A Socialist Programme

THE enemies of socialism are very diligent in stating its extravagancies. These are so prolific and of such hardy growth that no movement ever lent itself to easier attack. Upon nothing do the socialists more vehemently insist than upon the severely scientific character of the thing they have in hand. Since 1848 their ablest writers exhibit mauvaise honte of anything like exhortation. They seem ever to be asking us merely to see what is happening in the business world: to observe the actual facts of the industrial panorama as it moves before us. It is their belief that to make us consciously alive to the main facts surrounding us is to make us socialists. “We have,” says Liebknecht, “ only to see the thing that is, to become socialists.”

Yet, in spite of this wariness, no great social endeavor was ever more charged with passional elements than modern collectivism. It is above all an endeavor suffused by temperament and variations of feeling. Every whit of its science consists of phenomena interpreted by what is essentially moral temperament. It is invariably a temperament appealing from the is to the ought. Its chief strength is, indeed, in this very feature. The existing status of competitive society is so heavyladen with inequalities and injustices of all sorts that the moral sense is generally in active revolt against it. The really great moralists of the last generation and of the present are, almost to a man, as ardently against it as any socialist.

Among a large group of social critics, there is a point of union in their moral rage against the fatalities of the competitive wage system that seems to class them with socialists. What invective could outdo the browbeating of Carlyle and of his follower, Ruskin ? Hugo, Ibsen, Tolstoi, — each after his genius makes it a vocation to discredit our conventional standards. The inevitable excesses of competition, moulding such standards, are to these race-teachers merely devil’s work. As much revolt as there is at any moment against these standards, so much morality is there. Not one of these masters is a socialist. Yet no one has done more than they to create the sustaining atmosphere in which socialism finds its strength. The headway which the movement is now making in the world is largely owing to a far wider moral indignation which the collectivist safely invokes.

To point out on its ideal side this source of strength is at the same time to indicate a weakness in the socialist cause. “When we shout for ideals, it is as musical as heaven; when we discuss our practical programme, it is discordant as hell,” says a French collectivist. With every step of approach toward the responsibilities of working politics, the defining of methods and ways of action brings out the temperamental differences with which socialism must more and more cope. One of the ablest English socialists, after a visit to this country, said to me, “ The American comrades are a queer lot of theorists. I have found but one man among them with whom I could work in sympathy.” Another says scornfully of John Burns, “ Oh, John was straight until he had been two years in Parliament; then he became a fakir, as most of them do when they get positions.”

This is the exact counterpart of the criticism heaped upon Millerand by former friends when he entered the WaldeckRousseau Cabinet in 1899 as Minister of Commerce and Industry. Definite political responsibility everywhere compels a reconstruction of all ideal formulas. The old expositions of socialism were free from embarrassments. “Let society take to itself the land and all capitalistic machinery of production. Let these be used for the common, not for the private good, as now.” These copybook phrases were equal to the occasion during the régime of propaganda minus responsibility. It is because the movement at various points is passing beyond the talking stage into that of action and accountability that programme and definition alike are undergoing changes full of significance. In dramatic interest the struggle between leaders like Jules Guesde and Jaurès in France is perhaps keenest, but for instruction the recent English experience is most illuminating. That more than fifty labor members should take their places in Parliament has had comment enough. To show what a large socialist contingent in this group proposes to do in the way of practical politics is the object of this paper. Socialist literature can nowhere show a programme more unflinching or more definite. It has the Fabian stamp of opportunism which characterizes politics under representative government. No paragraph is tainted by gray theory or by academic aloofness. It has been beaten out line by line during the last twenty years, by resolute contact with the fighting facts of English policy. The great features of this policy give an admirable perspective through which this formulated attack upon society as now organized may be seen and judged: Imperialism, the land question, education, free trade, and, overstepping all, the questions of finance, private property, and taxation.

I

Let us begin with the least revolutionary proposals. It is strictly consistent with socialist policy to attack the liquor trade by striking at the private profits connected with its distribution. Every step which narrows the area from which individuals may put rent, interest, or profits, in their pockets is the essence of socialism. A state in which these elements of wealth should pass as a whole into public treasuries would realize to the full the economic dream of the socialist. Legislation that should prevent all private persons from making profit out of liquor selling, would in that measure advance the socialist cause.

