Part 9 (1/2)
CHAPTER VI
THE CLa.s.s STRUGGLE THEORY
I
No part of the theory of modern Socialism has called forth so much criticism and opposition as the doctrine of the cla.s.s struggle. Many who are otherwise sympathetic to Socialism denounce this doctrine as narrow, brutal, and productive of antisocialistic feelings of cla.s.s hatred. Upon all hands the doctrine is condemned as an un-American appeal to pa.s.sion and a wicked exaggeration of social conditions. When President Roosevelt attacks the preachers of the doctrine, and wrathfully condemns cla.s.s-consciousness as ”a foul thing,” he doubtless expresses the views of a majority of American citizens. The insistence of Socialists upon this aspect of their propaganda is undoubtedly responsible for keeping a great many outside of their movement who otherwise would be identified with it. If the Socialists would repudiate the doctrine that Socialism is a cla.s.s movement, and make their appeal to the intelligence and conscience of all cla.s.ses, instead of to the interests of a special cla.s.s, they could probably double their numerical strength at once. To many, therefore, it seems a fatuous and quixotic policy to preach such a doctrine, and it is very often charitably ascribed to the peculiar intellectual and moral myopia of fanaticism.
Before accepting this conclusion, and before indorsing the Rooseveltian verdict, the reader is bound as a matter of common fairness, and of intellectual integrity, to consider the Socialist side of the argument.
There is no greater fanaticism than that which condemns what it does not take the trouble to understand. The Socialists claim that the doctrine is misrepresented; that it does not produce cla.s.s hatred; and that it is a vital and pivotal point of Socialist philosophy. The cla.s.s struggle, says the Socialist, is a law of social development. We only recognize the law, and are no more responsible for its existence than for the law of gravitation. The name of Marx is a.s.sociated with the law in just the same manner as the name of Newton is a.s.sociated with the law of gravitation, but Marx is no more responsible for the social law he discovered than was Newton for the physical law he discovered. There were cla.s.s struggles thousands of years before there was a Socialist movement, thousands of years before Marx was born, and it is therefore absurd to charge us with the creation of the cla.s.s struggle, or cla.s.s hatred. We realize perfectly well that if we ignored this law in our propaganda, making our appeal to a universal sense of abstract justice and truth, many who now hold aloof from us would join our movement. But we should not gain strength as a result of their accession to our ranks.
We should be obliged to emasculate Socialism, to dilute it, in order to win a support of questionable value. History teems with examples of the disaster which inevitably attends such a course. We should be quixotic and fatuous indeed if we attempted anything of the kind. Such, briefly stated, are the main outlines of the reply which the average Socialist gives to the criticism of the cla.s.s struggle doctrine described.
The cla.s.s struggle theory is part of the economic interpretation of history. Since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, the modes of economic production and exchange have inevitably grouped men into economic cla.s.ses. The theory is thus admirably stated by Engels in the Introduction to the _Communist Manifesto_:--
”In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; and, consequently, the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive society, holding land in common owners.h.i.+p) has been a history of cla.s.s struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed cla.s.ses; that the history of these cla.s.s struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed cla.s.s--the proletariat--cannot attain its emanc.i.p.ation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling cla.s.s--the bourgeoise--without, at the same time, and once and for all, emanc.i.p.ating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, cla.s.s distinctions, and cla.s.s struggles.”[116]
In this cla.s.sic statement of the theory, there are several fundamental propositions. First, that cla.s.s divisions and cla.s.s struggles arise out of the economic life of society. Second, that since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, which was communistic in character, mankind has been divided into economic groups or cla.s.ses, and all its history has been a history of struggles between these cla.s.ses, ruling and ruled, exploiting and exploited, being forever at war with each other. Third, that the different epochs in human history, stages in the evolution of society, have been characterized by the interests of the ruling cla.s.s.
