall discuss the truth or untruth of this criticism in later chapters). Yet Mr. Roosevelt voices the opinion of many when he calls the view that the maximum of progress is to be secured only after a struggle between the classes, the "most mischievous of Socialist theses," says that an appeal to class interest is not "legitimate," and that the Socialists hope "in one shape or another to profit at the expense of the other citizens of the Republic."[210]

"There is no greater need to-day," said Mr. Roosevelt in his Sorbonne lecture, "than the need to keep ever in mind the fact that the cleavage between right and wrong, between good citizenship and bad citizenship, runs at right angles to, not parallel to, the lines of cleavage between class and class, between occupation and occupation. Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by his position instead of judging him by his conduct in that position."

This is as much as to say that there are only individuals, but no class, which it is better to have outside than inside of a progressive majority. The Socialist view is the exact opposite. It holds that the very foundation of Socialism as a method (which is its only aspect of practical importance) is that the Socialist movement assumes a position so militant and radical that every privileged class will voluntarily remain on the outside; and events are showing the wisdom and even the necessity of these tactics. Socialists would say, "Ruin looks us in the face if, in politics, we judge the men who occupy a certain position (the members of a certain class) by their conduct as individuals, instead of judging them by the fact that they occupy a certain position and are members of a certain class."

Again, to the Chamber of Commerce at New Haven, Mr. Roosevelt expressed a view which, to judge by their actions, is that of all non-Socialist reformers: "I am a radical," he said, "who most earnestly desires to see a radical platform carried out by conservatives. I wish to see great industrial reforms carried out, not by the men who will profit by them, but by the men who will lose by them; by such men as you are around me."

Socialists, on the contrary, believe that industrial reforms will never lead to equality of opportunity except when carried out wholly independently of the conservatives who will lose by them. They believe that such reforms as are carried out by the capitalists and their governments, beneficent, radical, and even stupendous as they may be, will not and cannot constitute the first or smallest step towards industrial democracy.

Mr. Roosevelt's views are identical on this point with those of Mr. Woodrow Wilson and other progressive leaders of the opposite party. Mayor Gaynor of New York, for example, was quoted explaining the great changes that took place in the fall elections of 1910 on these grounds: "We are emerging from an evil case. The flocking of nearly all the business men, owners of property, and even persons with $100 in the savings bank, to one party made a division line and created a contrast which must have led to trouble if much longer continued. The intelligence of the country is asserting itself, and business men and property owners will again divide themselves normally between the parties, as formerly." Here again is the fundamental antithesis to the Socialist view. Leaving aside for the moment the situation of persons with $100 in the savings bank, or owners of property in general (who might possess nothing more than a small home), Socialists are working, with considerable success, towards the day when at least one great party will take a position so radical that the overwhelming majority of business men (or at least the representatives of by far the larger part of business and capital) will be forced automatically into the opposite organization.

Without this militant attitude Socialists believe that even the most radical reforms, not excepting those that sincerely propose equal opportunity or the abolition of social classes as their ultimate aim, must fail to carry society forward a single step in that direction. Take, as an example, Dr. Lyman Abbott, whose advanced views I have already referred to (see Part I, Chap. III). Notwithstanding his advocacy of industrial democracy, his attack on the autocracy of capitalism and the wages system, and his insistence that the distinction between non-possessing and possessing classes must be abolished, Dr. Abbott opposes a class struggle. Such phrases amount to nothing from the Socialist standpoint, if all of these objects are held up merely as an ideal, and if nothing is said of the rate at which they ought to be attained or the means by which the opposition of privileged classes is to be overcome. No indorsement of any so-called Socialist theory or reform is of practical moment unless it includes that theory which has survived out of the struggles of the movement, and has been tested by hard experience—a theory in which ways and means are not the last but the first consideration,—namely, the class struggle.

