I ILLINOIS

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Rare Book & Manuscript Library
University of Illinois Library at
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201 9

 

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THE ' HARVARD
SU CIALIST
TRACTS ’

Number 2

 

 

Socialism
and Present *
HARVZEELSIZISfAiIZ: CLUB Day P OlitiCS

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THE HARVARD SOGIALIST TRAGTS

 

HE HARVARD SQCIALIST CLUB was

organized by sixteen Harvard under- \
graduates in March, I908. for the purpose of
x \ stimulating the study of Socialism and contem—
pot‘aneous social problems in Harvard Univer-
sity. They began their study of radical meth-
ods, of reform because they believed the basis
‘ of present-day society fundamentally wrong.
For the poverty and suffering about them they
thought they saw a reason.

To defend their attitude towards the past
and present and to explain their programme
for future social amelioration will be the pur-
pose of the Harvard Socialist Tracts. They ‘
will be issued at intervals throughout the col-
lege year, and will aim to represent the Socialism
which is studied and advocated by an increas-
ing body of college men and women.

Single Copies, 5 cents. Wholesale Price,

3 ‘cents.

Address 62 Thayer Hall, Cambridge, Mass.

 

  

Socialism and Present Day Politics.

 

 

 

SOCIAL JUSTICE

N the summer of the year 1912, social justice as a polit-
"i ii! ical asset was discovered, and a new political party was
organized to capitalize the discovery. Until recently the
term was the exclusive possession of a few minor par-
ties. Dominant parties left it strictly alone, agreeing,
despite their quarrels, that to suggest that social justice
was not omnipresent would be to cast a reflection upon themselves.

Since Mr. Roosevelt stood at Armageddon, however, it has sud-
denly dawned upon political leaders that there is a very widespread
and very persistent belief among the voters that much of the pov-
erty and misery in this land of plenty is due to an unjust organiza-
tion of society. It is obvious that as soon as a majority becomes
conscious of injustice, a party that does not endorse social justice in
its platform is out of the running. Thus it has come about that the
attitude of each party toward the term social justice is the most
important issue in‘present day politics.

The parties are not agreed upon the meaning of the term. In-
deed they quarrel over it like children over a new toy. The tradi-
tional Republicans treat the new discovery deprecatingly, as a. thing
that, in so far as it has not always existed, thanks to the Republican
tariff, is a somewhat dubious vision, involving, in President Taft’s
own words, “a forced division of property, and that means Socialism.”
The Democrats, on the other hand, far from keeping social justice in
the background, cry it out from the housetops. Woodrow Wilson
analyzes it in classic language. Thomas Marshall concentrates it into
an epigram. Even the ward heeler slaps his brother politician on the
back, and declares that social justice is What he has stood for since
he got his first political job.

By its own claim the true monopolist 01' social justice, however,
is that vigorous newcomer, sprung, Minerva-like, full—grown from the
brain of its impetuous leader, the National Progressive party. With
a program borrowed from Bismarck, Lloyd George and William Jen-
nings Bryan, with as spectacular a. running team as has ever been
hitched together, and with a press bureau 01' unrivalled efliciency,
the Progressive party has literally dinned social justice into the pub-
lic ear. Equipped With a camp following of social workers and phil-
anthropists, and armed with a song book of revivalist hymns, the
party stands at Armageddon ready to dispute with man or beast, nay

 

  

 

with Charles F. Murphy and Tom Taggart themselves, the title of
true prophet of social justice.

Democrats and Progressives do lip service, nay lung service, to
social justice, although, as we will shortly see, they are in dispute
among themselves as to what the term means. President Taft boldly
takes issue with them, declaring in his speech of acceptance that
equal opportunity and “so-called social justice” are possible only
under Socialism, and hence by implication undesirable. Here he has
formulated the principle issue of modern politics. Can social justice
be achieved under a system in which the means of production are in
private hands? Is social justice compatible with capitalism? Wilson
and Roosevelt say yes. Taft says no. Here is a clear issue, and the
most important in the campaign.

For it must be evident to any man of spirit that once the ma-
jority becomes thoroughly convinced that social justice and capital-
ism are incompatible, the days of capitalism will be numbered. There
is left in our people enough of that primitive dynamic instinct which
the Germans call “Volkskrafft,” to grapple with a system that is
wrong and make it right. To let injustice live lest we interfere With
property, as President Taft would have us do, is a program that does
not strike fire with a people that has mastered a continent. If the
President’s analysis is true, his program will be rejected, for the tem.
per of the nation is such that in the long run social justice will be
placed above property.

THE DEMOCRATIC PROGRAM

Progressive and Democrat each has a program whereby social jus-
tice is to be inaugurated without the disturbance of property rights.
Let us examine the Democratic program, as formulated by the stand-
ard bearer of the party.