Fourth, that a stage has now been reached in the evolution of society where the struggle a.s.sumes a form which makes it impossible for cla.s.s distinctions and cla.s.s struggles to continue if the exploited and oppressed cla.s.s, the proletariat, succeeds in emanc.i.p.ating itself. In other words, the cycle of cla.s.s struggles which began with the dissolution of rude, tribal communism, and the rise of private property, ends with the pa.s.sing of private property in the means of social existence and the rise of Socialism. The proletariat in emanc.i.p.ating itself destroys all the conditions of cla.s.s rule.
II
As we have already seen, slavery is historically the first system of cla.s.s division which presents itself. Some ingenious writers have endeavored to trace the origin of slavery to the inst.i.tution of the family, the children being the first slaves. It is fairly certain, however, that slavery originated in conquest. When a tribe was conquered and enslaved by some more powerful tribe, all the members of the vanquished tribe sunk to one common level of servility and degradation.
Their exploitation as laborers was the princ.i.p.al object of their enslavement, and their labor admitted of little gradation. It is easy to see the fundamental cla.s.s antagonisms which characterized slavery. Has there been no uprisings of the slaves, no active and conscious struggle against their masters, the antagonism of interests between them and their masters would be none the less apparent. But the overthrow of slavery was not the result of the rebellions and struggles of the slaves. While these undoubtedly helped, the princ.i.p.al factors in the overthrow of chattel slavery as the economic foundation of society were the disintegration of the system to the point of bankruptcy, and the rise of a new, and sometimes, as in the case of Rome, alien ruling cla.s.s.
The cla.s.s divisions of feudal society are not less obvious than those of chattel slavery. The main division, the widest gulf, divided the feudal lord and the serf. Often as brutally ill-treated as their slave-forefathers had been, the feudal serfs from time to time made abortive struggles. The cla.s.s distinctions of feudalism were constant, but the struggles between the lords and the serfs were sporadic, and of comparatively little moment, just as the risings of their slave forefathers had been. But alongside of the feudal estate there existed another cla.s.s, the free handicraftsmen and peasants, the former organized into powerful guilds. It was this cla.s.s, and not the serf cla.s.s, which was destined to challenge the rule of the feudal n.o.bility, and wage war upon it. As the feudal cla.s.s was a landed cla.s.s, so the cla.s.s represented by the guilds became a moneyed and commercial cla.s.s, the pioneers of our modern capitalist cla.s.s. As Mr. Brooks Adams[117]
has shown very clearly, it was this moneyed, commercial cla.s.s, which gave to the king the instrument for weakening and finally overthrowing feudalism. It was this cla.s.s which built up the cities and towns from which was drawn the revenue for the maintenance of a standing army, thus liberating the king from his dependence upon the feudal lords. The capitalist cla.s.s triumphed over the feudal n.o.bility, and its interests became in their turn the dominant interests in society. Capitalism in its development effectually destroyed all those inst.i.tutions of feudalism which obstructed its progress, leaving only those which were innocuous and safely to be ignored.
In capitalist society, the main cla.s.s division is that which separates the employing, wage-paying cla.s.s from the employed, wage-receiving cla.s.s. Notwithstanding all the elaborate arguments made to prove the contrary, the frequently heard myth that the interests of Capital and Labor are identical, and the existence of pacificatory a.s.sociations based upon that myth, there is no fact in the whole range of social phenomena more self-evident than the existence of an inherent, fundamental antagonism in the relations.h.i.+p of employer and employee. As individuals, in all other relations, they may have a commonality of interests, but as employer and employee they are fundamentally and necessarily opposed. They may belong to the same church, and so have religious interests in common; they may have common racial interests, as, for instance, if negroes, in protecting themselves against the attacks made in a book like _The Clansman_, or, if Jews, in opposing anti-Semitic movements; as citizens they may have the same civic interests, be equally opposed to graft in the city government, or equally interested in the adoption of wise sanitary precautions against epidemics. They may even have a common industrial interest in the general sense that they may be equally interested in the development of the industry in which they are engaged, and fear, equally, the results of a depression in trade. But their special interests as employer and employee are ant.i.thetical.
It cannot be denied that, in certain circ.u.mstances, these other interests may become so accentuated that the cla.s.s antagonisms are momentarily lost sight of, or completely dwarfed in importance; nor is such a denial implied in the Socialist theory. It is not difficult to see that in the case of a general uprising against the members of their race, in which their lives are imperiled, Jewish employers and employees may forget their _cla.s.s_ interests and remember only that they are Jews.
