Your pay envelope

My dear Smith,

If you were to tell the soap-boxer that Socialism is an impracticable scheme, and that it couldn’t “make good” whether we all wanted it or not, he would become very indignant and would probably call you a “blind fool,” if he did not shower upon you still more vituperative epithets. If you ever find yourself in such a position, don’t let the soap-boxer place you on the defensive. When you talk about the impracticability of Socialism you put the Socialist just where he doesn’t want to be, and, if you follow up your attack consistently and strenuously, you will have him on the run before you know it. Socialists like to theorize. They like to talk to people who don’t ask for too many details, but they have little liking for the man who demands definite plans and accurate specifications.

You have a little house in a new suburban section. It is a small house and it has a mortgage on it, but you are paying for it gradually and it won’t be many years before it will be all your own. Even now the payments and all the charges together call for a smaller monthly expenditure than would be required if you rented a home not nearly as comfortable as this one.

Now, John, suppose I were to come to you and tell you that if you would let me tear down your house I would build you another somewhere else. Wouldn’t you be likely to ask me where the new house was to be located, and what guarantee I would give you that it would be a more satisfactory place of abode than the one which you now occupy? No matter how well you may know me—no matter how much confidence you may have in me as an individual—unless you are a very careless or a very stupid person, you will refuse to consent to any change in your domestic arrangements until you are certain that the proposition will be advantageous to you.

Such caution is entirely reasonable; this is the attitude you should take; yet Socialism asks you to disregard all such conditions. It expects you to believe that, when everything that represents modern civilization has been thrown into a vast melting-pot called “The Revolution,” something will come out of it that will be very much to your profit. They won’t tell you how this is to be brought about. They themselves have a vague idea in regard to what kind of a society we are to evolve into, and they try to describe it to you under the general terms of the “Co-operative Commonwealth.” As a matter of fact, however, it is almost impossible to find any two Socialists who will agree, even as to the main points of their program, and some of the socialistic leaders are honest enough to admit that there is a poor chance that they would be able to carry out this program successfully, even if given the best of opportunities. For example, Edward Bernstein, who is a sufficiently good Socialist to be selected to represent his party in the German Reichstag, admits that, “Socialism could not keep its promise if it were placed in power to-morrow.”

Remember this the next time the soap-box orator calls you a “wage slave.” Ask for specifications. Insist upon his telling you if Socialism would not introduce as hopeless a form of slavery as the world has ever known, and—if not, why not?

It is a catchy phrase, the term “wage slave.” It is a telling taunt that does good service for Socialism wherever there are people simple enough to be imposed upon. Yet if you, who are not a Socialist, will study this question you can easily turn the tables upon the limber-tongued agitator in a way to make him very unhappy.

In the first place, the use of the term “wage slave” would naturally lead us to suppose that, under Socialism, men will no longer work for a wage; that they will become their own masters, employing themselves and paying themselves the full product of their labor; in a word, that each will be free with a freedom such as man has never before experienced.

Knowing that this is the plan proposed by many prominent Socialist thinkers, it is somewhat surprising to find publications purporting to represent Socialism still promising the worker a “wage.” It is true that they have greatly increased the amount of his remuneration until they promise him anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 a year, but they combine to talk about the “wages” he will get.

What does this mean? Simply that under Socialism he will still be a wage earner. He may receive labor checks instead of United States currency—or something equivalent in value—but, if such a system were to be carried out, he could have no more freedom than he enjoys to-day and from every indication it is not impossible that he might have considerably less. A man is no less a wage slave because he works for 90,000,000 and himself, than he is when he is employed by a single individual. This is a fact that Socialism overlooks.

Under the present system a man is free to choose his own method of livelihood. If he does not like one trade, he can learn another. If he wants to get out of the industrial sphere altogether and enter upon a professional career, there are methods of accomplishing this purpose within his reach, if he is willing to work hard enough to attain that end. It is true that there are certain restrictions under existing labor conditions—the area of selection is not as wide as it might be, yet there is a great deal more scope for the development of individual preference to-day than there could possibly be under Socialism.

Let us see for ourselves.

Socialism provides for the collective ownership of all means of production, distribution and exchange. This means that the State—using the term as “collective” State, of course—would organize all these industries and would operate them upon a collective, which means a democratic, basis. Under such conditions it is doubtless true that every man would have an equal opportunity to earn a living, but it is absurd for anybody to assert that this equality of opportunity would also mean absolute freedom of choice.

If you want evidence in support of this statement, you can get it—and Socialist testimony at that.

In 1906, the Fabian Society of London—an organization composed of absolutely orthodox Socialists—issued a leaflet entitled, “Socialism and Labor Policy.” Let us see what they have to say about the freedom of choice we shall have under the collective régime.

“Everybody should have a legal right to an opportunity of earning his living in the society in which he has been born,” we read, “but no one should or could have the right to ask that he should 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 doing, or take the consequences of refusal.”

Again, Sydney Webb, in his “Basis and Policy of Socialism” (p. 71), says:

“Instead of converting every man into an independent producer, working when he likes and where he likes, we aim at enrolling every able-bodied person directly in the service of the community, for such duties and under such kind of organization, local or national, as may be suitable to his capacity and social function. In fact, so far are we from seeking to abolish the wage system, so understood, that we wish to bring under it all those who now escape from it—the employers, and those who live on rent or interest—and so make it universal. If a man wants freedom to work or not to work just as he likes, he had better emigrate to Robinson Crusoe’s island, or else become a millionaire. To suppose that the industrial affairs of a complicated industrial State can be run without strict subordination and discipline, without obedience to orders, and without definite allowances for maintenance is to dream not of Socialism, but of Anarchism.”