Mr. Roosevelt and nearly all other popular leaders of the day denounce "special privilege." But the denouncers of special privilege, aside from the organized Socialists, are only too glad to associate themselves with one or another of the classes that at present possess the economic and political power. To the Socialists the only way to fight special privilege is to place the control of society in the hands of a non-privileged majority. The practical experience of the movement has taught the truth of what some of its early exponents saw at the outset, that a majority composed even in part of the privileged classes could never be trusted or expected to abolish privileges. Neither Dr. Abbott, Mr. Roosevelt, nor other opponents of the Socialist movement, are ready to indorse this practical working theory. For its essence being that all those who by their economic expressions or their acts stand for anything less than equality of opportunity should be removed from positions of power, it is directed against every anti-Socialist. Dr. Abbott, for example, demands only "opportunity," instead of equal opportunity, and Mr. Roosevelt wishes merely "to start all men in the race for life on a reasonable equality." (My italics.)[211]

Let us see what Marx and his successors say in explanation of their belief that the "class struggle" must be fought out to an end. Certainly they do not mean that each individual capitalist is to be regarded by his working people as their private enemy. Nor, on the other hand, can the expression "class struggle" be interpreted, as some Socialists have asserted, to mean that there was no flesh and blood enemy to be attacked, but only "the capitalist system." To Marx capitalism was embodied not merely in institutions, which embrace all classes and individuals alike, but also in the persons of the capitalist class. And by waging a war against that class he meant to include each and every member of it who remained in his class, and every one of its supporters. To Marx the enemy was no abstraction. It was, as he said, "the person, the living individual" that had to be contended with, but only as the embodiment of a class. "It is not sufficient," he said, "to fight the general conditions and the higher powers. The press must make up its mind to oppose this constable, this attorney, this councilor."[212] These individuals, moreover, he viewed not merely as the servants or representatives of a system, but as part and parcel of a class.

The struggle that Marx had in mind might be called a latent civil war. It was not a mere preparation for revolution, since it was as real and serious in times of peace as in those of revolution or civil war. But it was a civil war in everything except the actual physical fighting, and he was always ready to proceed to actual fighting when necessary. Throughout his life Marx was a revolutionist. And when his successors to-day speak of "the class struggle," they mean a conflict of that depth and intensity that it may lead to revolution.

None of the classical Socialist writers, however, has failed to grasp the absolute necessity to a successful social movement, and especially to a revolutionary one, of making the class struggle broad, inclusive, and democratic. In 1851 Marx wrote to the Socialists: "The forces opposed to you have all the advantages of organization, discipline, and habitual authority; unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined." (The italics are mine.)

Edward Bernstein, while representing as a rule only the ultra-moderate element of the Party, expresses on this question the views of the majority as well. "Social Democracy," he says, "cannot further its work better than by taking its stand unreservedly on the theory of democracy." And he adds that in practice it has always favored coÖperation with all the exploited, even if "its literary advocates have often acted otherwise, and still often do so to-day."

Not many years ago, it is true, there was still a great deal of talk in Germany about the desirability of a "dictatorship of the proletariat," the term "proletariat" being used in its narrow sense. That is, as soon as the working class (in this sense) became a political majority, it was to make the government embody its will without reference to other classes—it being assumed that the manual laborers will only demand justice for all men alike, and that it was neither safe nor necessary to consult any of the middle classes. And even to-day in France much is said by the "syndicalists" and others as to the power of well-organized and determined minorities in the time of revolution—it being assumed, again, that such minorities will be successful only in so far as they stand for a new social principle, to the ultimate interest of all (see Chapter V). It cannot be questioned that in these schemes the majority is not to be consulted. But they are far less widely prevalent than they were a generation ago.

The pioneer of "reformist" Socialism in Germany (Bernstein) correctly defines democracy, not as the rule of the majority, but as "an absence of class government." "This negative definition has," he says, "the advantage that it gives less room than the phrase 'government by the people' to the idea of oppression of the individual by the majority, which is absolutely repugnant to the modern mind. To-day we find the oppression of the minority by the majority 'undemocratic,' although it was originally held up to be quite consistent with government by the people.... Democracy is in principle the suppression of class government, though it is not yet the actual suppression of classes."[213]

Democracy, as we have hitherto known it, opposes class government, but countenances the existence of classes. Socialism insists that as long as social classes exist, class government will continue. The aim of Socialism, "the end of class struggles and class rule," is not only democratic, but the only means of giving democracy any real meaning.

