If the majority of Socialists are liberal in their conception of what constitutes the "working class," they are equally broad in their view as to what classes must be reckoned among its opponents. They are aware that on the other side in this struggle will be found all those classes that are willing to serve capitalism or hope to rise into its ranks.

In its narrow sense the term "capitalist class" may be restricted to mean mere idlers and parasites, but this is not the sense in which Socialists usually employ it. Mere idlers play an infinitely less important part in the capitalist world than active exploiters. It is even probable that in the course of a strenuous struggle the capitalists themselves may gradually tax wholly idle classes out of existence and so actually strengthen the more active capitalists by ridding them of this burden. Active exploiters may pass some of their time in idleness and frivolous consumption, without actual degeneration, without becoming mere parasites. All exploitation is parasitism, but it does not follow that every exploiter is nothing more than a parasite. He may work feverishly at the game of exploitation and, as is very common with capitalists, may be devoted to it for its own sake and for the power it brings rather than for the opportunity to consume in luxury or idleness. If pure parasitism were the object of attack, as certain Socialists suppose it to be, all but an infinitesimal minority of mankind would already be Socialists.

Nor do Socialists imagine that the capitalist ranks will ever be restricted to the actual capitalists, those whose income is derived chiefly from their possessions. Take, for example, the class of the least skilled and poorest-paid laborers such as the so-called "casual laborers," the "submerged tenth"—those who, though for the most part not paupers, are in extreme poverty and probably are unable to maintain themselves in a state of industrial efficiency even for that low-paid and unskilled labor to which they are accustomed. Mr. H. G. Wells and other observers feel that this class is likely to put even more obstacles in the path of Socialism than the rich: "Much more likely to obstruct the way to Socialism," says Mr. Wells, "is the ignorance, the want of courage, the stupid want of imagination in the very poor, too shy and timid and clumsy to face any change they can evade! But even with them popular education is doing its work; and I do not fear but that in the next generation we will find Socialists even in the slums."[234]

"Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralyzing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering," says Oscar Wilde. "They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great employers of labor against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them."[235] It is the "very poor" who disbelieve the agitators. They must be embraced in every plan of social reconstruction, but they cannot be of much aid. The least skilled must rather be helped and those who can and do help them best are not any of their "superiors," but their blood brothers and sisters of the economic class just above them—the great mass of the unskilled workers.

The class of casual workers and the able-bodied but chronically under-employed play a very serious rÔle in Socialist politics. It is the class from which, as Socialists point out, professional soldiers, professional strike breakers, and, to some extent, the police are drawn. Among German Socialists it is called the "lumpen proletariat," and both for the present and future is looked at with the greatest anxiety. It is not thought possible that any considerable portion of it will be brought into the Socialist camp in the near future, though some progress has been made, as with every other element of the working class. It is acknowledged that it tends to become more numerous, constantly recruited as it is from the increasing class of servants and other dependents of the rich and well-to-do.

But Socialists understand that the mercenary hirelings drawn from this class, and directly employed to keep them "in order," are less dangerous than the capitalists' camp followers. Bernard Shaw calls this second army of dependents "the parasitic proletariat." But he explains that he means not that they do not earn their living, but that their labor is unproductive. They are parasitic only in the sense that their work is done either for parasites or for the parasitical consumption of active capitalists. Nor is there any sharp line between proletarian and middle class in this element, since parts of both classes are equally conscious of their dependence. Shaw makes these points clear. His only error is to suppose that Socialists and believers in the class war theory, have failed to recognize them.

"Thus we find," says Shaw, "that what the idle man of property does is to plunge into mortal sin against society. He not only withdraws himself from the productive forces of the nation and quarters himself on them as a parasite: he withdraws also a body of propertyless men and places them in the same position except that they have to earn this anti social privilege by ministering to his wants and whims. He thus creates and corrupts a class of workers—many of them very highly trained and skilled, and correspondingly paid—whose subsistence is bound up with his income. They are parasites on a parasite; and they defend the institution of private property with a ferocity which startles their principal, who is often in a speculative way quite revolutionary in his views. They knock the class war theory into a cocked hat [I shall show below that class war Socialists, on the contrary, have always recognized, the existence of these facts, "whilst the present system lasts."—W. E. W.] by forming a powerful conservative proletariat whose one economic interest is that the rich should have as much money as possible; and it is they who encourage and often compel the property owners to defend themselves against an onward march of Socialism. Thus we have the phenomenon that seems at first sight so amazing in London: namely, that in the constituencies where the shopkeepers pay the most monstrous rents, and the extravagance and insolence of the idle rich are in fullest view, no Socialist—nay, no Progressive—has a chance of being elected to the municipality or to Parliament. The reason is that these shopkeepers live by fleecing the rich as the rich live by fleecing the poor. The millionaire who has preyed upon Bury and Bottle until no workman there has more than his week's sustenance in hand, and many of them have not even that, is himself preyed upon in Bond Street, Pall Mall, and Longacre.