And Sydney Webb is not alone in these conclusions. Ramsay MacDonald, who is certainly one of the most conservative of Socialists, expresses the same spirit when he tells us that “trade must be organized like a fleet or education system” (“Socialism and Society,” p. 172); while Suthers answers this particular “objection” by expressing the most genuine contempt for those who would protest against the kind of slavery that collectivism would introduce. He reminds us that the people themselves would then be masters. Who would oppress the people? The people themselves? Like so many other Socialists, he will not see that slavery is slavery under whatever guise it may operate.

The only attempts to escape this proposition have been most utopian in character. Bebel, for example, asks us to believe that, in a Socialist State, disagreeable work will be accomplished chiefly by means of mechanical devices and that such undesirable tasks as remained, and which could be performed only by personal action, would be freely undertaken, as an effect of the unselfish spirit which will prevail among the workers of the future. He even suggests that it will be possible to inaugurate a kind of changing-off system so that each member of society may in his turn submit to assignment to the performance of the more disagreeable duties.

While this suggestion may be equitable in theory, it is of no practical value. Picture to yourself what kind of a community we should have if each individual was compelled to submit himself by a changing-off system to the most disagreeable avocations that you can imagine. Can you say that “freedom” could exist under such a régime? Do you think that such a system is possible outside of the penitentiary?

Of still greater absurdity is Bebel’s promise (“Woman,” p. 271) that the members of the social body shall become so perfectly developed that, “without distinction of sex,” they “shall undertake all functions” of society. As Cathrein says (p. 289), “this statement can hardly be said to deserve a refutation.”

“Let us only imagine what such industrial and technical ability supposes,” he continues. “Every individual in his turn undertakes all social functions. For instance, in a factory he is director, foreman, fireman, bookkeeper, a simple laborer or hod-carrier; then he turns to some other branch of industry or social calling—becomes editor, compositor, telegrapher, painter, architect, actor, farmer, gardener, astronomer, professor, chemist, druggist. With such a program is any thorough knowledge of anything possible?”

You know, John, that the efficient worker is the man who has mastered a trade thoroughly, and you also know that the maintenance of his efficiency depends upon his constant attention to the ever-changing details of his particular trade. This means the application of a lifetime, yet Socialists tell us that, merely by the adoption of the collective system, all men will become so perfectly proficient in everything that they will be fitted to undertake every kind of work.

No, John, this is not a joke! I did not find it in Puck or Judge. It is Bebel and other equally bright lights of the Socialist philosophy, who are responsible for these assertions. Even Marx himself endeavors to prove (“Capital,” p. 453) that the “separate individual” will be replaced by the “totally-developed individual,” and this development will confer upon the workman “absolute availability” for everything. If this is not a flight of imagination worthy of our old friend Baron Munchausen, what is it? Even Professor Paulsen, who cannot be called an anti-Socialist, protests in his “System of Ethics” (Vol. II, p. 437) against the equalizing tendencies shown by those who are trying to picture the future Co-operative Commonwealth.

“In the society of the future,” he says, “the self-same individual will be letter carrier to-day; to-morrow he must perform the duties of a post-office clerk; on the third day he must act as postmaster-general—but why use a title?—in short, he must undertake all that business which at present the director of the national post-office has in hand—he must prepare programs for international post-office congresses, etc.; and on the fourth day he must again return to the counter; on the fifth he condescends to be letter-carrier once more but this time not in the metropolis, but in some out-of-the-way place, for it is but meet that the sweets of city life should fall to the lot of all in their turn. Thus it would be also with the railroad department, in the mining and military department and in every common factory. To-day the member of the socialistic State descends into the bowels of the earth as a collier, or hammers at the anvil, or punches tickets; to-morrow he wields the quill, balances accounts, makes chemical experiments, drafts designs for machines or issues general edicts on the quantity and quality of the social productions.”

So, you “wage slaves,” you have been told what is in store for you. The utopian promises of some Socialist apologists are too ridiculous to be credited by a sane individual. The only thing that remains is the course which Sydney Webb and Ramsay MacDonald have outlined. The worker will still work for a wage. The officials of the new State will sanction the selection of his employment. He may take it or leave it, live or starve to death, for there will be but one master to whom he can turn for a job—the omnipotent State. It is the State that will tell him what he is permitted to do, and he will have no right save that of strict obedience.

As the author of “The Case Against Socialism” says (pp. 290-1): “A man might desire to be an electrical engineer. ‘No vacancies,’ says the State. ‘Ah, but I am sure that I can prove myself to be a much better man than some whom you have chosen,’ replies the applicant. ‘No outside competitions allowed,’ says the State. ‘We want masons, and a mason you must be.’ ‘But have I no personal freedom?’ replies the man. The answer is that he belongs to the State, and, if the official is in the mood to graciously explain matters further, the man will probably be told that it is difficult enough to organize labor at all, and that the attempt would become impossible if anyone was so selfish as to consider such a trivial matter as his own inclinations.”

What chance could a worker have under such circumstances? If he was not satisfied, he would simply have to pocket his dissatisfaction and make the best of it. What do you think of a body of men who, while planning this fate for the American worker, have the nerve to talk to him about “wage slavery”! Could anything be worse than this slavery with the State as a master?