In a nutshell the program is to restore competition. The Wilson
theory, so eloquently expounded, holds that the free interplay of
economic forces spells social justice. Social injustice has arisen
because our law makers, taking counsel with the minority, have
granted certain privileges through private laws. Abolish them, and
we Will “restore the economic freedom of the people.” “Let us re-
turn,” he says in his speech of acceptance, “from what is abnormal
to what is normal.” Let us restore competition, not by the Repub-
lican method of judicial or legislative flat, but by removing the causes
of monopoly. Then once more the free interplay of the laws of
trade will establish by indirection that greatest good of the greatest
number which all statesmen aspire to achieve.

2

 

  

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Certainly this view is reactionary, frankly and by honest con-
viction. It is looking backward. It sees the Promised Land behind
us, and hopes that by undoing some of our mistakes we may be able
to scramble back. It is strange that a man with such a social phil-
osophy should have been so widely heralded as a progressive. The
probable reason is that conservative politics has so often been asso-
ciated with corrupt politics, that when Wilson entered public life he
was at once taken to be progressive merely because he was honest.
It is true that he wants to move; he is not a conservative. But since
when did the term “progress” apply to movement regardless of its di-
rection? Governor Wilson has deluded his followers to such an ex-
tent that some of them think it possible, crablike, to progress
backwards.

Yet while the intentions of the party are boldly reactionary, its
program is largely confined to intentions. Neither from its platform
nor from the speeches of its candidates can we glean the slightest
information as to the means by which the reaction is to take place.
Governor Wilson tells us that the tariff fosters monopoly, and should
be reduced. Yet our three greatest industrial combinations, the Steel
Trust, the late lamented though yet vigorous Standard Oil 00., and
the likewise disintegrated and likewise flourishing Tobacco Trust,
are independent of tariffs, indeed international in character. Gov-
ernor Marshall would have us arrest a few trust magnates, and for-
feit the charters of corporations living in illicit relation~a program
strangely inconsistent with Wilson’s plea for the removal of the
causes of monopoly, and moreover as futile as the attempt of the

anarchist to abolish monarchy with a bomb. Aside from these ob-

viously inadequate means, we find no plan whereby this idyllic state
of competition is to be induced to return.

We had free competition once, and the blue books of the Eng-
lish parliament are full of its horrors. Their description of the human
machinery of production wasting away at work, and rotting away
in its homes, is revolting and horrifying even now, after nearly a
century has elapsed. Painfully and slowly, through labor laws,
through unions, through trade agreements among competitors, we
have remedied a few of the most blatant faults, but always by limit-
ing, by restricting, by eliminating competition. Yet there have
always been social theorists who would entice us back into the
realms of delight from which we have strayed, and stranger yet,
there are always people Who hail these doctors progressive.

THE PROGRESSIVE PROGRAM
The National Progressive party also has its formula for social
justice in a capitalistic environment. Roosevelt proposes to turn
3

 

  

   

over to the government a few activities which have hitherto been
considered private, to license and regulate big business combinations,
and to enact an extensive program of labor reforms, such as work
ingmen’s compensation, old age pensions, minimum wage laws, etc.

Plainly there is nothing here to Which a farsighted owner of in-
dustrial property, from a strict standard of personal gain, dould offer
objection. Regulation means freedom from irksome disintegration
proceedings, and to a certain extent, government guarantee of what
is traditionally considered a fair return on property. Workingmen’s
compensation means the elimination of a host of parasitic lawyers,
to the advantage of both capital and labor, With the added expense,
if there is any, shifted upon the consumer. Minimum wage legisla-
tion protects the better class of employers from the competition of
those who more flagrantly underpay labor. Old age pensions is a
humanitarian scheme largely financed out of taxes for the most part
indirectly contributed by the laboring classes. The Whole program
constitutes a wise concession to the growing discontent of the masses.
As has been well said, the Progressive movement provides an en-
lightened program for progressive capitalism. It leaves the Whole
system of private ownership of industrial capital intact, and attempts
to safeguard it by a few well selected concessions.

It is not, after all, astonishing that we should find Messrs. Gary
and Perkins and Munsey and Hanna, doubtess in all sincerity,
financing and advocating this program. Were they calculating self-
seekers, they could not draw up a program that more ingeniously
protects their own property interests, and yet concedes so little.

