The truth about socialism

A “radical” politician, when he is not an utter fraud, is a well-meaning man who lacks either the courage or the insight to do well. He can see wrongs, but he cannot see rights. Or, if he can see rights, he dare not do right. Always, there is some reason why he should not do right. The people are not ready. The time is not propitious. Thus does he appease his conscience, betray his followers and destroy himself.

Abraham Lincoln, during all except the last two years of his life, was such a man. I sometimes feel that this is why so many modern “radicals” believe they are second Lincolns. They seem to remember Lincoln only as he was when he was too small for his task. Mr. Roosevelt, in particular, is suspected of harboring the belief that he is a second Lincoln. In a way and to a degree, Mr. Roosevelt is right. The ground upon which Mr. Roosevelt now stands is broadly comparable to the ground upon which Mr. Lincoln stood before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Mr. Lincoln hated chattel slavery, but was willing to end the war with slavery intact. Mr. Roosevelt hates the robbery of man by man, but he shrinks from trying to seize the club with which the robbery is committed. He is willing to pick at the splinters upon the club, precisely as Mr. Lincoln was long willing to content himself with efforts to restrict the evil of slavery. And, Mr. Roosevelt, picking at splinters, is no more useful in destroying poverty than was Mr. Lincoln, when he picked at the splinters of chattel slavery. The Civil War came on, in spite of all that Lincoln did, because he did no more than to temporize with the evil that was destined to cause the war. Mr. Roosevelt, even as the leader of a new political party, is doing no more than to temporize with the monstrous evil of unnecessary poverty in America.

Let us look, even more closely, into the life of Lincoln. The career of no other man of modern times is so well suited to our purpose. We want to know whether a “radical” like Roosevelt or Wilson should be more highly regarded by the people than a revolutionist like Debs or Berger. Lincoln, at different times in his life, was both a “radical” and a revolutionist. His “radical” beliefs put him into the White House. One colossal revolutionary act put him into the hearts of men. We Socialists feel that he nestles a little more closely to our hearts than he does to some others. When Lincoln ceased to temporize with chattel slavery and struck it down, he became one of us. He actually did to chattel slavery what we are trying to do to wage slavery.

The magnitude of this act, as well as the usefulness of a mere “radical” politician, may be measured by what Lincoln’s life would have been without his name at the bottom of the Emancipation Proclamation. Tradition has it that Lincoln became a radical upon the slavery question when, as a flatboatman upon the Mississippi, he saw a negress sold upon the auction block at New Orleans. Tradition has it that he said: “If I ever have a chance to hit slavery, I will hit it and hit it hard.”

The fact is that when Mr. Lincoln began to get the power to hit slavery, he did not hit it hard. He was a “radical” politician and therefore could not hit it hard. He was against slavery, but he was also against anything that would end slavery. In the phrase of our time, he wanted to “regulate” slavery. Men like John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison wanted to end slavery and advocated means that would have ended it, but Lincoln, though he hated slavery as much as they did, wanted only to restrict it. He was “radical.” Brown and Garrison were revolutionary. Lincoln meant well. Brown and Garrison were determined to do well.

But after Lincoln, even as President, had continued to temporize with slavery; after he had sent word to the Southern leaders that if they would let him write into a treaty of peace the one word “union” he would let them write all of the other words, including “slavery”—after all of this, there came a change, and Lincoln ceased to be a “radical.” Then, and not until then, did he strike the blow that in his youth he declared he would strike if ever the opportunity should come. With only the briefest words he laid the Emancipation Proclamation before his cabinet.

“I do not lay this before you for your advice,” he said, “but only for your information. I have promised my God that I will do this, and I shall do it.”

Thus spoke the revolutionist. The time for “radicalism” had passed. Slavery, during half a century of “radicalism,” had expanded. Having the power to kill chattel slavery and daring to use it, Lincoln killed chattel slavery. He put himself into the hearts of men. He wrote his name so big in history that the names of all other men since his time seem small.