"It is only the proletariat" (wage earners), writes Kautsky, "that has created a great social ideal, the consummation of which will leave only one source of income, i.e. labor, will abolish rent and profit, will put an end to class and other conflicts, and put in the place of the class struggle the solidarity of man. This is the final aim and goal of the class struggle by the Socialist Party. The political representatives of the class interests of the proletariat thus become representative of the highest and most general interests of humanity."[214]

It is expected that nearly all social classes, though separated into several groups to-day, will ultimately be thrown together by economic evolution and common interests into two large groups, the capitalists and their allies on the one side, and the anti-capitalists on the other. The final and complete victory of the latter, it is believed, can alone put an end to this great conflict. But in the meanwhile, even before our capitalist society is overthrown and class divisions ended, the very fusing together of the several classes that compose the anti-capitalist party is bringing about a degree of social harmony not seen before.

Already the Socialists have succeeded in this way in harmonizing a large number of conflicting class interests. The skilled workingmen were united for the first time with the unskilled when the latter, having been either ignored or subordinated in the early trade unions, were admitted on equal terms into the Socialist parties. Then the often extremely discontented salaried and professional men of small incomes, having been won by Socialist philosophy, laid aside their sense of superiority to the wage earners and were absorbed in large numbers. Later, many agricultural laborers and even agriculturists who did all their own work, and whose small capital brought them no return, began to conquer their suspicion of the city wage workers. And, finally, many of those small business men and independent farmers, the larger part of whose income is to be set down as the direct result of their own labor and not a result of their ownership of a small capital, or who feel that they are being reduced to such a condition, are commencing in many instances to look upon themselves as non-capitalists rather than capitalists—and to work for equality of opportunity through the Socialist movement.

The process of building up a truly democratic society has two parts: first, the organization and union in a single movement of all classes that stand for the abolition of classes, and class rule; and second, the overthrow of those social elements that stand in the way of this natural evolution, their destruction and dissolution as classes, and the absorption of their members by the new society as individuals.

It becomes of the utmost importance in such a vast struggle, on the one hand, that no classes that are needed in the new society shall be marked for destruction, and on the other that the movement shall not lean too heavily or exclusively on classes which have very little or too little constructive or combative power. What, then, is the leading principle by which the two groups are to be made up and distinguished? Neither the term "capitalist classes" nor the term "working classes" is entirely clear or entirely satisfactory.

Mr. Roosevelt, for example, gives the common impression when he accuses the Socialists of using the term "working class" in the narrow sense and of taking the position that "all wealth is produced by manual workers, that the entire product of labor should be handed over to the laborer."[215] I shall show that Socialist writers and speakers, even when they use the expression "working class," almost universally include others than the manual laborers among those they expect to make up the anti-capitalistic movement.

Kautsky's definition of the working class, for example, is: "Workers who are divorced from their power of production to the extent that they can produce nothing by their own efforts, and are therefore compelled in order to escape starvation to sell the only commodity they possess—their labor power." In present-day society, especially in a rich country like America, it is as a rule not sheer "starvation" that drives, but needs of other kinds that are almost as compelling. But the point I am concerned with now is that this definition, widely accepted by Socialists, draws no line whatever between manual and intellectual workers. In another place Kautsky refers to the industrial working class as being the recruiting ground for Socialism, which might seem to be giving a preferred position to manual workers; but a few paragraphs below he again qualifies his statement by adding that "to the working class there belong, just as much as the wage earners, the members of the new middle class," which I shall describe below.[216]

In other statements of their position, it is the context which makes the Socialist meaning clear. The party Platform of Canada, for instance, uses throughout the simple term "working class," without any explanation, but it speaks of the struggle as taking place against the "capitalists," and as it mentions no other classes, the reader is left to divide all society between these two, which would evidently make it necessary to classify many besides mere manual wage earners rather among the anti-capitalist than among the capitalist forces.

