Cornell University Library 
 
 HX 86.S75 
 
 The substance of socialism, 
 
 I 
 
 ililllllllllJlillillnillllliillllJil.il 
 
 3 1924 002 674 012 
 
 Socialism 
 
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 
 OF 
 
 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR 
 
 RELATIONS 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 The Family of 
 Morris and Vera Hillquit 
 
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 Cornell University Library 
 HX 86.S75 
 
 The substance of socialism, 
 
 A 
 
 3 1924 002 674 012 
 
 
 
 Is 
 
 • -- 
 
 ism 
 
 From the Library of 
 
 MORRIS HILLQUIT 
 
 Presented 
 in the memory of 
 
 MORRIS and VERA HILLQUIT 
 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002674012 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
BOOKS BY JOHN SPARGO 
 
 SOCIALIST THEORY 
 
 The Socialists, Who They Are and What 
 
 They Stand For 
 Socialism, A Summary and Interpretation 
 
 of S6cialist Principles 
 Capitalist and Laborer 
 The Common Sense of Socialism 
 The Spiritual Significance of Modern 
 
 Socialism 
 Socialist Readings for Children (illustrated) 
 The Substance of Socialism 
 
 SOCIAL QUESTIONS 
 The Bitter Cry of the Children (illustrated) 
 The Common Sense of the Milk Question 
 (illustrated) 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES 
 The Socialism of William Morris (illustrated) 
 The Marx He Knew (illustrated) 
 Karl Marx: His Life and Work (illustrated) 
 
The 
 Substance of Socialism 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN SPARGO 
 
 NEW YORK 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 
 1909 
 
Copyright, 1909 
 By B. W. HUEBSCH 
 
 PRINTED IN U. S. A. 
 
WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH 
 FIDEI DEFENSOR 
 
 H 
 
 sir 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I The Socialist Hope 15 
 
 II Private Property and Personal Liberty 
 
 in the Socialist State 65 
 
 III The Moral Value of Class Consciousness 105 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THE first part of this little volume con- 
 sists of an address which, somewhat 
 abridged and modified, was delivered 
 at a Socialist Conference in Boston. The sec- 
 ond part consists of a paper contributed, in 
 June, 1909, to the North American Review, 
 and reprinted here, slightly revised, through 
 the courtesy of the editor and publishers of 
 that periodical. The third and last consists 
 of a stenographic report of a lecture delivered 
 in Cooper Union, New York City, under the 
 auspices of the People's Institute, revised for 
 this publication. 
 
 Probably no article upon the subject has 
 ever been more widely discussed than the pa- 
 per from the North American Review. Hun- 
 dreds of newspaper editorials were written 
 about it, and thousands of correspondents 
 wrote me from all parts of the world con- 
 [9] 
 
The Substance of Socialism, 
 
 cerning it. Most of the newspaper com- 
 ments were such as to gratify any writer, and 
 the letters were such as to indicate general 
 satisfaction. 
 
 But one newspaper writer, the gentleman 
 who writes for the Boston Transcript under 
 the pseudonym of " The Social Settler," was 
 greatly disturbed to discover that I was not 
 what he termed an " orthodox Socialist." He 
 went further, and charged that I was not 
 acting in good faith; that I was the leader 
 of a small group of Socialists who make it 
 their business to do propaganda " window 
 dressing " — " glossing over the disagreeable 
 features of Socialism " to catch unwary gud- 
 geons with our bait. 
 
 Now, of course, I care rather less than 
 nothing at all about being " orthodox." For 
 me the only orthodoxy is truth, error the only 
 heresy. While I have called myself a 
 " Marxist," and believe that I have fairly 
 earned the right to do so by many years 
 given to earnest and careful exposition of 
 Marx's theories, I have never regarded Marx 
 [ 10 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 as a pope, nor believed that the last word 
 of wisdom was spoken by him. From time 
 to time, therefore, I have freely and frankly 
 expressed opinions upon matters of theory 
 and policy contrary to those of Marx. 
 
 While, therefore, I am not at all concerned 
 about my orthodoxy, I am somewhat jealous 
 of my good name, and cannot lightly pass 
 over the charge that I am engaged, with some 
 " assistants," in misrepresenting the Socialist 
 position and carrying on a propaganda of de- 
 ceit. My connection with the Socialist move- 
 ment has involved too much suffering and 
 sacrifice during many years to lend support 
 to such a charge as that. 
 
 It is not for the sake of my reputation as 
 an honest and sincere thinker that I refer here 
 to the atrabilious charge of " The Social Set- 
 tler," however. That would be conferring 
 too much dignity upon an undignified criti- 
 cism. I desire only to make plain the fact 
 that, except in the manner of stating it, there 
 is not the slightest difference between my gen- 
 eral position and that taken by Marx, Engels, 
 [«] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Liebknecht, Kautsky, and others whose 
 " orthodoxy " is unquestioned. Marx and 
 Engels made it perfectly clear in the Com- 
 munist Manifesto, more than sixty years ago, 
 that they were not aiming at the abolition of 
 private property; that only that capitalistic 
 form of property which was used to exploit 
 the workers was attacked. Liebknecht, 
 Kautsky, and others, have laid special em- 
 phasis upon the same point. Kautsky's The 
 Social Revolution and Vandervelde's Collec- 
 tivism may be referred to for proof of this. 
 In a remarkable manuscript, referred to and 
 quoted from in the following pages, Lieb- 
 knecht not only laid stress upon this point, but 
 also upon the fact that the greatest possible 
 consideration for the present privileged 
 classes would be observed. He wrote : 
 
 " Even those who now enjoy privileges 
 and monopolies ought to be made to under- 
 stand that we do not propose to adopt any 
 violent or sudden measures against those 
 whose position is now sanctioned by law, and 
 that we are resolved, in the interests of a 
 
 [12] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 peaceful and harmonious evolution, to bring 
 about the transition from legal injustice to 
 legal justice with the greatest possible con- 
 sideration for the individuals who are now 
 privileged monopolists. 
 
 " We recognize that it would be unjust to 
 hold those who have built up a privileged sit- 
 uation for themselves on the basis of bad 
 legislation personally responsible for that 
 bad legislation, and to punish them person- 
 ally. 
 
 " We especially state that in our opinion it 
 is the duty of the State to give an indemnity 
 to those whose interests will be injured by 
 the necessary abolition of laws contrary to the 
 common good in so far as this indemnity is 
 consistent with the interests of the nation as 
 a whole." 
 
 If the reader will procure and read care- 
 fully Liebknecht's little pamphlet, Socialism: 
 What It Is and What It Seeks To Accom- 
 plish, he will see that Liebknecht took in gen- 
 eral a position identical with that taken by 
 myself in the following pages. My own 
 
 [i3l 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Karl Marx: His Life and Work may also be 
 referred to. 
 
 The fact is that for many years, owing to 
 causes into which it is not possible to enter 
 here, a gross travesty of Marxian Socialism 
 has been commonly put forward as a faithful 
 account. Now, at last, American Socialism 
 is beginning to develop a literature of its 
 own, and to throw off the shackles of an im- 
 potent and crude " Marxism " which carica- 
 tured every essential feature of Marx's teach- 
 ing. I hope that I may be pardoned for re- 
 ferring to Mr. Morris Hillquit's admirable 
 work, Socialism in Theory and Practice, and 
 my own Socialism in this connection. 
 
 It is my earnest hope that this little volume 
 may help to give the reader a clearer and 
 juster view of the great Socialist movement 
 of to-day than has heretofore generally pre- 
 vailed. 
 
 J.S. 
 
 Raymond Cottage, 
 
 Bennington Centre, Vt., 
 Beginning of August, 1909. 
 [14] 
 
I 
 
 THE SOCIALIST HOPE 
 
IN that pathetic nightmare of melodrama 
 and pessimism, The Iron Heel, Mr. Jack 
 London observes that for a long time it 
 has been sufficient to damn any propaganda 
 or movement simply to call it " Utopian." 
 With due allowance for the exaggeration of 
 the statement, it must be admitted that it 
 contains important elements of truth. " O, 
 it is altogether Utopian ! " cries the hard- 
 headed, practical man of affairs when he is 
 asked to consider the claims of Socialism, and 
 then he smiles complacently, satisfied that the 
 last word of wisdom has been said. To con- 
 sider it any further, he thinks, would be a 
 grievous waste of precious mental energy, and 
 of time which might be more profitably em- 
 ployed in the market place. 
 