Yet Lincoln, if he had been content to remain merely a “radical,” could have performed no service for his country worth while, and Fame would have missed him by many a mile. If the South had won, the North would have blamed Lincoln. If the North had won, without destroying chattel slavery, nothing would have been settled, and Lincoln would have been given the credit for settling nothing. Lincoln’s greatest opportunity to serve his country lay in doing precisely what he did, and it is to his eternal glory that he had both the understanding and the courage to do it.

The times again call loudly for such a man. Chattel slavery is dead, but a greater slavery has grown up in its place. Wage slavery is as much greater than chattel slavery as the white people in this country are more numerous than the black people. Poverty is widespread and the fear of poverty is all but universal. No one knows how much longer he will have employment. No one can know how much longer he will have employment. A few own all of the machinery without which we cannot be employed. These few have it in their power to say whether we shall be permitted to earn the means of life. We may want to work as much as we please, but we cannot work unless they please. They do not please to let us work unless they believe they can see a profit in so doing. That we need work means nothing to those who own the great industries of the country. Nor does the fact that the people need the things we could make. They consider only the question: “Is there profit in it?” By their answer, we eat or hunger, live or die.

Such times could not help but call for great men, even in little places. The times call for great men to take charge of municipal affairs, lest the poor shall be tortured with bad tenements and robbed of their last nickels by little grafters while greater grafters are taking their dollars. The times call for great men in state offices, in judicial positions, in Congress and in the White House. But, in response to the White House call, who answered in 1912? Mr. Roosevelt answered. Mr. Wilson answered.

Socialists do not regard either Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Wilson as a fraudulent “radical,” in the sense that they believe either of them to be intent upon wantonly fooling the people. We regard Mr. Roosevelt as being something of a self-seeker. We regard him as the embodiment of inconsistency. We know that when he was President he never tried to do some of the things that he later promised to do if we would again make him President. We know he does not now promise to try to take away the club with which robbery is committed. He is still picking at the splinters, taking care to lay no hand upon the club itself. And, so far as concerns Mr. Wilson, we regard him as an amiable, cultured gentleman, who, meaning well, as he doubtless does, lacks the understanding without which he can not do well. We also call attention to the fact that immediately following Mr. Wilson’s nomination he began to placate the great grafters. He invited them to his home to hold counsel with him. And, in his speech of acceptance, he all but laid himself at their feet. He said nothing worth saying. He confined himself to platitudes. He swore allegiance to the “rule of right” as applied to government, without giving the slightest indication of his definition of right. Wall Street applauded him. Stocks went up. But would stocks have gone up if Wall Street had believed that, under Wilson, grafters would not be permitted to continue to rob you?

We Socialists may be extremely absurd persons, but, as we look about us, we see two or three things that should be done at once.

We believe every man should have the continuous right to work. We believe this right should be guaranteed by law. The law prohibits stealing and vagrancy. Why should not the law, therefore, guarantee the right to avoid the necessity for becoming either a thief or a vagrant?

We also believe that after a man has worked he should not be robbed. We believe if nobody were robbed, there would be in this country neither millionaires nor paupers. From the fact that there are in this country so many millionaires and so many paupers or near-paupers, we deduce that the extent of the robbery of the many by the few is appalling.

We want this stopped. We don’t demand that it be stopped a hundred years hence—we demand that it be stopped now. We are interested in our posterity, but we are also interested in ourselves. We want to enjoy life a little. This world looks good to us. We know it could be good to us. We demand that it shall be good to us. Nor are we appeased by the promise of some “radical” like Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Wilson that if we will elect him President, he will try to make the world a little less bad for us. The promise of a 1 per cent. or a 5 per cent. reduction in robbery constitutes no blandishment. We demand a 100 per cent. reduction in robbery. We are tired of robbery. We mean to end it. We shall end it. We cannot fail, because we have a weapon with which the robbed class never before fought. We have the gigantic printing press. Our ancestors had a puny press, or none at all. We shall carry our word far. Wherever our word goes it will wake. Sooner or later, the robbed will understand. Then robbery will cease. Millions of people who understand how to stop robbery will never consent to let a few continue to rob them.

