The truth about socialism

Socialists want the people, through the government, to own and operate the country’s great industries. In making this proposal, however, they always specify that they also want the people to own and operate the government.

Upon this slight basis rests the charge that Socialists oppose the right of the individual to own private property. Gentlemen who own much private property—hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth—energetically try to frighten gentlemen whose holdings of private property are chiefly confined to the clothes they stand in and the chairs they sit in.

“Beware of those Socialists,” say these gentlemen. “They are your worst enemies. They would deprive you of the right to own private property. They would have everybody own everything jointly, thus permitting nobody to own anything individually. Look out for them.”

We Socialists say to you: “Look out for the gentlemen who are so fearful lest you shall lose the right to own private property. If you will observe carefully, you will note that they are the ones who own practically all of the private property. You have hopes, perhaps, but they have the property. Your hopes do not increase. Their property does. Besides, we have no desire to deny you the right to own private property. On the contrary, we want to make your right worth something. It is not worth anything now, because you don’t own anything and can’t own anything. You are kept too busy making a bare living.”

The imagination can picture no more seductive subject than the right to own private property. The right to own private property suggests the power to exercise the right. The power to exercise the right a little suggests the power to exercise it much. The power to exercise it much suggests the power to put the world at one’s feet; to reach out and get this, whatever it may be; to go there and get that, wherever it may be. Nothing that is of earth or on earth is beyond the dreams of one who owns enough private property. Therefore, the subject may be worth a little more than ordinary consideration.

What, then, is property? Let us look around us. One man has property in land. So far as the eye can see, maybe, the laws of the state defend him in his power to say: “This is mine. I bought it. I paid for it. No one can take it from me without my leave. No one may even pick a flower from the hillside, or a berry from a bush without my consent.”

Property in land may be called property in natural resources—property in things that man did not make.

Then there is property in things that man has made. Property in food, property in clothing, property in houses, and property in the mills and machinery with which food, clothing, houses and all other manufactured articles are made.

Now, why should anyone wish a property right in anything? Why should anyone wish to say of anything on earth: “This is mine. No one may take it from me without my leave. No one may even use it without my leave”?

Only that he may fully use and enjoy it. That is the only valid reason that lies behind the desire to own anything. Some things cannot be fully used and enjoyed unless they are exclusively within the control of those who use them. A home into which the world was at liberty to enter would be no home. It might be a lodging house or a hotel, but it would be no home. Therefore, there is a valid reason why each individual should exclusively control the house in which he lives. Such exclusive control may arise from private ownership, as we now understand the term, or it may arise from the right, guaranteed by the state, to exclusive control so long as its use is desired; but, from whatever it may arise, it should exist.

It is the shame of the present civilization that it does not exist. The great majority of human beings have not the exclusive control of the houses in which they live. Their clutch upon their habitations is of the flimsiest sort. The sickness of the father may deprive them of the power to pay rent and thus put them out. The ability of some other man to pay a greater rental may put them out. Any one of many incidents may deprive them of their right to exclusive control of their domiciles.

Exclusive control of the furnishings of a home is also necessary to their complete enjoyment. What is true of house furnishings is true of clothing. Anything, in fact, that is exclusively used by an individual cannot be completely enjoyed unless it is exclusively controlled by that individual.

Wherein lies the justice of permitting one individual to own that which he does not use and cannot use, but which some other individual must use? Why should Mr. Morgan and his associates be permitted to own the machinery with which the steel trust workers earn their living? Why should Mr. Rockefeller and his associates be permitted to own so many of the railroads with which railroad men earn their living? Why should one man be permitted to own block upon block of tenements, while block upon block of tenement-dwellers own no homes?

These questions cannot be answered by saying that the world has always been run this way. In the first place, it is not true. Never, during all the years of the world, until less than a century ago, did a few men own the tools with which all other men work. In fact, it is only within the last 40 years that such ownership has divided the population into a small master class and a vast servant class. But even if the world had always been run as it is running, that, in itself, would not make it right. And anything that is wrong cannot be made right without changing it.

We Socialists are determined to change the laws relating to private property. We assert that the present laws are wrong. We are prepared to prove that they are wrong. We are eager to demonstrate that the poverty of the masses is the direct result of the ownership, by a few, of a certain kind of property that should not be privately owned. We refer, of course, to the industrial machinery of the country, which is owned by those who do not use it and used by those who do not own it.

Our proposal, therefore, is this: We say that all property that is collectively used should be collectively owned, and that all property that is individually used should be individually owned. The last clause should help out the gentleman who is afraid that Socialism would rob him of the ownership of his undershirt. The first clause will help him to own an undershirt.