This part of the programme has been adopted, however, not merely for its theoretic consistency, but even more because of the belief that no real headway is made under present methods against the devastating effects of drink. The ablest investigations wholly independent in character, like those of Rowntree and Sherwell, confirm this view. Again, the telling evidence of several reports upon the solid improvements made under the Gothenburg System, which “socializes profits,” has been used for ten years by English socialists. In the words of the programme, “The drink trade is too profitable and too perilous to be left to the heedless greed of private enterprise.” “The private trader must no longer be suffered to push his trade to the detriment of the public, and to wax rich on his customers’ excess.” Therefore, “Management by public authorities, in the public interest, where the salesman is a salaried official.” But “the grandmothers of the temperance party” stick to their ancient nostrum. The cry is still for local veto, not because its advocates can prove that it makes for sobriety, but “because they are too old or too slowwitted to be pervious to any more modern idea.”

As the socialist everywhere strikes with a kind of fury at the entire existing policy of dealing with poor laws and charities, there is nothing peculiar in this English plan. “The only way in which to reform the Poor Law is to abolish it.” That any man because of misfortune or lack of property should be called a pauper and deprived of his franchise, is pronounced a meanness and indignity unworthy even of half-civilized peoples. “This rubbish should be swept away, — the aged, the sick, and the children, victims of accident or of a wrong system of wealth distribution, should be cared for, not under a special poor law, but as part of the duty of the peoples’ representatives.” Thus with other “rubbish” the boards of guardians are to be cast out together with all control of the Local Government Board. There is no longer to be “doling out of insufficient relief,” or “workhouses more hateful than prisons.” The sturdy beggar, the idle, the unemployable, are to be placed in farm colonies where a chance at least shall be given to win new habits of independence.

As a part of the above policy, old-age pensions are of course to be granted. For the whole wage-earning class of both sexes these pensions, to be locally administered like the poor law and payable through the post-office, are to be universal, and payable probably at the age of sixty years. None of the six governments that have adopted old-age pensions has dared to put the age below sixty-five, because of the cost. This niggardly regard to fiscal difficulties has everywhere been held up to execration by socialists, so that one may presume that premiums will begin at sixty. From 1883, when the German Labor Insurance began, the socialist party united in aggressive opposition to these measures in spite of their socialistic character. They feared imperial control and expressed only contempt for the petty sums paid to labor in form of premiums. That German socialists should have changed front on this legislation marks the inevitable change, even on the continent, toward “possibilist” politics. The English programme assumes that it is to work with existing parties. Pensions, municipal trading, feeding the school children, elementary education, insurance, land-leasing to small holders, and coöperative factories, represent policies already in the arena of popular discussion. On this frontier line of agitation the socialists take their stand, “to persuade and to permeate the thought of the average elector.”

The surest and best fighting ground which these socialists have chosen is unquestionably in that ugliest fact of English society, the decay of country districts. That millions should be huddled in cities living so hungrily on the margin of want and squalor, while vast stretches of fertile land maintain less than a tenth of those who could live there in plenty, is a situation that sooner or later has to be met. With a decent technical and agricultural education Denmark is actually turning her population away from the city. It is a fact immense in its significance. These socialists have so far learned their lesson as to realize the futility of the old cry “back to the land ” until a broad, definite, and effective system of education, technical and agricultural, is given to the people. The lottery charms of the city will never be broken except through the slow teaching of a new set of habits and capacities.

Models of this great achievement already exist, — not only among the Danes, but in Belgium, Hungary, Germany, and in the Irish work of Sir Horace Plunkett. They take forms as fascinating to the imagination as they are profitable to the pocket. Much of this work has of course grown without a thought of socialism in it. Some of the best of it has had collectivist inspiration from the beginning. The English programme leaves no question as to the principle. It has the element of state compulsion and the open recognition that the one adversary is the present landlord and the present capitalist. At the heart of this special task is the “organization of scientific and technical education and of coöperation in production and sale.” “Every county shall have a Committee to organize agriculture just as it now has a Committee to organize education.” It is to have authority “to do all that the councillors and their coöpted experts deem needful for the furtherance of agricultural prosperity.” The committee must be empowered to buy land to be leased to small holders, with perfect security of tenure; and to advance stock and implements on reasonable terms and on reasonable security. Further, it must lead the way by starting dairy factories for the production of butter and cheese and the handling of milk. Lectures and classes on agricultural subjects are to be organized on a great scale, and if any recalcitrant body hesitates, there shall be “a mandamus compelling a lethargic conncil to action.”

Two principles of economic collectivism get sharp emphasis: “the right to work” and “the minimum wage.” The chief danger of the legally admitted right to work is guarded against by insisting that the unemployed shall be given “opportunity to work;” but “no one should or could have the right to ask that he be employed at the particular job which suits his peculiar taste and temperament. Each of us must be prepared to do the work which society wants done or take the consequences of refusal.”