Our experience With public service corporations has shown that
public control cannot stop With a few minor regulations, and the trend
of labor legislation shows that more and more the fixing of wages
must be left to the government. When the price of goods is regu-
lated, quality must be regulated. When hours of labor are fixed,
wages must be protected. When profits are limited to a stated per-
centage, salaries must be regulated, and investments, and bookkeep-
ing, lest profits be concealed in the form of high salaries or of re-
invested surplus. If prices are fixed so that a manufacturer cannot
raise his price to take advantage of an increased demand in the mar-
ket, it is only just that output be regulated, so that the market can
not be swamped and his prices cut below the profit line. One step
in regulation Will of necessity bring another. The ultimate aim of
this program is, therefore, undoubtedly a form of state capitalism,
in Which the essential factors of business management, such as
the fixing of prices and wages, of standards of quality and
amount of output, are in the hands of salaried government boards

4

 

and oflicialrs, while the owner of industrial property, in so far as he
does not himself receive a salary for work performed, becomes an
idle pensioner upon the state with a few nominal property rights over
the capital so employed.

There is a strange inconsistency in this elaborate program
of partial government control of privately owned industry.
Capitalism has always been justified on the ground that private
ownership of capital alone can furnish the incentive that makes the
wheels of industry revolve. The fact that postal systems are main-
tained at high efficiency, that enormous canals are built, and that
gigantic irrigation projects are successfully completed without the
incentive of private ownership, has been ascribed to a kind of spu-
rious and abnormal condition. The old capitalism of John Stuart
Mill existed to make the world go round. The capitalist class,
munificently endowed, had the official function, in this theoretic sys-
tem, of organizing, controlling and energizing industry, just as the
French nobility of the Old Regime was endowed and pensioned on
the theory that there was need of a special incentive for the defense
of the land and the government of the masses.

Yet the new progressive capitalism makes the extraordinary
proposal of giving up what was formerly considered the main justifi-
cation of the capitalist system, but of keeping the system without
the justification. Formerly capitalists argued: “leave us our property
so that we may have incentive.” Now the cry is: “take away our
incentive, but leave us our property.” Progressive capitalism is in
reality capitalism in process of decay, capitalism bankrupt of its life
purpose.

Moreover it is visionary to suppose that anything that a majority
will ever call social justice is consistent with its program. State
capitalism will merely emphasize the injustice of endowing a class in
return for idle ownership. Labor is already wondering by what
strange alchemy, to adapt Carlisle’s phrase, an idle owner may ex-
tract a part of its earnings and call it interest. The growth of in~
dustrial consciousness among workingmen is impressing upon their
minds 9. new point of view, wherein labor of brains and muscle is
regarded as the foundation of industry, and capital merely employed
by labor for its own use. It is a revolution in thought similar to
that which convulsed Europe a century ago, when men began to
realize that government existed for them, not they for the private
profit of the men who governed.

You cannot make the workingman see the social justice of a.
scheme whereby a stated percentage of the product of his labor is
turned over to a bondholder who contributes no productive energy

5

 

   

   

to the process. Very soon he comes to see that wages are a partial
payment for work, and that interest is full payment for idless. No
amount of old age pension schemes can palliate the essential injuS--
tice of such a scheme. Thus we find, as we grow more familiar with
the new movement, that progressive capitalism is but capitalism de-
caying, and its program of social justice is a program of essential
injustice.

It is argued by some progressives of a more radical stripe, that
ultimately the Progressive party will completely root out this in-
justice, and establish a condition much like that advocated by the
Socialists. After the control of industry has been shifted, according.
to the program of advanced Progressives, from private to public
hands, it will then it is argued, become the obvious next step to cut
down swollen fortunes by taxation, and thus gradually to stop the
leaks in the industrial ship. To this it may be answered that if such
intentions exist in the minds of a few members of the party, they
have never been set forth in any official party platform, nor acknowl-
edged by any responsible party leader. The large majority of the
rank and file of the party have no shch program in mind, and it is
what this majority believes that constitutes the party program, not
what may be concealed in the hidden intentions of a few of its mem-
bers.

Moreover for anyone who desires to abolish the private owner-
ship of industrial property, it is dishonest, and at the same time very
bad tactics, to appeal for support to the very capitalists whom it is
intended to expropriate. It is a bit chimerical to suppose that a.
party financed in large part by prominent members and stockholders
of the United States Steel Corporation will be a very effective in-
strument with which to root out the private ownership of the means
of production. As well expect that a party of Southern slaveholders,
financed by the biggest plantation proprietors in the South, and with
a program calling for the regulation of slavery and old age pensions
for slaves, could have been a very efiective instrument for the aboli-
tion of slavery. Indeed it is surprising that such a party was not
formed. If anything could have prolonged the peculiar institution of
the South, a party of progressive, humanitarian slave owners would
have done so.

THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM

The Socialist party does not accept the dogma of the harmony
of interests between capital and labor. It has the courage to recog-
nize that any reform which benefits both capitalist and workingman
can be of but small importance. Therefore it does not appeal to
“honest business men,” for support, but to the workers of brain and
muscle. As' soon as the Progressive party interferes With the sacred
six per cent, the heavy financial gentlemen who replenish its war
chest will decide that their offspring has become a party of anarchy,
and will promptly shift their strength to a safer and saner party.
The Socialist party on the other hand draws its support from
the laboring classes, and is financed by monthly dues from its mem-
bership. It puts the essentials of its Whole program in its platform.

6

It calls upon all those who are not connected, by conviction or by
pocketbook, with the system of private capitalism, to league them-
selves together in one political party, to buy out the big industrial
concerns at their property value, and then by means of progressive
income and inheritance taxes, or by similar devices, to confiscate
gradually the bonds which have been used in payment.

Lest this program should result in an industrial bureaucracy the
Socialist party accompanies it with a series of political demands,
including the initiative and referendum, recall, equal suffrage, and
the reform of judicial power and procedure; and it strongly indorses
the trades and industrial union movement, which it recognizes as a
step towards the democratic internal management of the workshop.

Finally, since the ultimate program of the party will take many
years to accomplish, the platform contains a series of immediate
economic demands, containing most of the labor planks adopted by
the Progressive party. These planks have been urged since the birth
Of the party 12 years ago, with the full realization that they would be
gradually taken over by the dominant parties, and by them enacted
into law.

The Socialist party itself is as yet small, and there is some
plausibility. to the belief that a vote for the party is a vote thrown
away. To vote for a man who is sure to lose, requires some justifi-
cation beyond the mere fact that one happens to agree with him.

It is rapidly becoming incorrect, however, to call the Socialist
party a. mere minor party of protest. In Wisconsin, for instance, 110
less than 15 members of the party were elected to the last legisla-
ture, and in 1910 the party candidate for governor polled 10% of the
total state vote. In California the party cast 14% of the state vote,
although running against as progressive a firebrand as Hiram
Johnson. America shows every sign of repeating the history of Ger—
many, Belgium, and France, where the Socialist parties have reached
positions of commanding prominence. Undoubtedly the party will
more than double its vote on November 5, and substantially increase
its representation in Congress and the various legislatures.

This view is amply substantiated by Prof. Robert F. Hoxie, one
of the editors of the Journal of Political Economy, who writes in
that journal in March, 1912, after a minute review of the party vic-
tories in 1911:

“The general impression conveyed by a close study of the ob-
jective facts of the November election period is that we are at last
face to face with a. vigorous and effective Socialist m0vement,——a
movement which is nation wide, which is laying the foundations for
a permanent party by building from the bottom of the political struc-
ture, Which is recruiting its main strength in the most important
civic and industrial centers, and is growing at a rapidly accelerating
rate.”

For those Who want no more than a complete program of pallia-
tive social legislation, nothing can accomplish this end so rapidly
as a vote cast for the Socialist party. If the party polls above a
million votes, in November, that “permanent scare” Which Prof.
Albert Bushnell Hart tells of receiving when he realized the growth

7

 

of the Socialist party in California, and which impelled him to call
for an immediate Bull Moose antidote, will communicate itself to
every enlightened politician in the three old school parties. If the
Socialist party shows a substantial gain, there will be a veritable
deluge of minimum wage laws, old ‘age pension bills, nay a whole
Lloyd George program of social legislation. For those who want a
Lloyd George program, a vote for the Socialists will bring more re—
sults than a dozen for any one of the old parties.

The Socialist party relies mainly, however, upon those Who will
not be content with a Lloyd George program, but who ask for no less
than the essential abolition of the private ownership of the means of
production. The Lloyd George program has its value, but relatively
it is unimportant. Germany has adopted it in its entirety, yet the
revolutionary labor movement is as insistent and as discontented as
ever. The time will inevitably come when the Progressive party, its
reform program enacted, Will disintegrate; for capital, Which fills the
party’s war chest, and labor, Which gives it most of its votes, cannot
long lie together in peace. Then there Will come the need, in nation
and state, for a strong, compact and determined party, to take up
the work. It must be a party absolutely free from capitalist aflilia-
tions, and undoubtedly it Will be the Socialist party. If that party
is now small, now is the time to build it up. It is a party for men
and women of courage, and it is willing to leave Progressive politics
to the weaker spirits, of Whom there are doubtless enough to carry
the Whole Progressive program into effect in a very few years.

G. C. H.

Eb: ?éarharb fiucialist QEIuh

62 THAYER HALL

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
.9 1t 31

®t£ims, 191243

PRESIDENT
ALFRED JARETZKI, JR.

SECRETARY AND TREASURER

PARK J . WHITE

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBER

R. WALSTON CHUBB

JACQUES a.- MELANCON
116 ELIOT STREET. BOSTON

$33

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