The platform of the American Socialist Party in 1904 divided the population between the "capitalists," and the "working or producing class." "Between these two classes," says this platform, "there can be no possible compromise ... except in the conscious and complete triumph of the working class as the only class that has the right or power to be."

"By working people," said Liebknecht, "we do not understand merely the manual workers, but every one who does not live on the labor of another." His words should be memorized by all those who wish to understand the first principles of Socialism:—

"Some maintain, it is true, that the wage-earning proletariat is the only really revolutionary class, that it alone forms the Socialist army, and that we ought to regard with suspicion all adherents belonging to other classes or other conditions of life. Fortunately these senseless ideas have never taken hold of the German Social Democracy.

"The wage-earning class is most directly affected by capitalist exploitation; it stands face to face with those who exploit it, and it has the especial advantage of being concentrated in the factories and yards, so that it is naturally led to think things out more energetically and finds itself automatically organized into 'battalions of workers.' This state of things gives it a revolutionary character which no other part of society has to the same degree. We must recognize this frankly.

"Every wage earner is either a Socialist already, or he is on the high road to becoming one.

"We must not limit our conception of the term 'working class' too narrowly. As we have explained in speeches, tracts, and articles, we include in the working class all those who live exclusively or principally by means of their own labor, and who do not grow rich from the work of others.

"Thus, besides the wage earners, we should include in the working class the small farmers and small shop keepers, who tend more and more to drop to the level of the proletariat—in other words, all those who suffer from our present system of production on a large scale." (My italics.)

The chief questions now confronting the Socialists are all connected, directly or indirectly, with these producing middle classes, who, on the whole, do not live on the labor of others and suffer from the present system, yet often enjoy some modest social privilege.

While Liebknecht considered that the wage-earning class was more revolutionary and Socialistic than any other, he did not allow this for one moment to persuade him to give a subordinate position to other classes in the movement, as he says:—

"The unhappy situation of the small farmers almost all over Germany is as well known as that of the artisan movement. It is true that both small farmers and small shopkeepers are still in the camp of our adversaries, but only because they do not understand the profound causes that underlie their deplorable condition; it is of prime importance for our party to enlighten them and bring them over to our side. This is the vital question for our party, because these two classes form the majority of the nation.... We ought not to ask, 'Are you a wage earner?' but, 'Are you a Socialist?'

"If it is limited to the wage earners, Socialism cannot conquer. If it included all the workers and the moral and intellectual Élite of the nation, its victory is certain.... Not to contract, but to expand, ought to be our motto. The circle of Socialism should widen more and more, until we have converted most of our adversaries to being our friends, or at least disarm their opposition.

"And the indifferent mass, that in peaceful days has no weight in the political balance, but becomes the decisive force in times of agitation, ought to be so fully enlightened as to the aims and the essential ideas of our party, that it would cease to fear us and can be no longer used as a weapon against us."[217] (My italics.)

Karl Kautsky, though he takes a less broad view, also says that the Socialist Party is "the only anti-capitalist party,"[218] and contends in his recent pamphlet, "The Road to Power," that its recruiting ground in Germany includes three fourths of the nation, and probably even more, which (even in Germany) would include a considerable part of those ordinarily listed with the middle class.

Kautsky's is probably the prevailing opinion among German Socialists. Let us see how he proposes to compose a Socialist majority. Of course his first reliance is on the manual laborers, skilled and unskilled. Next come the professional classes, the salaried corporation employees, and a large part of the office workers, which together constitute what Kautsky and the other Continental Socialists call the new middle class. "Among these," Kautsky says, "a continually increasing sympathy for the proletariat is evident, because they have no special class interest, and owing to their professional, scientific point of view, are easiest won for our party through scientific considerations. The theoretical bankruptcy of bourgeois economics, and the theoretical superiority of Socialism, must become clear to them. Through their training, also, they must discover that the other social classes continuously strive to debase art and science. Many others are impressed by the fact of the irresistible advance of the Social Democracy. So it is that friendship for labor becomes popular among the cultured classes, until there is scarcely a parlor in which one does not stumble over one or more 'Socialists.'"