 Now, what is there in that word " Uto- 
 pian " which makes it so terrible as an epi- 
 [17] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 thet ? What do we mean when we denounce 
 a movement or a propaganda as Utopian? 
 Why, simply that it is visionary and out of 
 reach; that howsoever beautiful its aims may 
 be they are beyond our present powers of re- 
 alization so far that working to attain them 
 does not commend itself to our practical 
 worldly sense. It is the contemptuous sneer 
 of the hard-headed practical man at the 
 " dreamer of dreams." 
 
 It is not such a terrible thing, after all! 
 To hitch our wagon to a star, as Emerson ad- 
 vised us, is to be guilty of being Utopians. 
 Ifor if our star is really a star, and not a mere 
 lantern hung out to deceive us, we shall never 
 reach it with our wagon; the end of our 
 journey will be far short of the star. If, 
 knowing this, we aim at the stellar goal we 
 may not reach, we are Utopians and fit sub- 
 jects for the reproaches of our more practical 
 fellows who hitch their wagons to the near- 
 est street lamps instead of to stars. So there 
 are many things worse than being a Utopian 
 [18] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 — to be a pulpit perverter of the Gospel, for 
 example, or even a legislator with one hand 
 constantly employed in grasping the rewards 
 for faithful service to Privilege. One would 
 rather be known as a dreamer of beatific 
 dreams than as the alderman who sold his 
 vote to a public service corporation seeking a 
 franchise. 
 
 There is some significance in the fact that 
 Jesus was a dreamer, a Utopian of the Uto- 
 pians, while Judas was a very " practical " 
 man. In the verdict of History the dreamer 
 has an honored place, while the practical man 
 is remembered only with scorn. The figures 
 that loom largest in history are the dreamers 
 who were sneered at as Utopians by the hard- 
 headed practical men of their time. Take, 
 for example, the Bible and scan the roll of 
 its great characters. Do you not find that 
 the names that shine with the brightest luster 
 are those of the great dreamers and Utopi- 
 ans? The practical priests inside the church 
 have for the most part been mercifully for- 
 [19] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 gotten, but the prophets outside, all of them 
 dreamers and Utopians, have been gloriously 
 remembered, their names being blazoned in 
 imperishable letters upon the deathless page. 
 From Moses to Isaiah and Ezekiel, down to 
 Jesus and John, all the prophets were dream- 
 ers, mocked by the practical men of their 
 day. Isaiah foretelling the coming of a time 
 when they who plant vineyards shall eat the 
 fruit thereof, and Jesus praying " Let Thy 
 kingdom come ! " were Utopians quite as 
 truly as Plato, Sir Thomas More, Saint Si- 
 mon or Robert Owen. 
 
 Columbus was the dreamer; those who 
 mocked him were the practical men of the 
 time. It was a practical man who thought 
 to silence the dreamer, Robert Stephenson, 
 by asking him what would happen if his 
 " steam horse " should meet a cow upon the 
 tracks, and who could not see any humor in 
 the quaint reply, " It wad be verra awkward 
 for th' coo." It was the practical man who 
 sneered at Morse's dream of the electric tele- 
 [20] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 graph and Marconi's wonderful vision of 
 wireless telegraphy. To be counted among 
 the dreamers is not, after all, an unenviable 
 fate: it is a glorious company, this host of 
 the once derided dreamers, now honored and 
 sung! 
 
 In one sense, Socialism is a dream and the 
 millions of its adherents are dreamers. They 
 look forward to a time when neither the black 
 shadow of poverty nor the scarlet shadow of 
 war shall oppress mankind. They wait the 
 day when no child's hunger-cry shall distress 
 the hearts of men and women, the fulfillment 
 o'f the ages-old dream of human brotherhood. 
 The faith of the Socialist in the coming of a 
 better and brighter day is invincible. If that 
 is what is meant when it is said that Socialists 
 are Utopians, a plea of guilty must be en- 
 tered. Every Socialist worthy the name is a 
 dreamer. He dreams the dream of Moses 
 upon Sinai, of Jesus upon the Mount; the 
 dream that was Lincoln's, the dream by 
 which all who look to the future for the 
 
 [21] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Golden Age are inspired. His heart holds 
 dear a sublime faith in the coming of a time 
 when 
 
 All shall be better than well. 
 
 But the Socialist is only a Utopian in that 
 sense. He is a dreamer, as all whose eyes 
 are lifted to the skies are dreamers. But he 
 is not a Utopian in the sense of one having 
 devised a plan for the reconstruction of so- 
 ciety. Socialism is not a scheme, a detailed 
 plan for the regeneration of society and the 
 removal of all its ills. It is no political and 
 economic cure-all, guaranteed to make a per- 
 fect society. The modern Socialist does not, 
 and cannot, paint for you a picture of the 
 future society, such as the many followers of 
 Plato have imagined. It is useless, there- 
 fore, to ask him for specifications and plans 
 of the Cooperative Commonwealth of which 
 he so eloquently speaks. None but a vision- 
 ary of the wildest type would believe it pos- 
 sible for the Socialist to do so. 
 
 Strangely enough, it is always your hard- 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 headed, practical man who regards Socialism 
 as a scheme for building the Perfect State 
 somewhere in the neighborhood of the Delec- 
 table Mountains, and who is disappointed 
 when he finds that it is nothing of the kind. 
 He comes with his questions concerning the 
 future, and wants to know what will be done 
 to insure perfect happiness. He asks for 
 specifications of the future social state, and 
 for a guarantee that perfection will be real- 
 ized therein. 
 
 The Socialist, of course, makes the com- 
 monsense answer that he does not know when 
 he is thus pressed for information concerning 
 details of the society of the future. He as- 
 sures his perplexed questioner that he does 
 not think of the Cooperative Commonwealth 
 as the Perfect State in which perfect happi- 
 ness is at last realized. He knows that the 
 world cannot be made to conform to the 
 dream of the Heart's Desire. He indulges 
 in no futile and vain hope that mankind can 
 be made perfect and completely happy by 
 any ingenious legislative devices. The splen- 
 [23] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 did genius of Darwin, which was the crown- 
 ing glory of the nineteenth century, opened 
 up to mankind a new and inspiring view of 
 the great drama of human progress. We 
 know now that social changes are not made 
 in response to our prayers; we know that 
 every social change is brought about by 
 gigantic evolutionary forces which our con- 
 scious will can only assist. The present so- 
 cial state is not the deliberate realization of 
 some great inventor's designs, but the out- 
 come of centuries of evolution, a long process 
 of development in which steam and electricity 
 and human aspiration have been mighty 
 forces. ' 
 
 It is the Socialist, then, who most clearly 
 realizes the futility of social schemes ; who re- 
 lies upon evolution for his hope, and knows 
 that the future is being developed in the 
 womb of the present. He, almost alone of 
 men, realizes how vain is that wish of Omar 
 the Pagan, which so many people entertain 
 to-day, to shatter " this sorry scheme of 
 things " to bits and then to " remold it nearer 
 [24] 
 
The Substance of Socialis 
 
 m 
 
 to the Heart's Desire." While he contem- 
 plates with reverent admiration the faith of 
 a Fourier, waiting patiently at noon every day 
 for twelve years for the philanthropist with 
 a million francs to secure the happiness of the 
 world, the Socialist sees its pathos, not in the 
 fact that the philanthropist Fourier expected 
 never came, but in the futility of the hope 
 that the world's happiness could be secured by 
 any such method if he came. And when he 
 thinks of the saintly Robert Owen, disap- 
 pointed that the British Parliament put off 
 the consideration of his Utopia for a session, 
 crying out, " What ! postpone the happiness 
 of the whole human race to the next ses- 
 sion?" the Socialist has only reverence for 
 the great dreamer's faith and singleness of 
 purpose, mingled with pity for his blindness 
 to the laws of human progress. 
 