Please take this suggestion: Distrust any man who advises you to distrust Socialism because of the fear that it would destroy the individual’s right to own property. Such a man is always either ignorant upon the subject of Socialism or crooked upon the subject of capitalism. There are no exceptions, for Socialism does not mean what he says it means and would not do what he says it would do.

Socialism would give such a meaning to the individual right to own property as it has never had in all the history of the world. Under Socialism, the individual would not only have the right to own property, but he would have the power to exercise the right. He would own property. If Socialism would not give every head of a family the power exclusively to control as good a house as the $5,000–a-year man now lives in, Socialists would have no use for Socialism. The actual ownership of the house might or might not rest with the individual. To prevent grafters from grabbing houses, it might be deemed advisable to let the state hold the title. But the state would protect the individual in the right exclusively to control the house as long as he wished to live in it, even if it were for a lifetime. If the people so desired, the state might even go further and give the children, after the death of their parents, the same right. But no Socialist government would permit a landlord class to fatten upon a homeless class.

Why? Because Socialists believe that no validity underlies a private title to property except the validity that is completed by the use of property. This statement, like any other, can be made ridiculous by construing it ridiculously. Socialists do not mean by this, for instance, that if a man should take his family to the country for the summer anybody would have a right to move into his house, merely because he had temporarily ceased to use it. But Socialists do mean that it is hostile to the interests of the community for a small class to own so much that they can never use.

Socialists believe that the needs of the community are so great that all of the resources of the community should be available to the community. Therefore, they would require occupancy, or use, as a pre-requisite to the perfection of a title. Not that if a man, in spring, were to hang up his winter underclothing for the summer, any neighbor gentleman would thereby be given the right to appropriate the same—nothing of the kind. This statement with regard to use, like all other statements made by Socialists, must be construed reasonably. We simply lay down the principle that it is wrong to perpetuate conditions under which a few are enabled to grab so much more than they can use. Such grabbing hurts. What a man cannot use he should not have. He thereby prevents others from getting what they need.

Besides, what is grabbing but a bad habit? Mr. Rockefeller’s $900,000,000, if expended exclusively for bologna sausages, might buy enough to supply him for a million years. If expended for golf balls, he might be able to play golf, without buying a new ball, until he had eaten the last sausage. If expended for clothing, he might be able to wear a new suit, every fifteen minutes, for the next 28,000,000 years. But what good do all of these figures do Rockefeller? His capacity for consuming wealth is extremely limited. It is only his capacity for appropriating the wealth created by others that is great. Every time Mr. Rockefeller’s watch ticks $2 drop into his till—but he never sees them. He hardly knows they are there. He has to hire a bookkeeper to know they are there. So far as certainties are concerned, Mr. Rockefeller knows only that when he wants bacon and eggs, with a little hashed brown potatoes on the side, he has the money to pay for them. In other words, the few wants of his slight physical body are never in danger of denial.

Mr. Rockefeller’s physical wants would be in no danger of denial if he were worth only $50,000. Why, then, does he want to own the rest of his $900,000,000 worth of property? Plainly, it is only because he is a victim of a bad habit. Some men want money because of the power it gives them, but Rockefeller has never seemed to care much about power. He simply has a mania for accumulation. The more he gets, the more he can get—therefore, he always wants to get more.

And, what does Rockefeller do with wealth, after he gets it? Why, he lets us use it. He invests it in railroads, or steel mills, or steamboats, or copper mines, or restaurants, or whatever seems likely to bring him more money. He does not use any of these properties much. The same freight train that brings him a package of breakfast food brings carloads of kitchen stoves and iron bedsteads to those whose watches have to tick all day to bring in $2. But the point is that while Mr. Rockefeller uses his properties little and we use them much, he is continuously charging us toll for their use and investing the toll in more iron, more steel or more copper. If he charged us no toll, we should have reason to be thankful to him. If he should invest the toll in the necessities of life and dole them out to us, we should, if we were beggars, also have reason to be thankful to him. But he invests his toll in more iron, more steel or more copper—toll that the men who made it need to put blood into their bodies and clothing on their families.

That is all that the private ownership of property does for Mr. Rockefeller more than it does for anybody else. The beefsteak upon his plate is no more secure from outside attack than is the food upon the plate of the poorest laborer. But the industrial machinery that Mr. Rockefeller owns enables him to get, every time his watch ticks, the equivalent of $2 worth of food, or clothing, or anything else.