It is no part of the writer’s purpose in this paper to criticise this programme, but merely to give it faithful exposition. It is well, however, to note the fearless admission that social compulsion is to take on forms that are rather startling. The older programmes implied as much; the newest of them is bold to state the specific character of the constraint.

There is again the extreme care to avoid the pitfall of “making” or “finding” work. That little can be done with the “social failures ” is taken for granted; but there are “ slums to clear, houses to build, land to reform, and waste places to afforest. To get work done there is need of an army of workers, engaged, not temporarily to tide over a depression, but permanently to complete an undertaking; these armies must consist, not of society’s failures, paid less than a fair wage, but of men capable of earning a high one.”

At the forefront is the necessity of a legally established minimum wage. A liberal ministry (1892-95) made formal declaration that the state should be a model employer. There is already recognition of “standard” wages in government employment. The foothold which this datum offers is seized by our socialists. Appeal is then made to the elaborate studies of B. S. Rowntree and Charles Booth, to show that there are “some five millions of men, women, and children living in families whose wage is below this minimum.” There is therefore to be an established minimum of food, clothing, and housing by appointed authority. The money equivalent to this minimum, in its variations in different parts of the country, is to be settled by town and county councils. Sweating in every aspect thus becomes a penal offense. It is succinctly stated that after a fair chance to adjust their affairs, employers found paying less than the minimum are to be punished. It is here assumed that New Zealand has already given adequate proof that this bold venture may be safely taken. The hope that these “five millions” can ever extricate themselves by voluntary action is abandoned.

II

This brings us to the towering obstacle which these Knights of the New Social Order face without blenching. How are the bills to be paid ? Old-age pensions are but an item in the count; but they would cost annually at least an hundred million of dollars. With local politicians competing for favors before the electorate, probably far more than this at an early date. To make its scheme of education effective, to establish its minimum wage and remodel the poor law on lines proposed, would enhance the cost of these luxuries to very dizzying figures. There is in the programme no hint of difficulty and danger in these claims. With the whole liberal policy of retrenchment and making small taxes a boast, this programme breaks with contemptuous abruptness. Its calmly drawn fiscal policy exhibits the full revolutionary character of its proposals.

“To the socialist, taxation is the chief means by which he may recover from the propertied classes some portion of the plunder which their economic strength and social position have enabled them to extract from the workers; to him national and municipal expenditure is the spending for common purposes of an ever increasing proportion of the national income. The degree of civilization which a state has reached may almost be measured by the proportion of the national income which is spent collectively instead of individually. To the socialist the best of governments is that which spends the most. The only possible policy is deliberately to tax the rich; especially those who live on wealth which they do not earn. For thus and thus only can we reduce the burden upon the poor.”

The temptation is strong to italicize portions of this extract. The reader will do well to dwell upon it with some care, as it leaves nothing in doubt about the proposals of the ablest leaders in this movement.

From this broad principle of taxing out of existence — not all private property as it is often said, but a very large portion of the present forms of private property, the programme passes in detail immediately to the income tax. It is to be based first upon ability to pay, and second upon a distinction between “incomes which cease with the death or illness of the earner and those which remain whether the owner live or die.” All those who owned their incomes up to five thousand pounds a year would pay less than at present. Unearned incomes above this amount would be taxed two and a half times more than at present. Then by an estimate of the ratio of earned and unearned incomes it is computed that this income would give the tidy surplus of £16,850,000 above the present beggarly shilling tax. The “estate duty ” is raked by the same fire and yet upon a carefully regulated principle. Up to £1000 there are no death duties. Between that sum and £10,000, three per cent; between this latter and £25,000, four per cent; while the millionaire who now pays a “poor eight per cent ” would pay fifteen. It is made clear to us that this increase is really grotesque in its moderation ; nor is there the least dissembling of the ultimate purpose, when power has been won, to apply the socialist finance with no need of petty and humiliating compromising. “These suggestions,” the programme reads, “are doubtless confiscatory; and that is why they should recommend themselves to the Labor Party. But even so the confiscation is of a timorous and slowfooted sort.”

In the interim before the drink traffic is socialized, those who make and distribute liquors are taxed an extra seven and a half million pounds. The lightening of direct and indirect taxes upon those of small income, and the equalizing of local burdens out of national funds, reveal the character of the bid for popular political support. The rearranging of the local and national finance is brilliant strategy, because through it vast amounts of personal property of the rich can be reached and applied at the poorer local centres throughout the realm. The principle on which this rests should be fully stated.