 Most persons are somewhat startled when 
 they hear some Socialist agitator say, or read 
 in a Socialist book or paper, that Socialism 
 is not at all a Utopian scheme ; that it is not 
 a design for the destruction of all the insti- 
 
 [ *5 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 tutions so painfully evolved through the un- 
 counted years of human struggle, and the 
 building of a new social edifice upon the 
 ruins of the old. They are astonished to 
 learn that the Socialist does not delude him- 
 self into the belief that, as a result of the 
 inspiration of an Owen or a Marx, laws will 
 be enacted which will make earth a Paradise, 
 subdue all evil human passions, and make 
 men gods. " But will there not always be 
 some to fail to make the most of life and 
 waste its opportunities ? " asks the simple- 
 minded person of this type. " Quite prob- 
 ably so," replies the mildly amused Socialist, 
 " but pray what has that to do with the claim 
 that at least all should be given equal op- 
 portunities? " 
 
 " But don't you think that some men and 
 women will rise above the rest, in any sort 
 of social state?" asks the amiable simple- 
 minded person whose concept of Socialism is 
 that it is a beautiful scheme for abolishing 
 evil from the world, to be astonished by the 
 reply, " Certainly: it would be very unfortu- 
 [26] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 nate if it were otherwise. But pray what has 
 that to do with the matter? Is that a good 
 reason why some should be weighted down 
 with leaden disadvantages, so that they can- 
 not rise? " 
 
 Socialism is an expression of faith in man. 
 It is a theory of social progress according 
 to which each stage in the social ascent from 
 brute to brother and from bondage to -free- 
 dom is made possible only through the ex- 
 tension of man's kingdom in the universe, his 
 mastery over the forces of external nature. 
 The social state which it hails with so much 
 rapturous faith is only a new stage in the 
 upward march of the race, a new epoch of 
 civilization, made possible and inevitable by 
 the great economic forces which man has de- 
 veloped, and which in turn compel him to 
 march on to still loftier heights. 
 
 Such being the case, it is as irrational to 
 demand of the Socialist answers to the multi- 
 tudinous questions concerning matters of de- 
 tail which are so easily propounded as it 
 would have been to propound such questions 
 [27] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 to a fourteenth century man concerning the 
 social system which he saw developing out 
 of feudalism. One has only need to imagine 
 oneself living in that far-off time of transi- 
 tion, fully conscious of the impending rise of 
 a new social and economic order, and pro- 
 claiming that consciousness fearlessly and 
 constantly in the face of ridicule and sneer- 
 ing skepticism, to realize something like the 
 position of the modern Socialist heralding the 
 rise of a new social order. Imagine the 
 skeptics of that period of transition from 
 feudalism to capitalism taunting the man who 
 proclaimed the coming of a new order out of 
 the womb of the old because he could not tell 
 exactly how all the details of the new so- 
 ciety would be arranged! At most the 
 prophet would be able to tell only the great 
 fundamental economic outlines, more or less 
 clearly evident to the discerning eye: to de- 
 mand more would be the most foolish of 
 Utopian follies. 
 
 And so it is with the Socialist of to-day. 
 He believes that he can discern the main 
 [28] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 outlines of the economic basis of a new so- 
 cial order growing out of the present. That 
 outline he is prepared to trace as well as he 
 is able. 3ut you must not ask him to tell 
 you what women will wear in the Coopera- 
 tive Commonwealth, how it will be decided 
 who shall live on the corner lot, nor how the 
 government will prevent the accumulation of 
 antique snuff boxes and grandfather clocks 
 by- individuals of highly, developed acquis- 
 itiveness. If he were a Utopian of the old 
 school, advocating the reconstruction of so- 
 ciety according to some carefully wrought de- 
 sign, he would be able to answer all such 
 questions with precision. But he is just an 
 ordinary mortal like yourself, calling atten- 
 tion to the signs of social growth. 
 
 [29] 
 
II 
 
 YOUR hard-headed man of " practical " 
 sense is opposed to Socialism because he 
 believes that it is contemplated to make 
 all people equal. A multitude of advisers as- 
 sure him that this is so. ,The most loqua- 
 cious — and omniscient — President the na- 
 tion ever had assured him that Socialism 
 meant nothing less than the reduction of all 
 human beings to one dead level of mediocrity. 
 But the Socialist answers that Socialism does 
 not concern itself with equality at all. He 
 knows very well that there can never be 
 equality of gift, of character, or of attain- 
 ment. As some will be bigger of body than 
 their fellows, so some will always be bigger 
 of mind and soul. The vision of a world of 
 perfect equality is like the quest for the Phi- 
 losopher's Stone and the Elixir of Perpetual 
 [30] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Youth. It is, fortunately, an illusive and un- 
 attainable ideal. 
 
 Nature's law is inequality. Mountain and 
 valley and plain in the physical world have 
 their counterparts in human nature. No So- 
 cialist believes that the diversities of human 
 capacity and attainment will be swept away, 
 that there will ever be uniformity of intel- 
 lectual or spiritual attainment. When the 
 Socialist's ideal of a Cooperative Common- 
 wealth is attained there will still be moun- 
 tains of genius rising above the plain of life, 
 mountains of higher altitudes and more nu- 
 merous than at presents It is to-day that 
 genius is repressed: the " dull level of life " 
 is a present reality. 
 
 The only equality which Socialists hope to 
 see realized in the world is that divine equal- 
 ity which cannot be denied without denying 
 liberty and brotherhood at the same time — 
 equality of opportunity. The protest of 
 modern Socialism is not directed against Na- 
 ture's inequalities, which give us the " hew- 
 ers of wood and drawers of water " upon the 
 [3i] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 one hand and the genius of a Shakespeare, a 
 Darwin, or an Edison upon the other. It is 
 directed solely against those artificial, man- 
 made inequalities which bind chains upon the 
 souls of men, stifle genius in the hideous 
 quagmire of poverty and despair, and exalt 
 a few upon thrones of privileges — thrones 
 that are founded upon the prostrate and 
 bound forms of the oppressed. 
 
 While it is true that not all the flowers in 
 Life's garden will be alike, equal in beauty 
 of color or fragrance, it is not the less true 
 that every one of them must have an equal 
 chance to blossom and grow before we can 
 speak of justice as an accomplished fact. And 
 the world will not be a fit place for a human 
 child, nor worthy of man's highest^aspiration, 
 until every human blossom has equal care 
 and opportunity to grow. Not until the 
 economic conditions of life make it possible 
 for every child born into the world to attain 
 the fullest possible development of its pow- 
 ers will it be right for us to rest content. and 
 satisfied. 
 
 [32] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Economic conditions are far more impor- 
 tant than the world's moralists have recog- 
 nized, for they are the soil in which the roots 
 of life and character grow, and from which 
 they draw the sustaining forces which alone 
 make possible free blossoming and perfect 
 fruitage. Life attains a generous height and 
 a perfect texture only when its roots are nur- 
 tured in the soil of nourishing economic con- 
 ditions. What we want, then, in the interest 
 of society as well as that of the individual, 
 is equal economic opportunities for all. And 
 until that end has been attained, so long as 
 the foul, dank tenement casts its black 
 shadow over our cities, and the pinched and 
 wan faces of hungry children haunt our 
 streets, the song of brotherhood will be un- 
 sung, a prophecy, not a reality of life. And 
 so long will our streets and market places 
 abound with broken and depraved human 
 figures, driftwood and waste of the great hu- 
 man struggle, doomed figures, disinherited 
 of man's divine estate. This claim for equal- 
 ity of opportunity as the right of every child 
 [33] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 is incontestable and unanswerable. Upon it 
 alone can justice rest firm and unshaken; 
 from it alone can true freedom spring. It is 
 the rationale of the Socialism that is challeng- 
 ing the age in which we live. 
 
 [34] 
 
Ill 
 
 SOCIALISM is most grievously misunder- 
 stood and misinterpreted when it is be- 
 lieved to be opposed to private property. 
 Socialism and private property are not anti- 
 thetical. The common ownership of every- 
 thing, which so many good people still believe 
 to be involved in the Socialist programme, 
 has, in fact, nothing to do with it. Such 
 communistic ideas belong to the ancient Uto- 
 pias of Plato, of the early Christian Fathers, 
 of More and Fourier and Owen. The mod- 
 ern Socialist ideal bears very slight resemblance 
 to these ancient ideals with their violent ha- 
 tred of private property. The American So- 
 :ialist of to-day is much nearer to Aristotle's 
 belief in the maintenance of private property, 
 md its approximate equalization, than to 
 Plato's belief in the abolition of all private 
 property. 
 In a certain sense, the whole history of 
 
 135] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 human civilization may be said to be the 
 record of man's struggle with this question 
 of property, his attempt rightly to relate him- 
 self to things. Every great epoch in history 
 has been born out of a conflict concerning 
 property rights. The modern struggle of 
 woman for the right of suffrage is but the 
 aftermath of her emancipation from the sta- 
 tus of a chattel. When the primitive man 
 went out to hunt a wife, he went armed, but 
 not with bon bons, opera tickets and flowers, 
 as the twentieth century man goes. Instead, 
 he armed himself with a big stick or stone. 
 Catching the lady of his choice, he rendered 
 her unconscious, dragged her to his home, 
 and she became his property. The Council 
 of Bishops at Macon, in the sixth century, 
 disputing as to whether woman had a soul, 
 and the legislators in twentieth century 
 America disputing her right to the franchise, 
 remind us of the old notion that woman was 
 properly a chattel. 
 