We stupid people who permit the private ownership of industrial machinery should be exceedingly thankful to Mr. Rockefeller and men of his type. To these gentlemen, are thanks especially due from those persons who believe that the constitution of the United States represents the last gasp of wisdom and should not, therefore, in any circumstances, be changed. Under the constitution and laws of this country, as they stand to-day, Mr. Rockefeller and his associates could legally starve us to death, if they were so minded. Each of them could go abroad, deposit $1,000,000 in the Bank of England, then cable instructions to close down every industry they own, which would mean every industry of importance in the country, including the railroads. No one would have a legal right to trespass upon their premises, and their hoarded wealth would be sufficient to enable them to live comfortably abroad to the end of their days, while the people of America were starving to death.

Of course, the people of America would not starve to death. Law or no law, the people of America would break into the abandoned properties and operate them. Without extended delay, they would change the law, including the federal constitution, to justify their action. But the theoretical possibility of such abandonment is sufficient to illustrate the absurdity of our present laws with regard to the ownership of private property.

When the constitution was adopted, even no such theoretical possibility existed. It is true that we were then almost exclusively an agricultural people, and some of the best families had stolen millions of acres of the most available land. But back of the most available land were untold millions of acres of other land upon which human life could be sustained—land that could be had for the taking and clearing. The factory age had not dawned. Every home was its own factory, in which cloth was woven and clothing was made. Aside from the stolen land which was privately owned, almost nothing was privately owned that was not suitable for private ownership. That was largely due, of course, to the further fact that there was not, at that time, much wealth in the country.

But, viewed from any angle, the unrestricted private ownership of property is a curse to the people and always has been. If it were not a curse, in the sense that it enables some to rob others, no one who is in his senses would be in favor of it. The desire to use property is a legitimate reason for wishing to own it, but the desire to own property that one does not use can arise from no other motive than a purpose to use such ownership as a bludgeon with which to rob the users.

Apply this test and it will be found never to fail. The landlord owns land because he wants to live in idleness from the fruits of those who till the land. The multimillionaire owners of industrial machinery want to own the industrial machinery because they want to use such ownership to appropriate part of what their employees produce. If private ownership did not give this advantage to the owners, the owners would not care to own. If it does give this advantage to the owners the workers have a right to object. Moreover, the workers have a right to insist that such ownership cease.

It is not enough to reply that a man has a right to own any physical property that he can buy. Some burglars have enough money to buy dark lanterns and “jimmies,” paying for the same in perfectly lawful coin of the United States. But merely because the private ownership of burglars’ tools is not for the good of the people, we have laws forbidding such ownership, and if the laws be violated, we seize and confiscate the tools.

Some day, the fact may dawn upon us that, for every dollar taken with burglars’ tools, a million dollars is taken—quite legally, of course—by the owners of industrial tools.

It may be a sore blow, of course, to a man who under capitalism, has never been able to own a coffee grinder, to tell him that, under Socialism, he would not be permitted to own a steel mill. If so, let the blow fall at once. He might as well know the worst now, as later. But if there be those who are interested in owning homes, furniture, clothing, motorboats, automobiles, and so forth, let them be interested in Socialism. Socialism, by no means, guarantees that every laborer shall go to his work in a six-cylinder car, while his wife does the marketing in a limousine, but it does guarantee that Socialism would not prevent him from privately owning all such property that he could earn.

We realize, of course, that this is but a small bait to hold out to a man whom capitalism has given the “right” to own the earth. Among gentlemen who would like to own the earth, perhaps we shall therefore make little progress. But among gentlemen who have been promised the earth and are getting only hell, we may do better. The time may come when they will tire of piling their bones at the foot of the precipice of private property. The time may come when they will realize that it would be no more absurd to have private undershirts owned by the public than it is to have the public’s industrial machinery owned by private interests. Then we shall have Socialism.

“And everything will be divided up equally, all around, and in five years the same persons will be rich who are now rich, and the same persons who are now poor will be poor again.”

List to the croaking parrot that has just flown into our happy home. Whenever and wherever there is a discussion about Socialism, that wise old bird wheels in and declares it is all a wicked scheme to rob the rich for the benefit of the poor, and that in no event could it long succeed. Poor old feathered imitation of a human intellect! Brainless, yet not without a voice, it talks on and on and on. Bereft of its feathers and its voice, it might take its place upon a hook in the market place and eventually work its way into some careless shopper’s basket as a perfectly good partridge, or diminutive duck. Placed upon the table and served as a delicacy, its worthlessness would soon be understood. But clad as nature clothed it and harping words that some one once dropped into its ear, its voice is continuously mistaken for the voice of wisdom and the progress of the world is commanded to halt.