“A district is not rich or poor on account of its own merits or faults, but by virtue of the place it takes in the national structure.” “ Not only has a town a claim on the unearned increment created by its citizens and annexed by the land owners; the nation has a claim of its own. A town owes to the nation a rent based on the advantages of its position, its mineral resources, etc., an advantage measured roughly by the rate of increase of its site value.”

Henry George never shrank before the fact of confiscation under his own plan of taking for social uses the entire economic rent of land. This is less serious because the highest legal authorities have decided that taxation is of the very nature of confiscation. All that George asked, however, is but an appetizer for our programme. The socialist takes this at a gulp and then gets to his real business of appropriating the vast accumulations based on interest and profits which George considered both just and socially useful. That the individual should pocket a distinctly social product (economic rent) was to the Single Taxer the sum of villanies. This is at most but petty larceny to the socialist. The grand larceny is the capitalistic system which enriches individuals, as distinct from society, through the appropriation of interest and profits as well as by area rent. This system is now assailed by organized devices far more threatening than the older socialism had at its command.

The assault began in the Australian Colonies in 1890, when trade unionism received a defeat so crushing as to turn its full strength into the political field. Most of the colonies have now an aggressive Independent Labor Party which puts each aspiring politician upon the grill. “If you expect our votes, what guarantees do you give us that our measures shall have your support ? ” These tactics are now organized by a powerful contingent in the English Parliament. In the opening paragraph, after warning new members against mere talk or hopes or enthusiasms it says, “A party in Parliament can he held together, kept vital, only by a policy, — not by vague aspirations and foggy ideas, —but by a policy. A policy implies something more than a desire to attain certain definite legislation. It implies strategy, criticism, initiative, and opposition. These, to be effective, must be based upon some principle either of attack or of defense, or of both. Labor to-day is essentially aggressive; its policy is a policy of attack. The object of its hostility is Capitalistic Monopoly in all its forms, and the winning for those who work of every penny which now goes into the pockets of those who idle. Nothing is gained though much may be lost by concealments, subterfuges, reticences. The Labor Party is a party against the Landlord and the Capitalist.”

III

It is a rare merit in a socialist document (or indeed in any political appeal) to avoid “concealments and reticences.” In this respect the success of the present document is complete. To show the public accurately what this branch of able and disciplined socialists proposes to do, its value is beyond that of a whole library of current speculations on the theme. It tackles straight the livest issues in English politics. It lays bare both the principles upon which it rests and the working methods through which it proposes to win its fight. The followers are solemnly apprised of what awaits them. The party is now patted on the back because it is not feared. “ Until it has made itself both disliked and feared, it will be far short of having fulfilled the object of its existence. It is not saying too much, to say that in the very near future the measure of the Labor Party’s effectiveness will be its unpopularity in the House of Commons. Acrimonious as are the feelings often evoked by political controversies, they are urbanity itself compared with the passions aroused by our economic issues.

“To mince matters, to seek to conceal or only half reveal the facts were mischievous as well as stupid. Insomuch as nothing short of an economic revolution can vitally or permanently improve the wage-earner’s condition, it is at an economic revolution that the Labor Party must aim, and the revolution is none the less a revolution because it takes years or even decades in the accomplishing. Years and decades of hard work, of tireless activity, of small triumphs and dismaying defeats lie before the Labor Party inside and outside the walls of Parliament, and there must be years and decades of revolutionary activity and of nothing less than that. In the course of a revolution somebody must needs suffer in mind, body, or estate. Thanks to our constitutional system and to the widely extended franchise, Labor can work out its own salvation without injury either to the sanity or to the skins of those who shall seek to hinder it. But the estates must be attacked, and attacked with vigor and dispatch. A Labor policy which hurts nobody will benefit no one.”

The immediate propaganda is to convince a stiff majority of the workers that political liberalism is a spent force. It was the politics of capitalism, and as this is now the enemy, the campaign of education is to teach labor to cut itself clean from every tradition of “ the politics of exploitation.” Thus every new labor member becomes in the language of the programme “one more nail driven into the coffin of the capitalist system.” “Although capitalism is not yet dead, the feet of the young men who are to carry it out to burial are already upon the floor of the House of Commons.” With this buoyant declaration the document closes.

It is conceded that the abhorred thing is still sturdy and vital enough to threaten society with its impudent presence for decades. Meantime, to see to it that the funeral obsequies are not too long delayed is to be the New Religion.