"But the parasites, the West End tradesman, the West End professional man, the schoolmaster, the Ritz hotel keeper, the horse dealer and trainer, the impresario and his guinea stalls, and the ordinary theatrical manager with his half-guinea ones, the huntsman, the jockey, the gamekeeper, the gardener, the coachman, the huge mass of minor shopkeepers and employees who depend on these or who, as their children, have been brought up with a little crust of conservative prejudices which they call their politics and morals and religion: all these give to Parliamentary and social conservatism its real fighting force; and the more 'class conscious' we make them, the more they will understand that their incomes, whilst the present system lasts, are bound up with those of the proprietors whom Socialism would expropriate. And as many of them are better fed, better mannered, better educated, more confident and successful than the productive proletariat, the class war is not going to be a walkover for the Socialists."[236]

If we take into account both this "parasitic proletariat" and the "lumpen proletariat" previously referred to, it is clear that when the Socialists speak of a class struggle against the capitalists, they do not expect to be able to include in their ranks all "the people" nor even all the wage earners. This is precisely one of the things that distinguishes them most sharply from a merely populistic movement. Populist parties expect to include all classes of the "common people," and every numerically important class of capitalists. Socialists understand that they can never rely on the small capitalist except when he has given up all hope of maintaining himself as such, and that they are facing not only the whole capitalist class, but also their hirelings and dependents.

Socialists as a whole have never tended either to a narrowly exclusive nor to a vaguely inclusive policy. Nor have their most influential writers, like Marx and Liebknecht, given the wage earners a privileged position in the movement. I have quoted from Liebknecht. "Just as the democrats make a sort of a fetish of the words 'the people,'" wrote Marx to the Communists on resigning from the organization in 1851, "so you may make one of the word 'proletariat.'"

But it cannot be denied that many of Marx's followers have ignored this warning, and the worship of the words "proletariat" or "working class" is still common in some Socialist quarters. Recently Kautsky wrote that the Socialist Party, besides occupying itself with the interests of the manual laborers, "must also concern itself with all social questions, but that its attitude on these questions is determined by the interests of the manual laborers."

"The Socialist Party," he continued, "is forced by its class position to expand its struggle against its own exploitation and oppression into a struggle against all forms of exploitation and oppression, to broaden its struggle for class interests into a struggle for liberty and justice for all members of the community." According to this interpretation, the Socialist Party, starting out from the standpoint of the economic interests of the "manual laborers," comes to represent the interests of all classes, except the capitalists. We may doubt as to whether the other non-capitalist classes will take kindly to this subordination or "benevolent assimilation" by the manual workers. Kautsky seems to have no question on this matter, however; for he considers that the abolition of the oppression and exploitation of the wage earners, the class at the bottom, can only be effected by the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, and that therefore "all friends of universal liberty and justice, whatever class they may spring from, are compelled to join the proletariat and to fight its class struggles."[237] Even if this is true, these other classes will demand that they should have an equal voice in carrying on this struggle in proportion to their numbers, and Socialist parties have usually (though not always) given them that equal voice.

The kernel of the working class, "the layers of the industrial proletariat which have reached political self-consciousness," provides the chief supporters of the Socialist movement, according to Kautsky, although the latter is the representative "not alone of the industrial wage workers, but of all the working and exploited layers of the community, that is, the great majority of the total population, what one ordinarily calls 'the people.'" While Socialism is to represent all the producing and exploited classes, the industrial proletariat is thus considered as the model to which the others must be shaped and as by some special right or virtue it is on all occasions to take the forefront in the movement. This position leads inevitably to a considerably qualified form of democracy.

"The backbone of the party will always be the fighting proletariat, whose qualities will determine its character, whose strength will determine its power," says Kautsky. "Bourgeois and peasants are highly welcome if they will attach themselves to us and march with us, but the proletariat will always show the way.