 When the State decreed that human beings 
 of a certain race were properly to be regarded 
 [36] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 as chattels, and property in human bodies and 
 souls was legalized by the statutes, the first 
 challenge to that idea came with a shock to 
 the great mass of the people. Boston 
 mobbed her brave Garrison, and Concord 
 stoned the gentle Whittier. Why? Be- 
 cause it was charged that the Abolitionists 
 were seeking to destroy private property. 
 Had they been charged with attempting to 
 destroy religion, morality, art, or anything 
 else they would not have experienced such 
 violence, but an attack upon private property 
 inevitably brought down upon their heads 
 the wrath of an enraged property-holding 
 and property-worshiping class. When they 
 were accused of the monstrous crime of seek- 
 ing to destroy private property, the enemies 
 of the iniquitous system of chattel slavery 
 made the reply which the Socialists are 
 repeating to-day. "We are not opposed 
 to private property, but only to certain hid- 
 eous forms of it." Their declaration, which 
 the immortal Lincoln so superbly voiced, was 
 that they had no sort of objection to the 
 [371 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 ownership of things, but that they would not 
 rest until they had destroyed the ownership 
 of men and women. 
 
 In the fierce heat of war, at a price which 
 still saddens and staggers the mind, the na- 
 tion established the principle that no man 
 was good enough or great enough to be the 
 master of another's life. To-day the na- 
 tion is being called upon by the Socialist to 
 face a new challenge, which must be met and 
 answered by the heart and brain of the 
 American people. The Socialist believes 
 that he is carrying the banner which Lincoln 
 bore, taking it from where the cold hand of 
 Lincoln laid it down and bearing it to where 
 he would bear it were he alive to-day. So- 
 cialism carries the eternal issue onward. As 
 Lincoln thundered that no man was good 
 enough to own another's life, so the Socialist 
 agitator of our time is thundering the new 
 form of the old principle, saying that no man 
 is good enough to own the things upon which 
 another's life depends. To declare men 
 [38] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 free, to burn the parchments which declare 
 them to be bound and chattels, is not really 
 to set them free. No man is really free 
 whose life is controlled by another, who de- 
 pends upon some other man for the right to 
 earn his bread in the sweat of his brow. 
 
 This, then, is the challenge of Socialism: 
 No man is good enough to be master of an- 
 other man's bread, of another man's job, of 
 another man's life. The three things mean 
 the same in the last analysis, for whoever is 
 master of a man's bread, of his opportunities 
 to labor, is master of his life as surely as if 
 he owned a parchment testifying to the fact 
 that he bought the man at auction. The 
 breadmakers of the world must be empowered 
 to eat the bread their hands make ; the means 
 of making bread must be taken from the 
 hands of those who through them hold their 
 fellows in bondage, and made common and 
 free to all. 
 
 So modern Socialism denies no property 
 right other than that which gives man do- 
 
 [39] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 minion over his fellows. The farmer work- 
 ing his farm and maintaining himself and his 
 family in comfort does not by that labor 
 bind chains upon his fellow men and upon the 
 children that are unborn. Not. private prop- 
 erty, but those anti-social forms of it which 
 have been developed, and which give a ruling 
 economic class the power to exploit the labor 
 and needs of the toiling masses Socialism op- 
 poses and seeks to bring under democratic 
 social control. 
 
 Whoever otherwise represents the Social- 
 ist programme misrepresents it. To claim, 
 as some do, that this is an emasculated state- 
 ment of the Socialist aim, for the purposes 
 of a deceptive propaganda, is disingenuous 
 and untrue. Marx and Engels, the great 
 founders of modern scientific Socialism, took 
 precisely the same ground in their famous 
 Communist Manifesto, more than sixty years 
 ago, as reference to that great document will 
 show. They made it perfectly clear that 
 they opposed only that capitalistic form of 
 private property which made it possible for 
 [40] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 a class of property owners to exploit the 
 wealth producers; that private property of a 
 few which makes private property for the 
 many impossible. 
 
 [41] 
 
IV! 
 
 THAT is why the struggle is one of 
 classes, and why we hear so much in 
 connection with the Socialist propa- 
 ganda of the " class struggle " and of " class 
 consciousness." When Mr. Roosevelt was 
 President, like a habitual scold, he hurled his 
 wrathful bolts at the Socialists for preaching 
 this doctrine of class consciousness. He 
 seemed to think that the Socialists make the 
 class struggle of which they talk so much, 
 and, like a great many other people, to imag- 
 ine that the wicked Socialists exist by provok- 
 ing class hatred. 
 
 But the struggle of the classes about which 
 the Socialist has so much to say is not pro- 
 duced by agitation. It is not in response to 
 the stirring appeals of agitators that classes 
 are formed in a nation and come into conflict. 
 The development of our economic system to 
 [42] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 a point where the control of practically all 
 the resources of the nation resides in a few 
 hands, forcing these, whether they desire it 
 or not, to dominate our politics, creates an 
 oligarchy and divides the nation into warring 
 classes. iWhen the wealth and resources of 
 a nation become the property of a minority, 
 that minority inevitably becomes the ruling 
 class, and, inevitably also, the subject class 
 will find itself compelled to antagonize it. 
 
 The class struggle is therefore not an ar- 
 tificial revolt that is created and fostered by 
 agitation, but a natural and necessary out- 
 come of our economic development. Just as 
 we may say that all history is the record of 
 man's struggles to place property in its right 
 relation to life, so we may say that it is the 
 record of class struggles. Progress has al- 
 ways taken the form of class struggles ; each 
 epoch in civilization has been ushered in by 
 the triumph of a new class over an old one. 
 Frankly, the Socialist movement is and must 
 be a class movement. That is to say, its im- 
 mediate object must be to secure the triumph 
 [43] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 of the wage-working class over the class of 
 exploiters. In no other way can the present 
 system with its exploitation of the worker by 
 the capitalist, and its riot of wealth won only 
 by plunging multitudes into the abysses of 
 poverty, ever be brought to an end. 
 
 This does not mean, however, that only 
 the manual workers are wronged, and that 
 they alone are interested in bringing about 
 better conditions. Still less does it mean 
 that none but the exploited may join in the 
 political Socialist movement. What is meant 
 is simply this : There can be no solution of 
 the great social problem which does not de- 
 stroy the power of the exploiting class and 
 liberate the exploited class. To that purpose 
 all who would joins hands with the Socialists 
 must pledge themselves, and it is natural that 
 the workers should have a keener interest in 
 the fulfillment of this purpose than their ex- 
 ploiters. 
 
 Although they are often represented as de- 
 siring simply to change one ruling class for 
 another, the Socialists are clear-sighted 
 •[44] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 enough to see that, in the long run, not much 
 would be gained by that. If it were the aim 
 of this great world movement of labor simply 
 to change the respective places of the warring 
 classes, the masters of to-day becoming the 
 slaves of to-morrow, not much would be ac- 
 complished. Society would still be divided 
 into warring classes ; there would still be lords 
 of bread and slaves of bread, exploiters and 
 exploited. No. The aim of this world- 
 circling Socialist movement is to do away with 
 class rule altogether, not merely to change 
 masters. The workers are in this position: 
 they cannot overthrow the rule of the ex- 
 ploiting class without destroying the only 
 basis upon which class rule can rest, and, at 
 the same time, creating the only possible eco- 
 nomic basis for the life of brotherhood. 
 Class struggles first began when private prop- 
 erty in the means of the social life appeared, 
 and one man could say of the conditions es- 
 sential to another's life, " These are subject 
 to my will and law." Class struggles will 
 end forever when the means of the common 
 [45] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 life are made subject to the common good 
 and will; social property, owned and man- 
 aged for the common weal and joy. The 
 Socialist movement does not exist for the pur- 
 pose of fostering class hatred : it is aiming to 
 destroy the conditions which give rise to 
 classes and produce class antagonisms and 
 hatreds. This pacific purpose is very differ- 
 ent from that commonly ascribed to the So- 
 cialists by their critics. 
 