It is difficult to understand how it can be said that these classes have no special "class interest," unless it is meant that their interest is neither that of the capitalists nor precisely that of the industrial wage-earning class. And this, indeed, is Kautsky's meaning, for he seems to minimize their value to the Socialists, because as a class they cannot be relied upon.

"Heretofore, as long as Socialism was branded among all cultured classes as criminal or insane, capitalist elements could be brought into the Socialist movement only by a complete break with the whole capitalist world. Whoever came into the Socialist movement at that time from the capitalist element had need of great energy, revolutionary passion, and strong proletarian convictions. It was just this element which ordinarily constituted the most radical and revolutionary wing of the Socialist movement.

"It is wholly different to-day, since Socialism has become a fad. It no longer demands any special energy, or any break with capitalist society to assume the name of Socialist. It is no wonder, then, that more and more these new Socialists remain entangled in their previous manner of thought and feeling.

"The fighting tactics of the intellectuals are at any rate wholly different from those of the proletariat. To wealth and power of arms the latter opposes its overwhelming numbers and its thorough organization. The intellectuals are an ever diminishing minority, with no class organization whatever. Their only weapon is persuasion through speaking and writing, the battle with 'intellectual weapons' and 'moral superiority,' and these 'parlor Socialists' would settle the proletarian class struggle also with these weapons. They declare themselves ready to grant the party their moral support, but only on condition that it renounces the idea of the application of force, and this not simply where force is hopeless,—there the proletariat has already renounced it,—but also in those places where it is still full of possibilities. Accordingly they seek to throw discredit on the idea of revolution, and to represent it as a useless means. They seek to separate off a social reform wing from the revolutionary proletariat, and they thereby divide and weaken the proletariat."[219]

In the last words Kautsky refers to the fact that although a large number of "intellectuals" (meaning the educated classes) have come into the Socialist Party and remain there, they constitute a separate wing of the movement. We must remember, however, that this same wing embraces, besides these "parlor Socialists," a great many trade unionists, and that it has composed a very considerable portion of the German Party, and a majority in some other countries of the Continent; and as Kautsky himself admits that they succeed in "dividing the proletariat," they cannot be very far removed politically from at least one of the divisions they are said to have created. It is impossible to attribute the kind of Socialism to which Kautsky objects to the adhesion of certain educated classes to the movement (for reasons indicated in Part II).

While many of the present spokesmen of Socialism are, like Kautsky, somewhat skeptical as to the necessity of an alliance between the working class and this section of the middle class, others accept it without qualification. If, then, we consider at once the middle ground taken by the former group of Socialists, and the very positive and friendly attitude of the latter, it must be concluded that the Socialist movement as a whole is convinced that its success depends upon a fusion of at least these two elements, the wage earners and "the new middle class."

A few quotations from the well-known revolutionary Socialist, Anton Pannekoek, will show the contrast between the narrower kind of Socialism, which still survives in many quarters, and that of the majority of the movement. He discriminates even against "the new middle class," leaving nobody but the manual laborers as a fruitful soil for real Socialism.

"To be sure, in the economic sense of the term, then, the new middle class are proletarians; but they form a very special group of wage workers, a group that is so sharply divided from the real proletarians that they form a special class with a special position in the class struggle.... Immediate need does not compel them as it does the real proletarians to attack the capitalist system. Their position may arouse discontent, but that of the workers is unendurable. For them Socialism has many advantages, for the workers it is an absolute necessity." (My italics.)[220]

The phrase "absolute necessity" is unintelligible. It is comparatively rarely that need arises to the height of actual compulsion, and when it does instances are certainly just as common among clerks as they are among bricklayers.

Pannekoek introduces a variety of arguments to sustain his position. For instance, that "the higher strata among the new middle class have a definitely capitalistic character. The lower ones are more proletarian, but there is no sharp dividing line." This is true—but the high strata in every class are capitalistic. The statement applies equally well to railway conductors, to foremen, and to many classes of manual workers.

"And then, too," Pannekoek continues, "they, the new middle class, have more to fear from the displeasure of their masters, and dismissal for them is a much more serious matter. The worker stands always on the verge of starvation, and so unemployment has few terrors for him. The high-class employee, on the contrary, has comparatively an easy life, and a new position is difficult to find."