Such is our demand—a 100 per cent. reduction in robbery and the right of the individual to continuous work. Yet, so far as we know, we want no more than is wanted by every other man who is not robbing anybody. We know of no man who is willing to be denied the right to work. We know of no man who is willing to be robbed. We differ from you Republicans and Democrats only in this: You seem to be willing to take an eternity to end robbery and secure a guarantee to the right to labor. We tell you that if you take an eternity to get these rights you will never get them. We also tell you that with either Mr. Wilson, Mr. Roosevelt or any other so-called “radical” in the White House the working class will remain poverty-stricken.

These gentlemen want to make you an omelette, but they do not want to break any eggs. They are afraid to break eggs. Breaking eggs means destroying the great fundamental laws that capitalists use to rob you. Yet, how are you ever to have an omelette unless eggs are broken? How can you be helped without hurting those who are now hurting you?

Make no mistake—anything that will make it much easier for you to live by working will make it much harder for capitalists to live without working. Picking at the splinters of this poverty-problem will not do. The wrong is great; the remedy must be equally great.

Anything that will not hurt the capitalist class much will not help you much.

Between you and the capitalist class there can be no peace.

So long as either of you exists, there can be only war.

You will continue to fight for the right to live.

The capitalist class will continue to refuse you the right to live except at the price of a profit.

This ultimatum, which has never appealed to your stomach, will some day not appeal to your brain.

You will begin to ask questions.

You will ask if you were born only that Mr. Morgan, Mr. Armour or Mr. Ryan might be made a little richer.

You will ask if it is right that you should die when you can no longer make others richer.

Your common sense will tell you that you were not born to make anybody richer.

Your common sense will tell you that you have a right to live, whether anybody be thereby made richer.

And, when that time comes, you will be in no mood to listen to the remedies of “radical” gentlemen like Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson.

You will no longer want wage slavery “regulated”—you will want it destroyed.

You will call for another Lincoln to destroy wage slavery as the first Lincoln destroyed chattel slavery.

And your call will be answered, because you will answer it yourself.

You will place in office not only a man but men who will work your will. You will know what you want and you will get it, because you will know how to get it.

The reason you have never gotten what you want is because you have never known how to get it. You want the right to work without being robbed. You do not seem to realize that it is the existence of the capitalist system that causes you to be robbed. In an indefinite sort of way you seem to believe that it is possible for a small class of bondholders and share-holders to live in luxury without working and, at the same time, take nothing from the product of your labor. If dividends grew upon one tree and wages upon another, your belief would be justified. But, inasmuch as dividends and wages grow upon the same tree, your belief is not justified. Both are the products of your labor. If the bondholders were to take everything you produce, you would have nothing. If you were to take everything you produce, the bondholders and other capitalists would have nothing.

Such being the fact, what possible benefit can come to the American people through the election to the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson? Mr. Wilson is not opposed to the capitalist system. He believes one class should own all of the great industries of the country while another class toils in them. Believing thus, he necessarily believes no man has a right to work, however sore may be his need, unless some other man thinks he can see a profit in hiring him. If he did not so believe, he would not have stood for the Presidency upon the Democratic platform. The importance of securing to each individual the right to work would have prevented him from so standing. He would have proclaimed to the country an amendment to the platform in some such words as these:

“If you elect me President, I will urge the passage of a law that will make it a felony for any capitalist to refuse work at wages representing the market price of the product, except at such times as his steel plants, railroads, or other industries, are running at full capacity.”

He would also have added:

“When a man’s right to work is involved, I care not whether the man who hires him makes a profit or not. Life comes before profits. Work comes before life. I am for men.”

Not one word of which Mr. Wilson ever said. Mr. Wilson believes in profits first and life, if at all, afterward. He may not believe he does, but he does. That is what his attitude amounts to. He wants both profits and life if we can get them. But if either must fall, it must be life. Life must always fall when work falls. Mr. Wilson stands for absolutely nothing that will put the worker’s right to work before the capitalist’s greed for profits. Let him or any of his friends point out a word in his platform, or any of his public utterances, to the contrary. There is no such word, because it has never been spoken or written by Mr. Wilson or anybody who is back of him or in front of him.