So with negroes and other oppressed races. The economic interests of the cla.s.s may be engulfed in the solidarity of the race. It is not difficult, either, to see that in the presence of some great common danger or calamity, cla.s.s interests may likewise be completely subordinated. An admirable example of this occurred at the time of the San Francisco earthquake and fire. The enormous demand for labor occasioned by that disaster practically enabled the artisans, most of whom were organized into unions, to demand and obtain almost fabulous wages. But there was no thought of taking advantage of the calamity. On the contrary, the unions immediately announced that they would make no attempt to do so. Not only that, but they voluntarily waived rules which in normal times they would have insisted upon with all their powers. The temporary overshadowing of the economic interests of cla.s.ses by other special interests which have been thrust into special prominence, is not, however, evidence that these cla.s.s interests do not prevail in normal times. Recognition of this fact effectually destroys much criticism of the theory.
The interest of the wage-worker, as wage-worker, is to receive the largest wage possible for the least number of hours spent in labor. The interest of the employer, as employer, on the other hand, is to secure from the worker as many hours of service, as much labor power, as possible for the lowest wage which the worker can be induced to accept.
The workers employed in a factory may be divided by a hundred different forces. They may be divided by racial differences, for instance; but while preserving these differences in a large measure, they will tend to unite upon the basis of their economic interests. Some of the great labor unions, notably the United Mine Workers,[118] afford remarkable ill.u.s.trations of this fact. If the difference of religious interests leads to division, the same unanimity of economic interests will sooner or later be developed. No impartial investigator who studies the influence of a great labor union which includes in its members.h.i.+p workers of various nationalities and adherents of various religious creeds, can fail to observe the fact that the community of economic interests which unites them is a powerful factor making for their amalgamation into a harmonious civic whole.
With the employers it is the same. They, too, may be divided by a hundred forces; the compet.i.tion among them may be keen and fierce, but common economic interests will tend to unite them against the organizations of the workers they employ. Racial, religious, social, and other divisions and distinctions, may be maintained, but they will, in general, unite for the protection and furtherance of their common economic interests.
So much, indeed, belongs to the very primer stage of economic theory.
Adam Smith is rather out of fas.h.i.+on nowadays, but there is still much in ”The Wealth of Nations” which will repay our attention. No Socialist writer, not even Marx, has stated the fundamental principle of the antagonism between the employing and employed cla.s.ses more clearly, as witness the following:--
”The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labor.... Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals.... Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labor.... These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution.... Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of labor. Their usual pretenses are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profits which the masters make by their work. But whether these combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamor, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the extravagance and folly of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and _never cease to call aloud for the a.s.sistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, laborers, and journeymen_.”[119]
Thus Adam Smith. Were it essential to our present purpose, it would be easy to quote from all the great economists in support of the Socialist claim that the interests of the capitalist and those of the laborer are irreconcilably opposed. That individual workers and employers will be found who do not recognize their cla.s.s interests is true, but that fact by no means invalidates the contention that, in general, men will recognize and unite upon a basis of common cla.s.s interests. In both cla.s.ses are to be found individuals who attach greater importance to the preservation of racial, religious, or social, than to economic, interests. But because the economic interest is fundamental, involving the very basis of life, the question of food, clothing, shelter, and comfort, these individuals are and must be exceptions to the general rule. Workers sink their racial and religious differences and unite to secure better wages, a reduction of their hours of labor, and better conditions in general. Employers, similarly, unite to oppose whatever may threaten their cla.s.s interests, without regard to other relations.h.i.+ps. The Gentile who is himself an anti-Semite has no qualms of conscience about employing Jewish workmen, at low wages, to compete with Gentile workers; he does not object to joining with Jewish employers in an Employers' a.s.sociation, if thereby his economic interests may be safeguarded. And the Jewish employer, likewise, has no objection to joining with the Gentile employer for mutual protection, or to the employment of Gentile workers to fill the places of his employees, members of his own race, who have gone out on strike for higher wages.
III