Now it is precisely the manual laborer who is most often blacklisted by the large corporations and trusts; and the brain-working employee is better able to adapt himself to some slightly different employment than is the skilled worker in any of the highly specialized trades.

"For the cause of Socialism we can count on this new middle class," says Pannekoek, "even less than on the labor unions. For one thing, they have been set over the workers, as superintendents, overseers, bosses, etc. In these capacities they are supposed to speed up the workers to get the utmost out of them."

Is it not even more common, we may ask, that one manual worker is set over another than that a brain worker is set over a manual laborer?

"They [the new middle class] are divided," writes Pannekoek, "into numberless grades and ranks arranged one above the other; they do not meet as comrades, and so cannot develop the spirit of solidarity. Each individual does not make it a matter of personal pride to improve the condition of his entire class; the important thing is rather that he personally struggles up into the next higher rank."

If we remember the more favorable hours and conditions under which the brain workers are employed, the fact that they are not so exhausted physically and that they have education, we may see that they have perhaps even greater chances "to develop their solidarity" and to understand their class interests than have the manual workers. It is true that they are more divided at the present time, but there is a tendency throughout all the highly organized industries to divide the manual laborers in the same way and to secure more work from them by a similar system of promotions.

Pannekoek accuses the brain workers of having something to lose, again forgetting that there are innumerable groups of more or less privileged manual laborers who are in the same position. And finally, he contends that their superior schooling and education is a disadvantage when compared to the lack of education of the manual laborers:—

"They have great notions of their own education and refinement, feel themselves above the masses; it naturally never occurs to them that the ideals of these masses may be scientifically correct and that the 'science' of their professors may be false. As theorizers seeing the world always with their minds, knowing little or nothing of material activities, they are fairly convinced that mind controls the world."

On the contrary, nearly all influential Socialist thinkers agree that present-day science, poorly as it is taught, is not only an aid to Socialism, but the very best basis for it.

Pannekoek is right, for instance, when he says that most of the brain workers in the Socialist movement come from the circles of the small capitalists and bring an anti-Socialist prejudice with them, but he forgets that, on the other side, the overwhelming majority of the world's working people are the children of farmers, peasants, or of absolutely unskilled and illiterate workers, whose views of life were even more prejudiced and whose minds were perhaps even more filled up with the ideas that the ruling classes have placed there.

The arguments of the American Socialist, Thomas Sladden, representing as they do the views of many thousands of revolutionary workingmen in this country, are also worthy of note. His bitterness, it will be seen, is leveled less against capitalism itself than against what he considers to be intrusion of certain middle-class elements into Socialist ranks.

"We find in the United States to-day," writes Sladden, "that we have created several new religions, one of the most interesting of which is called Socialism, and is the religion of a decadent middle class. This fake Socialism or middle-class religion can readily be distinguished from the real Socialist movement, which is simply the wage working class in revolt on both the industrial and political fields against present conditions.... Yesterday I was a bad capitalist—to-day I am a good Socialist, but I pay my wage slaves the same wages to-day as I did yesterday.... They never take the answer of Bernard Shaw, who, when asked by a capitalist what he could do, saying that he could not help being a capitalist, was answered in this manner: You can go and crack rock if you want to; no one forces you to be a capitalist, but you are a capitalist because you want to be. No one forces Hillquit to be a lawyer; he could get a job in a lumber yard. There is no more excuse for a man being a capitalist or a lawyer than there is for him being a Pinkerton detective. He is either by his own free will and accord. The system,—they acclaim in one breath,—the system makes us do what we do not wish to do. The system does nothing of the kind; the system gives a man the choice between honest labor and dishonest labor skinning, and a labor skinner is a labor skinner because he wishes to be, just the same as some men are pickpockets because they wish to be."