More astounding do these facts become as we consider them. Here is a great nation, eager to earn its bread. Of the many millions who compose this nation, not one in ten ever has or ever will receive a profit upon anything. More than nine-tenths of our many millions are wage-laborers or farmers. Naturally, they care nothing about profits. If everybody were continuously employed at good wages, and the balance-sheets, at the end of the year, should show not one dollar left for dividends, nobody except the capitalists would shed a tear. So little does the working class really care about profits. So convinced is the working class that the right to work, together with the right to be protected from robbery, should come ahead of everything else. Yet this very working class that cares nothing about profits; that cares and needs to care so much about the continuous right to work; that cares and needs to care so much about the right to be protected from robbery—this very working class gave Mr. Wilson almost every vote he received!

Do the people of America know how to get what they want?

The people of America want the continuous right to work.

Mr. Wilson offers them fine phrases about the “rule of right”—phrases that Wall Street applauds because Wall Street knows such phrases mean the continued rule of wrong.

The people of America want the right to be protected from robbery, and Mr. Wilson offers them an anti-trust plank, in which they are solemnly assured that if they will only wait until Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Morgan and other similar gentlemen are in jail, they will be very happy.

Is it not absurd? Indeed, it is not. It is pitiful. It is pitiful that a people should so long have been kept in ignorance of both the nature of their social malady and its cure. Yet, how could they be otherwise than ignorant? They depend for such information upon their newspapers, magazines, public officials, and public speakers. Until recently, almost all of these sources were poisoned against the people. They were poisoned against the people because they were controlled, in one way or another, by the capitalist class. They are still almost all poisoned in the interest of the capitalist class. The truth about Socialism is carefully suppressed. The false is carefully put forward. Wrongs are admitted, but rights are not recognized. The people are robbed, yes—but who robs them? Why, the trusts and the high-tariff gentlemen, certainly. Therefore, if we lower the tariff and place the trust gentlemen in jail, we shall be happy.

Nobody seems moved to recall whether we were happy when the tariff was low and there were no trusts.

Nobody seems to recall that the working class has never been happy; that it has always been the prey of a master class which has resorted first to one method and then to another to plunder. In fact, nobody but Socialists seems to do any serious thinking until his favorite “radical” President has passed into history without doing the slightest thing to alleviate poverty.

Grover Cleveland was regarded, each time he was elected, as radical. In Cleveland’s day, not to be in favor of highway robbery in office was regarded as proof of radicalism. That is why Cleveland’s dictum that “a public office is a public trust” attracted national attention. It was a new note. But in neither of Cleveland’s terms did he do anything to improve the condition of the American people. They were as poor when he finally left office as they were when he first took office. Moreover, there was good reason for their poverty. Cleveland never lost an opportunity to betray them. He sold bonds in secret to Mr. Morgan to the great profit of Mr. Morgan and the great loss of the American people. He hurled troops against strikers and placed thousands of deputy United States Marshals under the orders of railway managers who were trying to prevent their employees from obtaining living wages.

Benjamin Harrison was never regarded as a radical, but in 1888 he was regarded as an improvement upon Cleveland. After Harrison had done nothing for four years, Cleveland was believed to be an improvement upon Harrison. Four years more of Cleveland were enough to send him out of office with the condemnation of everybody but the grafters in both parties.

Business revived somewhat under the Presidency of McKinley, but the revival was not so much due to anything that Mr. McKinley did as it was to the fact that the time had come for the pendulum to swing back from panic to “prosperity.” Nor did the revival solve the problem of poverty. Nothing was settled because nothing was changed. Not so many men were denied the right to work, but those who worked toiled only for a “full dinner pail.” They paid all they received to live poorly. Only their employers fared wonderfully well. For them there was real prosperity.

Which brings us to Mr. Roosevelt and his Progressive party.

Mr. Roosevelt was the first President of the type that is now regarded as “radical.” He held office seven years and a half. He had “a perfectly corking time.” He did business with all of the bosses, including Hanna, Quay, Cannon, Payne, Aldrich and a host of others, but we have his word for it that his intentions were good. Maybe they were. For the sake of argument, let it be granted that they were. Let it be conceded that he believed the things he did would enable the average man to earn a living more certainly and more easily. Still, is it not a fact that the things he did failed to accomplish what he expected they would?