But the progress of the world does not halt. Those who can think without inviting excruciating pain; those who can reflect without bringing on a stroke of apoplexy, are not compelled to think much or to reflect much to realize that nothing the bird says about “dividing up” is so. Who divided up the wealth that is represented in the public buildings in Washington? What part of the White House, pray, do you own? Do you own the south veranda, or do you own the President’s bed? Maybe it is the gilded lady upon the dome of the Capitol who calls you “papa” or “mamma.” If not, the wealth represented in the public buildings in Washington has not been “divided up,” for you have not been given your share.

Under Socialism, the wealth of the nation would no more be divided up than the wealth invested in the American navy is divided up now. The industrial wealth of the community, owned in common by the members of the community, would be at the service of the community. It would no more be at the service of an individual, exclusive of any other or all other individuals, than the postal department is now at the service of an individual to the exclusion of any other individual. Nor would any man or small set of men ever have a greater opportunity to regain possession of the nation’s industrial wealth than any man or small set of men now have to acquire private ownership of the Capitol at Washington. Any man may walk into the Capitol with all the freedom that he might feel if it were his own. But let any man try to sell off a wing as a lodging house and the Capitol police would do their duty. Let Socialists once nationalize the nation’s industries and they will cheerfully agree to lay their heads on the block if individuals ever recover possession of them.

Gentlemen who believe otherwise forget that under Socialism there would no longer be the means by which a few pile up great fortunes at the expense of the many. The private ownership of property that is collectively used is the means by which such fortunes are now accumulated. With the means gone, how could the fortunes reappear?

We Socialists are also often chided for what our opponents are pleased to call our “gross materialism.” Gentle folk like the Morgans, the Guggenheims, the Ryans, the Havemeyers and others often grieve because our vision seems to comprehend nothing but bread and butter, clothing and furniture, houses and lots and pensions for the aged.

Their grief is perhaps natural. We talk much about those things. We are frankly committed to the task of removing poverty from the world. Material things are required to remove poverty. When poverty goes, of course, a lot will go that is not material. All of the unhappiness that is caused by poverty and the fear of poverty will go. All of the ignorance that is caused by poverty will go. All of the crimes that are caused by ignorance and poverty will go. And much of the vice will go.

Much of the vice? Did you ever consider how much vice would go if capitalism were to go? Did you ever realize to what extent vice is fostered by the profit system to which Socialism is opposed? No? Then read what Wirt W. Hallman, of Chicago, said before the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. Here it is:

“If any city will take the profit out of vice, it will immediately reduce the volume of vice at least 50 per cent. If, in addition, it will make vice dangerous to men as well as women, to patrons, property-owners and business men as well as to dive-keepers and women street-walkers, it will reduce vice 75 per cent. or more, and will reduce the wreckage of health and morals in much the same proportion.”

Socialism will not only take the profit out of vice, but it will take it out of everything. By enfranchising woman and making her economically independent, no woman would be compelled to sell herself to keep herself. Socialism, in this and other enumerated respects, is therefore not particularly materialistic.

But what if it were wholly materialistic? What if its advocates thought of teaching nothing to the world but the best means of supplying itself with bread and butter, boots and shoes, caps and clothing, houses and lots? Do you now require your grocer to teach you ethics? Does your haberdasher supply you with spiritual food as well as neckties? If your house were burning, would you refuse the assistance of the fire department merely because the fire department is exclusively materialistic?

The charge of “gross materialism” is but more sand thrown in the eyes of those who could not be so easily robbed if they could see Socialism. Socialists behold a world that is and always has been poverty-stricken. They say that for the first time in the history of the world it is now possible to remove poverty. And those gentlemen who might have to go to work if poverty were removed rebuke the Socialists because they do not sing psalms while talking about the bread and butter question. Assuredly, no flattery is thereby intended, but indeed what flattery this is. By inference, they tell the world that we are super-men. We could tell the world all it needs to know if it were not for the cussedness that causes us to harp on bread and butter.

The real cause of such complaint is, of course, not that we are teaching the world too little, but too much. We could preach ethics and religion until the cows came home and not arouse a croaker. We could preach nothing until the cows dropped dead and still there would be silence. But when we proclaim the right of the individual, not only to work, but to possess all he creates, the gentlemen who create nothing and own everything fire at us every brick within reach.