It can readily be realized that such arguments will always have great weight with the embittered elements of the working class. Nor do the most representative Socialists altogether disagree with Sladden. They, too, feel that if the war is not levied against individuals, neither is it levied against a mere abstract system, but against a ruling class. However, they make exceptions for such capitalists as the late Paul Singer, who definitely abandon their class and throw in their lot with the Socialist movement, while Sladden would admit neither Singer, nor those other millions mentioned by Liebknecht (see above), for he demands that the Socialist Party must declare that "no one not eligible to the labor unions of the United States is eligible to the Socialist Party."

The high-water mark of this brand of revolutionism was reached in the State of Washington, when these revolutionary elements in the Socialist Party withdrew to form a new workingmen's party, the chief novelty of which was a plank dividing the organization into "an active list and an assistant list, only wage workers being admitted to the active list." The wage workers were defined as the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. These are the active list, and they alone hold office and vote. "The assistant list cannot hold office and cannot vote," and the Party will "do active organizing work among wage earners alone." This reminds one very much of the notorious division into active and passive citizens at the early stages of the French Revolution, which gave such a splendid opportunity to the Jacobines to organize a revolt of the passive citizens and was one of the chief causes leading up to the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic reaction that followed. The Washington plan, however, has been a complete failure. It has had no imitators in the Socialist movement, nor is it likely to have.

On the other hand, the most influential representatives of the extreme revolutionary wing of the movement, like HervÉ in France, have championed the non-wage-earning elements of the movement as fearlessly as the reformists.

"In the ranks of our party," writes HervÉ, "are to be found small merchants, small employers, wretched, impoverished, educated people, small peasant proprietors, none of whom on account of occupation can enter into the general Federation of Labor, which only admits those receiving wages and salaries. These are revolutionary elements which cannot be neglected; these volunteers of the Revolution who have often a beautiful revolutionary temperament would be lost for the Revolution if our political organization was not at hand to nourish their activity. Besides, the General Federation of Labor is a somewhat heavy mass; it will become more and more heavy as it comprises the majority of the working class which is by nature rather pacific at the bottom."

While there is no sufficient reason for the accusation that the Socialist movement neglects the brain workers of the salaried and professional classes, there is somewhat more solid ground, in spite of the above quoted declarations of Liebknecht and HervÉ, for the accusation that it antagonizes those sections of the middle classes which are, even to a slight degree, small capitalists, as, for example, especially the farmers.

"The unimaginative person," says Mr. H. G. Wells, "who owns some little bit of property, an acre or so of freehold land, or a hundred pounds in the savings bank, will no doubt be the most tenacious passive resister to Socialist ideas; and such I fear we must reckon, together with the insensitive rich, as our irreconcilable enemies, as irremovable pillars of the present order."[221]

This view is widespread among Socialists, and is even sustained by Kautsky. "Small merchants and innkeepers," he writes, "have despaired of ever rising by their own exertions; they expect everything from above and look only to the upper classes and to the government for assistance," though they "find their customers only in laboring circles, so that their existence is absolutely dependent upon the prosperity or adversity of the laboring classes." The contradiction Kautsky finds goes even further. He says, "Servility depends upon reaction—and furnishes not only the willing supporters, but the fanatical advocates of the monarchy, the church, and the nobility." With all this they (the shopkeepers, etc.) remain democratic, since it is only through democracy that they can obtain political influence. Kautsky calls them the "reactionary democracy."[222] But if they are democratic and in part economically dependent on the laboring classes, then why should not this part cast its lot economically and politically with the working class?

Kautsky extends his criticism of the small capitalists very far and even seems in doubt concerning the owners of small investments such as savings bank deposits. "Well-meaning optimists," he says, "have seen in this a means of decentralizing capital, so that after a while, in the most peaceable manner, without any one noticing it, capital would be transformed into social property. In fact, this movement really means the transformation of all the money of the middle and lower classes, which is not used by them for immediate consumption, into money capital, and as such placing it at the disposal of the great financiers for the buying out of industrial managers, and thereby assisting in the concentration on industry in the hands of a few financiers."