Is it not a fact that it is to-day more difficult for most persons to make a living than it was when Mr. Roosevelt became President?

Is not the cost of living vastly more?

Are not more millions of men out of work?

Is there not greater uncertainty with regard to continuity of employment?

Are not more men, women and children living upon the hunger line, or close to it?

Each of these questions must be answered in the affirmative. Mr. Roosevelt, himself, would not dare, even if he were so inclined, to answer them in the negative. The facts are notorious and scandalous. They are scandalous because poverty, in this rich country, is unnecessary.

Yet, Mr. Roosevelt is not wholly to blame. He is only partly to blame. A President is not the government. He is only part of the government. As part of the government, Mr. Roosevelt advocated measures, some of which were enacted into law, that he believed would do good. Subsequent events have proved that he was in error. The measures he believed would help have not helped. If they had helped, times would be better than they were, instead of worse.

Therefore, we are brought face to face with these questions:

“If Mr. Roosevelt, during seven and one-half years in the White House, could do nothing to make the conditions of the average man’s life easier, how long should we have to elect him President in order to give him time to do something worth while?

“If we were to elect him for life, are you sure that the rest of his lifetime would be long enough?

“In any event, are you prepared to wait so long to be helped?”

Mr. Roosevelt’s friends, following this thought, reply that he is not the same man that he was when he left the White House; that he has grown, with vision enlarged.

No, he is not the same man. The American people have forced him into the advocacy of some things. They have forced even some Socialist measures upon him. The initiative, the referendum and the recall are Socialist measures. For a good many years, Mr. Roosevelt tried to damn them with faint praise combined with a medley of doubts and strangling provisos. But after these measures, in one winter, fought their way into every state capitol west of the Mississippi, as well as into some of the state capitols of the East, Mr. Roosevelt saw a great light. Then he became in favor of them.

When Mr. Roosevelt was President he had nothing to say against the courts. He criticised individual judges, as he criticised Judge Anderson of Indianapolis, whom he called “a damned jackass and a crook.” But Judge Anderson, be it remembered, had just decided against Mr. Roosevelt in the libel suit that he brought against several newspapers because of articles reflecting upon the part played by himself and others in the acquisition of the Panama Canal property.

Now Mr. Roosevelt is convinced that our judicial system is in need of reform. In reaching this opinion, however, he is somewhat late. The courts are no longer popular. The people have not yet begun to strike at them, but they are watching them out of the corners of their eyes. Mr. Roosevelt senses the situation and responds with a proposition to give the people the right to recall, or set aside, the decisions of state courts. He says nothing about giving the people the right to recall the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, though he must know this court is the chief judicial offender. Yet we are asked to believe that Mr. Roosevelt, in belatedly joining the fight against the tyrannical power of the courts, is but giving proof of the greatness to which he has grown and the increased fearlessness with which he fights.

The women of the country have forced Mr. Roosevelt into the advocacy of woman suffrage. Mr. Roosevelt used to say that Mrs. Roosevelt was “only lukewarm” toward woman suffrage, and that his interest in it was the same. After the women of California gained the ballot, and Mr. Roosevelt again became a candidate for the Presidency, he changed from “lukewarm” to very hot. From that moment, woman suffrage became not only a right, but a necessity. Of course, the fact that women vote in several western states that he hoped to carry had no part whatever in changing his opinion. Mr. Roosevelt is not that kind of a man.

Mr. Roosevelt’s 1912 platform—or “contract with the people,” as he calls it—bristles with new devices and new plans for the public good. Some of Mr. Roosevelt’s plans would probably help a little—provided he could get a Congress that would put them into effect, and courts that would declare them constitutional. Mr. Lincoln probably could have helped the black slaves a little if he had made it a legal obligation upon slave owners to provide each negro, semi-annually, with a red necktie and a paste diamond. Mr. Lincoln might have gone even further and provided that each negro should be supplied, during the water-melon season, with all the melons he could eat. Instead, he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation.