 [46] 
 
BUT, it may be argued, all the Socialist 
 theories seem plausible enough when 
 they are carefully and calmly stated, but 
 there is one thing which the Socialists do not 
 take into account — they overlook human na- 
 ture I Selfishness and envy are inherent in the 
 nature of man, we are told, and it is feared 
 that the Socialist thinks of human nature as 
 being pure gold without any alloy. This is 
 an old and hoary objection which every So- 
 cialist has to encounter. 
 
 The Socialist replies to this objection by in- 
 sisting that in truth it is the opponents of So- 
 cialism who fail to reckon properly with hu- 
 man nature, that the Socialist alone bases all 
 his hope and his efforts upon what is known 
 of human nature. That, broadly and briefly 
 stated, is the claim which must be. made here 
 on behalf of the Socialist, movement. The 
 [47] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 very terms in which the average man speaks 
 of human nature betray the fact that he has 
 never seriously thought about it; never asked 
 himself what human nature is. He repeats, 
 parrot-like, an objection which he has heard 
 somewhere, with as little thought as a parrot 
 gives to the things it has been taught to say, 
 and with as little comprehension. 
 
 What is meant by " human nature " when 
 it is described as being an insuperable ob- 
 stacle to Socialism? Is it not a fact that 
 those who urge this objection think of hu- 
 man nature as something fixed and unchang- 
 ing, some stable ingredient, some inflexible 
 principle, which enters into the composition 
 of every normal human being? It is very 
 evident from the manner in which the objec- 
 tion is urged that most of those who urge it 
 have in their minds, perhaps not clearly or 
 definitely formulated as yet, a conception of 
 human nature as being a sort of parcel of 
 various assorted qualities, a composite of cer- 
 tain vices and virtues, more or less evenly 
 blended, which enters into the mental and 
 [48] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 moral make-up of the average human being. 
 
 But in truth human nature is always chang- 
 ing. Progress implies some change or modi- 
 fication of human nature. Not only is there 
 not at any time a common standard of intel- 
 lectual or moral development which justifies 
 us in talking of human nature in general, but 
 changes of time and place involve such 
 changes of conduct and of mental attitude 
 that to call attention to the fact ought to be 
 enough to dispose of this stupid old objec- 
 tion. 
 
 Every great calamity reported in the 
 press provides its own illustration of the fact 
 that there is no very definite meaning to be 
 attached to the term " human nature " which 
 we so freely use. A great disaster occurs at 
 sea, for example, and there is a panic-stricken 
 rush for the boats. Some men in their frenzy 
 trample down women and children : they are 
 mastered by the primitive instinct of self- 
 preservation. That is human nature. But 
 some other men hold them back and protect 
 the women, helping these first into the boats. 
 [49] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 They are mastered by a force that conquers 
 the primitive human instinct, a sentiment, a 
 convention of society, a tradition of the race. 
 That, too, is human nature. 
 
 The primitive savage afraid of fire, and 
 the civilized man using it, both illustrate hu- 
 man nature in different stages of its develop- 
 ment. The modern man, using the ocean to 
 bear his burdens and making a pathway of 
 the skies, and his remote ancestor, afraid of 
 the ocean and regarding the sky as an awful 
 mystery, illustrate human nature in different 
 stages of its evolution; their conduct reflects 
 the sum of their knowledge and experience. 
 Human nature is exemplified by the blind, 
 helpless terror of the savage in Africa in the 
 presence of the dread sleeping sickness, but 
 another phase of human nature is exemplified 
 by the great scientist, Koch, going into the 
 centers of pestilence and death and proving 
 himself more powerful than the natives' 
 gods. The terrified savage, mutilating his 
 poor body in the hope that he may appease 
 his angry gods, and the scientist, seeking the 
 L50] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 germ of the disease, draining swamps and 
 patiently developing a remedy for it, illus- 
 trate human nature as a great and constantly 
 changing expression of human consciousness. 
 
 Of course, there is a law of life and de- 
 velopment which expresses itself in what is so 
 vaguely termed human nature. Man is a 
 creature of his environment, and self-preser- 
 vation, self-realization, self-expression, are 
 fundamental instincts which determine his 
 conduct, his actions in any given environment. 
 Socialism is not an artificial attempt to sub- 
 stitute some other law for this. It is not an 
 attempt, as so many suppose, to substitute al- 
 truistic motives for those of self-interest which 
 spring from the fundamental law of life. 
 Quite the contrary is true, in fact. The 
 whole theory of modern Socialism, and its 
 appeal to the workers, rest upon the law of 
 self-preservation. Self-abnegation is not So- 
 cialism: rather it should be defined as en- 
 lightened self-interest. 
 
 That this is so can easily be shown. Here 
 are two classes in modern society opposed 
 [5il 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 to each other. One class is small, but ex- 
 ceedingly powerful. Despite its disadvan- 
 tage in size, it is the ruling class, controlling 
 and exploiting the larger class. Its members 
 rule by reason of the fact that they have de- 
 veloped a sense of class solidarity as a result 
 of their ownership of the means of life. 
 Now, the workers are developing a class in- 
 stinct, a sense of class solidarity, as a neces- 
 sary result of their economic experience and 
 position. There is no escaping the fact: 
 The deepest and profoundest instinct in hu- 
 man beings is that they are forever striving 
 to secure more of good in return fdr less of 
 ill. That instinct made man kindle his first 
 fire; it inspired the building of the first ca- 
 noe ; it has inspired every invention and every 
 revolution in the world's history. Socialism 
 rests all its faith upon that deep,' primal hu- 
 man instinct. Instead of saying that Social- 
 ism requires a change in human nature it 
 would be fair to say that human nature makes 
 inevitable the change for which the Social- 
 ists are working. 
 
 [52] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 If the meaning of this is not quite clear, 
 consider the matter further in these terms: 
 Demos, the people, long ago described by 
 Tomasso Campanella as " a beast of muddy 
 brain," is developing a clear mental vision. 
 No longer muddy-brained, but keen and alert, 
 Demos is learning that poverty is unneces- 
 sary, that there is plenty for all, and that 
 none need suffer want ; that it is. possible to 
 suffer less and live more, to have more of 
 good while enduring less of ill. That De- 
 mos should reach out to that larger life with 
 eager grasp, and turn toward the future — 
 the future of Socialism — is not a strange 
 thing. It is nothing less than obedience to 
 Nature's primal law, the law that has gov- 
 erned the world since the first man gazed 
 with wonder at the stars above him. 
 
 No attempt to make a plain, commonsense 
 statement of the principles of the Socialism 
 of to-day, and the hope which inspires its ad- 
 herents, can satisfy if it ignores the matter of 
 their relation to the institution of the family 
 based upon monogamic marriage. Among 
 [53] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 all the heritages of Socialism from the Uto- 
 pian experiments of the past none has been 
 the source of greater trouble than the idea 
 that marriage and the family must be done 
 away with. Plato's Republic made the com- 
 munism of property complete by the commu- 
 nism of women, and just as there are many 
 people who think that the Socialists hold 
 Plato's communistic ideal regarding proper- 
 ty, so, too, they think the Socialists must hold 
 the ideal of communism of wives. 
 
 Let it be said, then, with all possible em- 
 phasis, that modern Socialism has nothing 
 in common with those schemes for placing 
 family life upon a new basis which are gen- 
 erally grouped under the euphonious designa- 
 tion, " Free Love." A few closet philoso- 
 phers, both within and without the Socialist 
 movement, may indulge in such fantastic 
 dreams, but the great mass of the Socialists 
 of the world are no more concerned with 
 them than the great mass of people outside 
 the Socialist ranks. Whoever charges the 
 Socialists of America with harboring designs 
 [54] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 for the destruction of the family based upon 
 monogamic marriage, branding them as 
 " Free Lovers," deserves to be ostracized by 
 all right-thinking men and women who love 
 and cherish the Republic, quite regardless of 
 party, for such persons endanger the safety 
 and stability of the nation itself by appealing 
 to prejudice and base passion in the discus- 
 sion of a great national issue. There is no 
 worse treason than that, and it is to be hoped 
 that the day is not far distant when, whoso- 
 ever makes that charge, be his station high 
 or low, will be denounced by all thoughtful 
 citizens as an enemy of the Republic more 
 to be feared than a host of Benedict Arnolds. 
 It is true that almost all the Utopia build- 
 ers, from Plato to the entertaining and in- 
 genious Mr. Wells, have felt it incumbent 
 upon themselves to design new forms for the 
 family relation. Some, like Plato, have in- 
 sisted that monogamous marriage must be de- 
 stroyed and communism of wives established. 
 Others, like Mr. Wells, have insisted upon 
 retaining monogamous marriage and supple- 
 [ 55 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 menting it with some system of state super- 
 vision, applying the principles of the stud 
 farm to the propagation of the race. These 
 visionaries with their systems of eugenics and 
 stirpiculture, and their dreams of the Super- 
 man, are found both within and without the" 
 Socialist movement. But if you would take 
 the common sense view of the matter you 
 must recognize that the Socialist movement, 
 as such, is no more responsible for these in- 
 dividual views and fads than for the fact 
 that some of its members are vegetarians, 
 anti-vaccinationists, anti-vivisectionists, or de- 
 votees of any of the multitude of reform 
 cults to which men and women attach im- 
 portance. You must judge the Socialist 
 movement, like any other, by its mass ; by the 
 common aims which inspire the movement as 
 a whole, not by individual caprices or idio- 
 syncracies which manifest themselves among 
 Socialists as among all masses of people. 
 