The classes which have invested their capital directly or indirectly in stocks or bonds through savings banks and through insurance companies number many millions, and include the large majority of all sections of the middle class, even of its most progressive part, salaried employees, and the professional element. It is undoubtedly true, as Kautsky says, that small investors are not obtaining any direct control over capital, and that their funds are used in the way he points out, constituting one of the striking and momentous tendencies of the time. But it does not follow that they are destined to lose such investments altogether, as the legislative reforms to protect banks may be extended to the railroads and other forms of investments. The small investors will scarcely be turned to favor capitalism by their investments, which bring in small profit and allow them nothing to say in the management of industry, but neither will the losses they sometimes suffer from this source be sufficient in themselves to convert them into allies of the working class.

As in the case of the farmers and small shopkeepers, everything here depends upon the economic and political program which the working class develops and offers in competition with the "State Socialism" of the capitalists. If it were true that the ownership of the smallest amount of property brings it about that Socialism is no longer desired, not a small minority of the population will be found aligned with the capitalists, but all the four million owners of farms, and the other millions with a thousand dollars or so invested in a building and loan association, an insurance policy or a savings bank deposit, a total numbering almost half of the occupied population. A bare majority, it is true, might still be without any stake in the community even of this modest character. But neither in the United States nor elsewhere is there any hope that a majority of the absolutely propertyless, even if it becomes a large one, will become sufficiently large within a generation, or perhaps even within a century, to enable it to overthrow the capitalists, unless it draws over to its side certain elements at least, of the middle classes, who, though weaker in some respects are better educated, better placed, and politically stronger than itself. The revolutionary spokesmen of the international Socialist movement now recognize this as clearly as do the most conservative observers.

The outcome of the great social struggle depends on the relative success of employers and employed in gaining the support of those classes which, either on account of their ownership of some slight property, or because they receive salaries or fees sufficiently large, must be placed in the middle class, but who cannot be classified primarily as small capitalists That this is the crux of the situation is recognized on all sides. Mr. Winston Churchill, for instance, demands that everything be done to strengthen and increase numerically this middle class, composed of millions of persons whom he claims "would certainly lose by anything like a general overturn, and ... are everywhere the strongest and the best organized millions," and his "State Socialism" is directed chiefly to that end. He believes that these millions, once become completely converted into small capitalists, would certainly prevent by an overwhelming resistance any effort on the part of the rest of the people to gain what he curiously calls, "a selfish advantage."

Mr. Churchill says that "the masses of the people should not use the fact that they are in a majority as a means to advance their relative position in society." There could not be a sharper contrast between "State Socialism" and Socialism. To Socialists the whole duty of man as a social being is to persuade the masses to "use the fact that they are in a majority as a means to advance their relative position in society." Mr. Churchill seems to feel that as long as everybody shares more or less in the general increase of prosperity from generation to generation, and, as he says, as long as there is "an ever increasing volume of production and an increasing wide diffusion of profit," there is no ground for complaint—whether the relative division of wealth and opportunity between the many and the few becomes more equal or not. But he realizes that his moral suasion is not likely to be heeded and is wise in putting his trust in the middle-class millions. For these are the bone of contention between capitalism and Socialism.

While the new middle class (that is, the lower salaried classes, corporation employees, professional men, etc.) is increasing numerically more rapidly than any other, large numbers within it are being deprived of any hope of rising into the wealthy or privileged class. As a consequence they are everywhere crowding into the Socialist ranks—by the hundred thousand in countries where the movement is oldest. Even in the organized Socialist parties these middle-class elements everywhere form a considerable proportion of the whole. Practically a third of the American Party according to a recent reckoning were engaged either in farming (15 per cent) or in commercial (9 per cent) or professional pursuits (5 per cent).

It is plain that certain sections of the so-called middle class are not only welcomed by Socialist parties, but constitute their most dependable and indispensable elements. Indeed, the majority of the Socialists agree with Kautsky that the danger lies in the opposite direction, that an unreliable small capitalist element has been admitted that will make trouble until it leaves the movement, in other words, that Socialist friendship for these classes has gone to the point of risking the existence of their organization. Surely their presence is a guarantee that Socialists have not been ruled by the working class or proletarian "fetish," against which Marx warned them more than half a century ago.

[207] The American Magazine, October, 1911.