Mr. John C. Spooner, once a United States Senator from Wisconsin, but, happily, no longer such, feels particularly aggrieved at the Socialist proposals commonly known as the initiative, the referendum and the recall. To engraft these measures upon our federal and state constitutions would, he says, be an attempt to bring about a “pure democracy,” meaning thereby a community the members of which directly governed themselves. A “pure democracy,” according to Mr. Spooner, was never made to work on a great scale and cannot be made to work to-day.

Mr. Spooner, who, in and out of office, has always served the rich, is evidently still true to his allegiance. If Mr. Spooner does not know that no Socialist, nor any other person fit to be out of an idiot asylum, has ever even suggested that the government of the United States be converted into a pure democracy, the sum of his knowledge is even less than the sum of his public services up to date. Socialists, and those who have followed us in advocating the initiative, the referendum and the recall merely want to give the people power to do certain things for themselves, provided their elected representatives refuse to do them.

We do not propose to do away with representative government. We do not propose to disband a single legislative body. But we do propose to make every elected official represent us. We do not care whether he be a judge, a congressman or a President. He must represent us. But merely because we are determined these gentlemen shall represent us, other gentlemen like Mr. Spooner seek to make the people believe we are trying to go back to the old New England town meeting days and collect 90,000,0000 people on the prairie somewhere every time a law is to be passed or a fourth-class postmaster appointed. The most charitable construction that can be placed upon the attitude of Mr. Spooner and men of his kind is that they are infinitely more foolish than they believe Socialists to be.

Another point of view is suggested by a Denver gentleman whose letter follows:

“In one of your articles on Socialism, you tell how Socialists would govern—changes they would make in the constitution, and so forth. I should like to ask what you Socialists, or your ancestors had to do with making our present form of government? In other words, what percentage of the Socialists have three generations of American-born ancestors? Socialist leaders, in particular? A very small percentage, I venture to say. Socialism is a result of immigration. Americans still have faith in the constitution of the United States.”

When all other attacks fail, the charge is gravely made that “Socialism is un-American” and, therefore, a “result of immigration.”

Does it never occur to these gentlemen that the United States are also the “result of immigration”? That the English language, as we speak it here, is the result of immigration?

Would these gentlemen have us reject everything that comes from Europe? If so, why do they not reject the Declaration of Independence, which, though written by Thomas Jefferson, yet breathes the spirit of Rousseau and Voltaire, at whose feet he was proud to sit? Why do they not reject the constitution of the United States which is heavily saturated with the political principles of the English? Why do they not reject the English common law, which assuredly is not American? Why do they not reject the multiplication table, the works of Shakespeare and the wireless telegraph?

Why don’t they? Because they are not fools. They are foolish, let us hope, only when they are talking about Socialism. On this subject, their brains curdle. They do not ask whether the principles upon which it is based are true. Truth is not the test. The test is the place where the principles were first proclaimed. If it could be proved that they were first proclaimed at Muncie, Indiana, by a gentleman who was born there immediately after the landing of Columbus—then we might expect these patriots to become Socialists even if Socialism had not a leg to stand upon. But since Europeans chanced to hit upon Socialism before we did, precisely as they chanced to hit upon many another good thing before we did, these gentlemen do not want Socialism, even though it be true.

Well, let them reject it. Let them reject the sun, the moon and the stars, if they want to. None of them was made in America. Let them reject the Mississippi River because it was discovered by De Soto, a foreigner. Let them reject the Pacific Ocean because it was discovered by Balboa, another foreigner. The march of the sun and planets will probably not be seriously disturbed, even if some gentlemen do reject them. Possibly the Mississippi River may flow on. Certainly, the Socialist party in America will not disband. It’s busy.

I cannot tell my correspondent what percentage of Socialists have three generations of ancestors who were born in America. I do not know. I do not care. I do not know why he should care. I know some Socialists who have fifteen generations of ancestors who were born in America. I have seen some Socialists when they had been in this country only fifteen minutes. So far as I could discover, they were precisely like the Socialists who had lived in this country, in person or by proxy, for 300 years. They all believed that poverty was unnecessary and that Socialism would remove it.

Either that belief is true, or it isn’t. Whence it sprang or by whom it is expressed makes no difference with its truth or falsity. Yet, men who think they can think, write or speak as this gentleman has written. They mean well, of course, but they are suffering from ingrowing Americanism. They are turning their eyes upon themselves and their backs upon the world. If America ever reaches the point where it will reject truth, simply because it comes from abroad, while accepting error for no other reason than that it is made at home, America will not be worth bothering about.