Mr. Roosevelt’s present political program is by no means an emancipation proclamation to the American people. It unties no knots, nor cuts any. It bristles with Socialists’ phrases, but it does not bristle with Socialist remedies. “This country belongs to the people who inhabit it”—an assertion that appears in Mr. Roosevelt’s platform—is a Socialist phrase. But Mr. Roosevelt’s method of giving the people their own is not Socialistic. The Socialist method is to give it to them. Mr. Roosevelt’s method is to appoint “strong” commissions to regulate the country that the people own, but do not control or enjoy. Again and again in his platform Mr. Roosevelt fervently advocates a “strong” commission to do this or do that.

If the word “strong” in a platform were sufficient to make a commission “strong” in action we might expect the commissions that Mr. Roosevelt advocates to be as strong as any commission can be that is trying to regulate other people’s property.

But we do not believe the word “strong” in a platform makes a commission strong. Mr. Roosevelt, always preaching strenuosity, nevertheless appointed, during his Presidency, some exceedingly poor officials.

Since Mr. Roosevelt, the originator of “strong” commissions as a cure for the poverty that is produced by robbery, failed as he did, what should we expect from such commissions if they were appointed by Presidents of the ordinary Wall Street stripe?

Simmered down, Mr. Roosevelt’s Progressive Party stands simply for this: We are still to have trusts and tariffs, but only such trusts and tariffs as Mr. Roosevelt wants. We are still to have a master class who own all of the industries and a servant class who do all of the work, but masters and servants must conduct themselves as Mr. Roosevelt provides. Masters may still hold out for profits and servants may die for lack of opportunity to work, but so long as Mr. Roosevelt, at Armageddon, is “fighting for the Lord,” what of it?

Such is not Mr. Roosevelt’s reasoning, but it might as well be. Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson, like all other “radical” politicians, are incapable of rendering any great service to the American people for the simple reason that they do not strike at the great wrong. The great wrong is the ownership, by a small class, of the great class’s means of life. A people who cannot support themselves without asking the permission of others are little more than slaves. We are such a people.

“Radicals” who promise, if given power, to free us, only mock us. Such gentlemen are not radicals at all. The word “radical” is derived from a Greek word meaning “root.” A real radical is one who goes to the roots of things. But radicals like Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson go to the roots of nothing.

The only way to go to the root of anything is to go to it.

Lincoln went to the root of the chattel slavery question.

When he had finished, the chattel slavery question was no longer a question—it was a corpse. After wasting years of his life as an anti-slavery “radical” he became an anti-slavery revolutionist and destroyed slavery. Lincoln, during the last two years of his life, became a real radical. A real radical and a revolutionist are but different names for the same thing.

The working class is suffering from robbery. The working class has always suffered from robbery. Never has there been a time when a little crowd of grafters were not feeding upon the workers.

In the beginning, the working class were held as chattel slaves, the only possible cure for which was the utter destruction of chattel slavery.

Then the workers became the serfs of feudal lords, the only possible cure for which was the destruction of feudalism.

Now the toilers are robbed by the private ownership of the means of production, the only possible cure for which is the destruction of such ownership and the substitution of public ownership through the agency of government.

No tinkering will do. Tinkering could not and did not settle the white man’s or the black man’s slavery question. Nothing but the absolute destruction of the capitalist system can remove the poverty, the ignorance, the crime and the vice that are inevitable products of the system.

But do not expect capitalists to remove this system for you. They will not.

You never saw a tiger feed its prey. You never saw a burglar mend a victim’s roof. You may see both of these sights some day. If you should, you may, perhaps, prepare yourself to behold the more marvelous spectacle of the capitalist class financing the campaign of a genuine radical who is bent upon taking the capitalist class off your back.

But until you see a tiger feeding its prey, you may well ask yourself whether “radicals” whose campaigns are financed by great capitalists are radical enough to do you any good.

Certainly one side or the other is always doomed to disappointment; either the capitalists who put up the money or the workers who put up the votes. The capitalists are still doing quite well. Are you?