 The idea that Socialism must of necessity 
 involve some artificial change of the institu- 
 tion of the family was born of man's miscon- 
 [56] 
 
The Substance of Socialis 
 
 m 
 
 ception of the laws of population. The grim 
 specter of over-population with which Mal- 
 thus frightened the first half of the last cen- 
 tury has never wholly disappeared from the 
 mental horizon. Men took the fears of 
 Malthus and made of them a dogma. "If 
 you make life too easy," it was argued, " re- 
 moving famine and pestilence, and the fear 
 of famine in particular, then there will result 
 an unrestricted propagation of the race ; pop- 
 ulation will overrun the means of sub- 
 sistence." With this dogma as the founda- 
 tion of their thought, they naturally con- 
 cluded that a necessary condition of Social- 
 ism must be the control of the propagation 
 of the species by the State, in some form or 
 another. 
 
 But we know now that the old dogma was 
 false. We know that the true law of popu- 
 lation, among human beings at least, is not 
 what Malthus thought, but that population 
 tends to abnormal and unsafe increase where 
 there is most poverty and hardship, where the 
 struggle for existence is fiercest. There is 
 [ 57 1 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 never any fear of " race suicide " in the 
 slums, as we know. The parents who are 
 ill-nourished and hunger-menaced and over- 
 worked breed most rapidly. Adam Smith 
 pointed out that in his Wealth of Nations 
 more than a century ago, but we are only now 
 coming to a full realization of its wonderful 
 truth. Nature is forever struggling against 
 extinction, and where life is hardest her most 
 titanic energies are put forth. That is the 
 explanation of the abnormal fecundity of con- 
 sumptives with which scientists have so long 
 been familiar. It is among the well-to-do 
 classes that the decline of the birth-rate is 
 most marked, not among the poor; " race sui- 
 cide " is a problem, not in the poorest coun- 
 tries, but in the most prosperous. 
 
 But the great problem, after all, is not 
 the Rooseveltian problem of race suicide. 
 Rather, it is a problem of race homicide. 
 What ought most to alarm us is not a low 
 birth-rate, but a high death-rate. Our ideal 
 ought not to be a tragic race between the 
 birth-rate and the death-rate, motherhood 
 [58] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 given over to the twin agonies of bearing 
 and burying babies. Given fair economic 
 conditions, there need be no fear, either that 
 Nature will fail to maintain the existence of 
 the race or that population will over-run the 
 means of subsistence. It is beyond conjec- 
 ture that in a single state, say Texas, we could 
 grow food enough to feed many millions of 
 people more than now inhabit the whole of 
 the United States : the fear of population out- 
 running the means of subsistence is as remote 
 as the fear that we shall be crowded out by 
 the multiplication of humming birds. We 
 need but divert a thousandth part of the land 
 and labor-power now employed in producing 
 the means of destruction to the task of pro- 
 ducing the means of life in order to make 
 the whole world glad with fatness and plenty. 
 It requires only a very brief and rapid sur- 
 vey of the question from this point of view 
 to show the futility of all the schemes, an- 
 cient and modern, for suppressing marriage 
 and the family as a condition of social well- 
 being. All the so-called " Free Love " 
 [ 59 1 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 schemes that have been devised with that end 
 in view have their raison d' etre in a false 
 concept of the laws of population. 
 
 Socialism, then, involves neither " Free 
 Love " nor the application of the principles 
 of the stud farm to the family. So much 
 may be asserted without expressing any con- 
 demnation of any of the systems of eugenics 
 and stirpiculture that have been propounded : 
 these can be considered upon their merits, all 
 that concerns us here and now being the fact 
 that they are not involved in the Socialist 
 programme. 
 
 Yet it would not be wholly true to say that 
 Socialism has nothing to do with the family, 
 for indeed it is to be devoutly hoped that it 
 will greatly influence family life for good, 
 exalting it to a higher plane than it has ever 
 reached hitherto. It is not vain to hope that 
 a satisfactory readjustment of our economic 
 conditions will result in the repression of 
 those evils which most menace family life to- 
 day. It is not unreasonable to suppose, as 
 all Socialists do, that given equality of eco- 
 [6oj 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 nomic opportunity to all with privilege to 
 none, which is the whole aim of Socialism, 
 no woman would bind herself to loveless wed- 
 lock merely for the sake of a " home," as in 
 our hearts we know millions of women must 
 do to-day. Nor would women sell them- 
 selves body and soul for coronets and titles, 
 for wealth and social position — a form of 
 prostitution under the cloak of marriage com- 
 mon enough to-day — prostitution which no 
 altar can sanctify, infinitely more serious and 
 shameful than the prostitution which flaunts 
 its painted forms upon our pavements, or 
 lurks within the shadows of brothels. 
 
 [6i] 
 
VII 
 
 IN this brief summary of the hope of most 
 present day Socialists we have kept very 
 close to the material things of practical life 
 which peculiarly belong to the rule of that 
 practical judgment based upon conscious ex- 
 perience which men call " common sense." It 
 would not, however, be fair or just to con- 
 clude without some reference, however brief, 
 to that vision of Socialism which is so dear to 
 many thousands of Socialists in all lands, 
 which cannot be confined within the metes 
 and bounds of these material things. Be- 
 yond these things, beyond the mere physical 
 life, deeper in its roots and higher in its reach, 
 is that life of the spirit which we vaguely 
 sense, but feel to be the noblest end of man's 
 being. Though we have ceased to regard 
 the story of God making a form of clay and 
 then breathing into its nostrils the Breath of 
 [62] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Life and calling it a " Living Soul " as a 
 literal fact, it has not ceased to have its value 
 for us. We can still regard it as a splendid 
 symbol, for there is in each human being that 
 which transcends the physical life, a life of 
 the spirit. 
 
 So, to many thousands of earnest Socialists 
 in all lands, Socialism means something more 
 than an economic readjustment; something 
 that is infinitely vaster and more glorious 
 than mere material gain. The economic 
 programme of the Socialist movement, mak- 
 ing the despoiled and disinherited of earth 
 masters of the State, and bringing under com- 
 mon control all the means of the common life, 
 is not to be taken as the end, the final goal, 
 of the Socialist movement. It is at best but 
 a means to an end: we seek the liberation 
 of man's physical life, not as those who go 
 forth to harvest, but as those who go forth to 
 prepare the soil. We want economic free- 
 dom as the only means whereby spiritual 
 freedom can be secured. We want to open 
 the prison gates of poverty and oppression 
 [63] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 that the soul of man may be set free. When 
 we beckon our fellows to join us in our efforts 
 to establish economic justice and security it is 
 with full faith that only in the land of eco- 
 nomic freedom will the Temple of Human 
 Brotherhood ever be found, and the song of 
 Fellowship be heard. 
 
 [64] 
 
II 
 
 PRIVATE PROPERTY AND PER- 
 SONAL LIBERTY IN THE 
 SOCIALIST STATE 
 
THE most persistent and wide-spread an- 
 tagonism toward Socialism springs 
 from a belief that, under a Socialist 
 regime, private property in all its forms 
 would be destroyed and personal liberty made 
 impossible by the rule of an immense bureau- 
 cratic government. All other objections, it 
 may be said without denying their force, are 
 subordinate to these two. 
 