"But if not only wage earners but also small peasants and small capitalists, artisans, middle-men of all kinds, small officials, and so forth—in short, the whole so-called 'common people'—formed the masses out of which Social Democracy recruits its adherents, we must not forget that these classes, with the exception of the class-conscious wage-earners, are also a recruiting ground for our opponents; their influence on these classes has been and still is to-day the chief ground of their political power.

"To grant political rights to the people, therefore, by no means necessarily implies the protection of the interests of the proletariat or those of social evolution. Universal suffrage, as it is known, has nowhere brought about a Social Democratic majority, while it may give more reactionary majorities than a qualified suffrage under the same circumstances. It may put aside a liberal government only to put in its place a conservative or catholic one....

"Nevertheless the proletariat must demand democratic institutions under all circumstances, for the same reasons that, once it has obtained political power, it can only use its own class rule for the purpose of putting an end to all class rule. It is the bottommost of the social classes. It cannot gain political rights, at least not in its entirety, except if everybody gets them. Each of the other classes may become privileged under certain circumstances, but not the proletariat. The Social Democracy, the party of the class-conscious proletariat, is therefore the surest support of democratic efforts, much surer than the bourgeois democracy.

"But if the Social Democracy is also the most strenuous fighter for democracy, it cannot share the latter's illusions. It must always be conscious of the fact that every popular right which it wins is a weapon not only for itself, but also for its opponents; it must therefore under certain circumstances understand that democratic achievements are more useful at first to the enemy than to itself; but only at first. For in the long run the introduction of democratic institutions in the State can only turn out to the profit of Social Democracy. They necessarily make its struggle easier, and lead it to victory. The militant proletariat has so much confidence in social evolution, so much confidence in itself, that it fears no struggle, not even with a superior power; it only wants a field of battle on which it can move freely. The democratic State offers such a field of battle; there the final decisive struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat can best be fought out."

The reader might understand this somewhat vacillating position on the whole to favor democracy, but only a few pages further on Kautsky explains his reasons for opposing the initiative and referendum, and we see that when the point of action arrives, his democratic idealism is abandoned:—

"In our opinion it follows from the preceding that the initiative and referendum do not belong to those democratic institutions which must be furthered by the proletariat in the interest of its own struggle for emancipation everywhere and under all circumstances. The referendum and initiative are institutions which may be very useful under certain circumstances if one does not overvalue these uses, but under other circumstances may cause great harm. The introduction of the initiative and referendum is, therefore, not to be striven for everywhere and under all circumstances, but only in those places where certain conditions are fulfilled.

"Among these conditions precedent we reckon, above all, the preponderance of the city population over that of the country—a condition which at the present moment has only been reached in England. A further condition precedent is a highly developed political party life which has taken hold of the great masses of the population, so that the tendency of direct legislation to break up parties and to bridge over party opposition are no more to be feared.

"But the weightiest condition precedent is the lack of an overwhelmingly centralized governmental power, standing independently against the people's representatives."[238] (My italics.)

The first condition mentioned I have discussed in the previous chapter; the second indicates that Kautsky, speaking for many German Socialists, for the present at least, puts party above democracy.

The industrial proletariat is supposed to have the mission of saving society. Even when it is not politically "self-conscious," or educated to see the great rÔle it must play in the present and future transformation of society, it is supposed that it is compelled ultimately "by the logic of events" to fill this rÔle and attempt the destruction of capitalism and the socialization of capital. This prediction may ultimately prove true, but time is the most vital element in any calculation, and Kautsky himself acknowledges that the industrial proletariat "had existed a long time before giving any indication of its independence," and that during all this long period "no militant proletariat was in existence."

The chief practical reason for relying so strongly on the industrial wage earners as stated by Bebel and other Socialists is undoubtedly that "the proletariat increases more and more until it forms the overwhelming majority of the nation." No doubt, in proportion as this tendency exists, the importance of gathering certain parts of the middle class into the movement becomes less and less, and the statement quoted, if strongly insisted upon, even suggests a readiness to attempt to get along entirely without these elements. The figures of the Census indicate that in this country, at least, we are some time from the point when the proletariat will constitute even a bare majority, and that it is not likely to form an overwhelming majority for decades to come. But the European view is common here also.