 The modern Socialist, whether dogmatic 
 Marxist or neo-Marxist, indignantly denies 
 both charges contained in this criticism. The 
 greater its persistence, the greater his vehe- 
 mence. Not unreasonably, he claims the 
 right to define the Socialist ideal in which he 
 believes and to interpret it in his own way: 
 he refuses to accept the dicta of the enemies 
 of Socialism as to its meaning. But, in spite 
 of indignant denials, the criticism prevails. 
 [ 67 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 For the almost universal prevalence of this 
 criticism there must be some other reason 
 than malice on the part of the critics. Un- 
 derlying the seeming malevolence there is 
 always a very real belief in the disaster to 
 the institutions of private property and per- 
 sonal liberty which must attend the triumph 
 of Socialism. Instead of hatred creating the 
 belief that a Socialist regime is incompatible 
 with personal freedom and with private prop- 
 erty, the belief, deep-seated and sincere, how- 
 ever mistaken it may prove to be, creates the 
 hatred. It must be remembered, also, that 
 the belief is not confined to the malevolent 
 opponents of Socialism and Socialist aims. 
 Many who are very sympathetic toward the 
 movement and the ideal, a great army of the 
 " almost persuaded," are held back from 
 giving their adherence to the movement 
 through fear that the criticism is well 
 founded. 
 
 The existence of such a widely prevalent 
 belief must be the result of causes inherent 
 either in the principles of Socialism or in the 
 [68] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 history of the movements based upon those 
 principles. It is, therefore, only just that the 
 Socialist, when he makes his sweeping denial 
 that Socialism involves the suppression of 
 private property and personal liberty, should 
 be asked to explain the persistence of the fear 
 he declares to be groundless — and this only 
 as a prelude to an equally just demand for 
 a reasoned statement of his own faith, so dif- 
 ferent to the unf aith of the world. 
 
 The frank and sincere Socialist will be slow 
 to attribute the criticism to malice. He will, 
 on the contrary, be disposed to admit that it 
 is a perfectly natural result of certain phases 
 of the evolution of Socialism and the develop- 
 ment of its propaganda. He will admit, 
 with entire good faith, that Socialists have 
 given their opponents ample warrant for be- 
 lieving that with the coming of Socialism pri- 
 vate property and personal liberty must cease. 
 No small part of the work of the Socialists 
 of to-day consists in undoing the work of an 
 older generation of Socialists. 
 
 Proudhon's famous dictum, " Property is 
 [6 9 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 robbery," and its counterpart, " Property- 
 holders are thieves," have been so many times 
 reiterated by Socialists, and so often inscribed 
 upon their banners, that no sort of blame at- 
 taches to those persons who, taking the words 
 at their face-value in the currency of human 
 speech, have concluded that Socialism must 
 abolish all kinds of private property. 
 Phrases like " the socialization of property " 
 abound in the literature of Socialism, and in 
 more than a few Socialist programmes, issued 
 in this country and elsewhere, Socialism is ob- 
 jectively defined as " the social ownership and 
 control of all the means of production, distri- 
 bution and exchange." The definition cer- 
 tainly justifies the belief that the existence of 
 a Socialist state depends upon the abolition 
 of private property. 
 
 [70] 
 
II 
 
 TAKING the definition literally, it is evi- 
 dent that under Socialism nothing 
 which could be used as a means of pro- 
 ducing or distributing wealth could be pri- 
 vately owned. No man could own a spade, 
 a hammer or even a jack-knife, for these are 
 all instruments of production. No woman 
 could own a sewing-machine, or even a needle, 
 for these are tools, means of production. 
 No man could own a wheelbarrow, no woman 
 could own a market-basket, these being 
 " means of distribution." The differences 
 between a spade and a steam-plough, between 
 a market-basket and a delivery van, are dif- 
 ferences in the degree of their efficiency 
 merely. 
 
 Now, it is quite evident that, if we are to 
 accept this definition literally and to regard 
 " the social ownership and control of all the 
 [70 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 means of production, distribution and ex- 
 change," as a sine qua non of Socialism* we 
 must accept the verdict that it would destroy 
 the institutions of personal property and lib- 
 erty. The amount of property which would 
 not come within the scope of the classification, 
 " all means of production, distribution and 
 exchange," is almost a negligible quantity, 
 and it is certain that such a vast bureaucratic 
 system of government would be needed as 
 would practically extinguish personal liberty. 
 It requires little imagination to see how in- 
 tolerable the despotism would be if needles, 
 spades, sewing-machines and market-baskets 
 were to be under the control of governmental 
 bureaus. 
 
 But, when challenged upon this important 
 matter, the modern Socialist denies that the 
 social ownership and control of all the agen- 
 cies of production and distribution is a sine 
 qua non of Socialism. He denies that his 
 aim is anything of the kind. Socialism, he 
 says, implies the social ownership and control 
 [72] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 only of certain kinds of property, certain very 
 definite categories of productive and distribu- 
 tive agencies. Under Socialism, as he con- 
 ceives it, private property would coexist with 
 social property. Indeed, his claim is that 
 Socialism, in very important respects, would 
 extend both private property and personal 
 liberty. 
 
 Therefore, the question arises: What 
 things, under Socialism, will it be necessary 
 to socialize and what to leave in the hands of 
 private owners? 
 
 The reply to this question may take either 
 of two forms : either we may attempt to cata- 
 logue the things which would have to be so- 
 cialized in order to realize Socialism — a stu- 
 pendous task — or we may attempt to state 
 the principle of differentiation in a manner 
 permitting its ready application to any form 
 of property, at any time, and in any place. 
 This latter is, indeed, the only practical meth- 
 od of dealing with the question. Not only is 
 the former- method a cumbersome one, in- 
 [73] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 volving the gigantic task of making an inven- 
 tory of all kinds of property, but endless re- 
 vision of the list would be necessary to make 
 it conform to changing conditions and to the 
 needs of particular localities. 
 
 [74] 
 
Ill 
 
 PRELIMINARY to the attempt to state 
 the principles of differentiation, how- 
 ever, a brief discussion of the nature of 
 property seems to be necessary. If we ask 
 ourselves, What is Property? and, instead of 
 repeating Proudhon's classic epigrammatic re- 
 ply, attempt to answer the question with the 
 seriousness it demands, we shall soon discover 
 that much of what we have regarded as a con- 
 crete entity is, in fact, a mere abstraction : that 
 property is not a tangible thing, in a vast num- 
 ber of instances, but an assumed relation. 
 We shall discover, too, that there are no abso- 
 lute property rights anywhere. 
 
 While it is true that the recognition of pri- 
 vate property marks the emergence of man- 
 kind from savagery, and that civilization is 
 commonly said to rest upon that recognition, 
 the paradox is nevertheless true that civiliza- 
 [ 75 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 tion and private property, in an absolute 
 sense, are incompatible. The jurisprudence 
 of all civilized countries rests upon the re- 
 pudiation of absolute property rights of any 
 kind whatever. Taxation is, of course, a fa- 
 miliar example of the collective disregard of 
 private property rights. All kinds of prop- 
 erty have been subjected to taxation, the col- 
 lective authority exercising the right to take 
 any part of any man's property, or even the 
 whole of it. Henry George's proposal to 
 impose a tax upon land values equal to the 
 sum total of such values is a perfectly logical 
 extension of the principle of taxation. A 
 few years ago, the city council of Copenhagen, 
 Denmark, applied the method to the street 
 railways of that city with entire success, so 
 that the owning companies were glad to sur- 
 render the lines. 
 
 The powers of domain and ultimate owner- 
 ship which underlie the jurisprudence of ev- 
 ery civilized nation prove conclusively that 
 there is no allodial property in land, nor any 
 form of absolute private property. A state 
 [76] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 or municipality desires land which is the 
 " property " of one of its citizens for some 
 public purpose, such as building a hospital 
 or a bridge, making a park or a roadway. 
 The " owner " of the land does not agree to 
 sell it, whereupon the state or the municipal- 
 ity takes the land from him — often at its 
 own valuation! Even when the land is 
 needed by a quasi-private corporation, such as 
 a railway company, the collective power is 
 used to take away the ownership of the land 
 from one citizen and transfer it to others. 
 