The moderate Vandervelde also says that the Socialist program has been "formulated by or for the workingmen of large-scale industry."[239] This may be true, but we are not as much interested to know who formulated the program of the movement as to understand its present aim. Its aim, it is generally agreed, is to organize into a single movement all anti-capitalistic elements, all those who want to abolish capitalism, those exploited classes that are not too crushed to revolt, those whose chief means of support is socially useful labor and not the ownership of capital or possession of some privileged position or office. In this movement it is generally conceded by Socialists that the workingmen of industry play the central part. But they are neither its sole origin nor is their welfare its sole aim.

The best known of the Socialist critics of Marxism, Edward Bernstein, shares with some of Marx's most loyal disciples in this excessive idealization of the industrial working class. Indeed, he says, with more truth than he realizes, that in proportion as revolutionary Marxism is relegated to the background it is necessary to affirm more sharply the class character of the Party. That is to say, if a Socialist Party abandons the principles of Socialism, then the only way it can be distinguished from other movements is by the fact that it embraces other elements of the population, that it is a class movement. But Socialism is something more than this, it is a class movement of a certain definite character, composed of classes that are naturally selected and united, owing to certain definite characteristics.

"The social democracy," says Bernstein, "can become the people's party, but only in the sense that the workingmen form the essential kernel around which are grouped social elements having identical interests.... Of all the social classes opposed to the capitalist class, the working class alone represents an invincible factor of social progress," and social democracy "addresses itself principally to the workers." (My italics.)

Perhaps the most orthodox Socialist organ in America, and the ablest representative in this country of the international aspects of the movement (the New Yorker Volkszeitung), insists that "the Socialist movement consists in the fusion of the Socialist doctrine with the labor movement and in nothing else," and says that students and even doctors have little importance for the Party. The less orthodox but more revolutionary Western Clarion, the Socialist organ of British Columbia, where the Socialists form the chief opposition party in the legislature, asserts boldly, "We have no leaning towards democracy; all we want is a short supply of working-class autocracy."

Some of the ultra-revolutionists have gone so far in their hostility to all social classes that do not work with their hands, that they have completed the circle and flown into the arms of the narrowest and least progressive of trade unionists—the very element against which they had first reacted. The Western Socialist, Thomas Sladden, throwing into one single group all the labor organizations from the most revolutionary to the most conservative, such as the railway brotherhoods, says that all "are in reality part of the great Socialist movement," and claims that whenever "labor" goes into politics, this also is a step towards Socialism, though Socialist principles are totally abandoned. Mayor McCarthy of San Francisco, for instance, satisfied his requirements. "McCarthy declares himself a friend of capital," says Sladden, but, he asks defiantly, "Does any sane capitalist believe him?" Here we see one of the most revolutionary agitators becoming more and more "radical" until he has completed the circle and come back, not only to "labor right or wrong," but even to "labor working in harmony with capital."

"The skilled workingman," he says, "is not a proletarian. He has an interest to conserve, he has that additional skill for which he receives compensation in addition to his ordinary labor power."

Mr. Sladden adds that the real proletarian is "uncultured and uncouth in appearance," that he has "no manners and little education," and that his religion is "the religion of hate." Of course this is a mere caricature of the attitude of the majority of Socialists.

Some of the partisans of revolutionary unionism in this country are little less extreme. The late Louis Duchez, for example, reminds us that Marx spoke of the proletariat as "the lowest stratum of our present society," those "who have nothing to lose but their chains," and that he said that "along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, grows the revolt of the working class." It is true that Marx said these things and said them with emphasis. But he did not wish to make any rigid or dogmatic definition of "the proletariat" and much that he has said pointed to an entirely different conception than would be gained from these quotations.

In speaking of "the lowest stratum of society" Marx was thinking, not of a community divided into numerous strata, but chiefly of three classes, the large capitalists, the workers, and the middle class. It was the lowest of these three, and not the lowest of their many subdivisions, that he had in mind. From the first the whole Socialist movement has recognized the almost complete hopelessness, as an aid to Socialism, of the lowest stratum in the narrow sense, of what is called the "lumpen proletariat," the bulk of the army of beggars and toughs. Mr. Duchez undoubtedly would have accepted this point, for he wishes to say that the Socialist movement must be advanced by the organization of unions not among this class, but among the next lowest, economically speaking, the great mass of unskilled workers. This argument, also, that the unskilled have a better strategic position than the skilled on account of their solidarity and unity is surely a doubtful one. European Socialists, as a rule, have reached the opposite conclusion, namely, that it is the comparatively skilled workers, like those of the railways, who possess the only real possibility of leading in a general strike movement (see Chapters V and VI).