 It is very commonly assumed that this pow- 
 er of ultimate ownership resting in society, 
 through its government, applies only to land ; 
 but, in fact, no form of property is exempt 
 from it. Not only may all forms of prop- 
 erty be taxed, but likewise all forms of prop- 
 erty may be sequestrated. The power exer- 
 cised in times of martial law, of seizing food 
 and other supplies, is an example of this. 
 Under the police powers of all civilized com- 
 munities, in case of serious accident or dis- 
 aster, the home of any person, and anything 
 [77] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 it contains, may be lawfully seized and used. 
 Suppose that, during the San Francisco earth- 
 quake and fire, the " owner " of a supply of 
 food or drugs, or any other vital necessity, 
 should have clung to them, asserting his 
 " ownership," does any sane person believe 
 that he would have been permitted to enforce 
 his sacred " rights " against the need of the 
 community? Nothing, not even one's pock- 
 et-handkerchief, can be said to be exempt 
 from this ultimate power of society. If, 
 therefore, one's handkerchief is not taken 
 away from him, it is simply because the com- 
 munity does not desire to take it. In the last 
 analysis, private property is an abstraction. It 
 consists of nothing more than a relation be- 
 tween the community and the citizen, and 
 rests upon nothing more tangible than com- 
 munity good-will. 
 
 Furthermore, in the development of capi- 
 talist society the substance of private property 
 tends to disappear, quite irrespective of the 
 enforcement of the ultimate powers of owner- 
 [78 J 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 ship by society. Prior to the formation of 
 joint-stock companies, in the era of indivld* 
 ual capitals, the investor who invested his 
 money in a ship or a factory could say that 
 the ship or the factory belonged to him. But 
 with the coming of the joint-stock company 
 and the development of the great industrial 
 corporations, that could not be said. Sup- 
 pose X to be a shareholder in a corporation 
 which owns a cotton-mill. There are a 
 thousand shareholders owning between them 
 the ten thousand shares of stock of the cor- 
 poration. • X owns ten shares. But he does 
 not own a one-thousandth part of the physical 
 properties of the cotton-mill in any real sense. 
 He could not, for instance, go into the mill 
 and say: " Here are a thousand looms: one 
 belongs to me. I will take it away." 
 
 What X really owns is a one-thousandth 
 part of every brick in the building, not a sin- 
 gle whole brick; a one-thousandth part of 
 each cog in every machine, but not a single 
 whole wheel; a one-thousandth part of every; 
 [79 J 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 yard of cotton, but not a single yard of actual 
 cotton. X could not realize his own proper- 
 ty, separate it from that of the* other nine- 
 hundred and ninety-nine shareholders and do 
 as he pleased with it. To get at his one- 
 thousandth part of a brick, he must destroy 
 the whole brick. To actually realize his own 
 property as a physical entity, he must destroy 
 it and the property of his fellows. And 
 then, paradoxically (for the whole capitalist 
 system is a paradox) , he does not realize it at 
 all. When he has destroyed the brick and 
 extracted his one-thousandth part of it, he 
 does not own a one-thousandth part of a 
 brick, but only some fragments of burned 
 clay. 
 
 However we look at it, private property 
 under our present social system is an abstrac- 
 tion. The property of the citizen in the im- 
 mense assets of the State of New York, or 
 of the United States, is just as real as the 
 property of the shareholder in the United 
 States Steel Corporation. But there is this 
 important difference, that the citizen's share 
 [80] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 is not negotiable; it may not be transferred. 
 It cannot be gambled with in the market, 
 whereas that of the shareholder in the cor- 
 poration may be and commonly is. 
 
 [81] 
 
IV 
 
 COLLECTIVE ownership is not the ulti- 
 mate, fundamental condition of Social- 
 ism. It is proposed only as a means to 
 an end, not as an end in itself. And that end, 
 to the attainment of which collective owner- 
 ship is the means, is the fundamental condition 
 of Socialism. The central idea of modern 
 Socialism, its spirit, is the doctrine of the divi- 
 sion of society into antagonistic classes. The 
 producers of wealth are exploited by a class 
 of capitalists draining from them a " surplus 
 value," and, instinctively, they struggle 
 against the exploitation, to reduce the amount 
 of the surplus value taken by the capitalists 
 to a minimum — ultimately to zero. To do 
 away with that exploitation, to destroy the 
 power of one class to live upon the labors 
 of another class, is the Socialist aim. So- 
 cial ownership and control are only proposed 
 [82] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 as means to the attainment of that end. If 
 other means toward that end, quicker, more 
 efficient or more certain means, can be found, 
 there is nothing in Socialism to prevent their 
 adoption. 
 
 It follows, therefore, that to make collec- 
 tive property of things not used to exploit 
 labor does not, necessarily, form part of the 
 Socialist programme. It is easy to see that, 
 according to this principle of differentiation, 
 it would be necessary to socialize the rail- 
 roads, but not at all necessary to socialize a 
 wheelbarrow. It is not difficult to see that 
 a woman might support herself through the 
 possession of a sewing-machine who would 
 otherwise be obliged to submit to exploitation 
 as a factory worker. To secure her the 
 ownership of the machine would, therefore, 
 be no departure from Socialist principles. 
 On the contrary, in her individual case, the 
 aims of the Socialist would be realized in 
 that she would be placed beyond the power 
 of the exploiter of labor. Similarly, in the 
 case of the farmer with a small farm, and of* 
 [ 83 1 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 the craftsman with his own tools, or of 
 groups of workers working co-operatively, 
 there is no exploitation; no surplus value is 
 extracted from their labor by any outside par- 
 ties. Consequently, being neither exploited 
 nor exploiters, their independent self-employ- 
 ment is quite consistent with Socialism. 
 
 As the Socialist movement has outgrown 
 the influence of the early Utopians, which 
 touched even Marx and Engels, it has given 
 up the old notions of a regimentation of la- 
 bor under the direction of the State. It is 
 increasingly evident that the Socialists of to- 
 day have abandoned the habit of speculating 
 upon the practical application of their prin- 
 ciples in future society. They are insisting 
 more and more that Socialism be regarded 
 as a principle — namely, the conscious elim- 
 ination of the power of an idle class in so- 
 ciety to exploit the wealth-producers. What- 
 ever lends toward that end of eliminating 
 the exploiter from society contributes to the 
 fulfillment of the Socialist ideal. 
 [84] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Instead of the old contention that, in order 
 to have Socialism, every petty industry must 
 be destroyed by the power of great indus- 
 trial corporations, and every small farm swal- 
 lowed up by great bonanza farms of vast 
 acreage, it is now recognized by most of the 
 leading exponents of Socialism in this coun- 
 try and Europe that the small workshop and 
 the small farm may enter very largely into 
 the economic structure of the Socialist State. 
 The small farm has thus far proved capable 
 of more economical cultivation than farms of 
 immense acreage; and it may be, as some 
 authorities contend, that small workshops 
 will prove quite as economical as, or even 
 more economical than, great industries when 
 the thousand hampering restrictions and dis- 
 criminations and privileges which favor their 
 greater rivals are removed. 
 
 Should this prove to be the case, there 
 would be nothing to prevent a process of de- 
 centralization of industry taking place under 
 Socialism; a process of decentralization so 
 [85] 
 
The Substance o'f Socialism 
 
 far-reaching that private ownership and in- 
 dividual production would be much more dif- 
 fused than now. The participation of the 
 State in industry would be confined to the op- 
 eration of railroads, mines and other great 
 natural monopolies, and to the carrying on 
 of the great fundamental public services 
 which rest upon natural monopolies, leaving 
 to individual enterprise and voluntary co- 
 operation vastly more scope than these enjoy 
 to-day in production and distribution. Need- 
 less to say, this is not a prophecy, but simply 
 a statement of possibilities. 
 
 The important point to be remembered is 
 that there is no principle of scientific Social- 
 ism which is opposed to the continuance of 
 private property or private industrial enter- 
 prise, so that it involves no exploitation of 
 the laborer by the non-laborer. It needs but 
 the statement of this principle to demonstrate 
 its truth. B is a farmer, working upon his 
 own small farm. He exploits no man's la- 
 bor, but manages to maintain himself and 
 [86] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 family in comfort. C is a shoemaker, own- 
 ing his own little shop and his own tools. 
 He, also, exploits no man's labor, but man- 
 ages to support himself and his family com- 
 fortably. What reason could the State have 
 for forbidding these men to employ them- 
 selves, denying them the right to exchange 
 their products, shoes for farm produce, and 
 compelling them to enter industrial or agri- 
 cultural regiments as employees of the 
 State? * 
 
 * As the proofs of these pages are being revised there 
 comes from the highest possible source interesting and 
 emphatic confirmation of this position. By a referen- 
 dum vote of the entire membership of the Socialist 
 Party important changes have been made in its na- 
 tional platform. One clause in the platform demanded : 
 
 "The collective ownership of railroads, telegraphs, 
 telephones, steamboat lines, and all other means of so- 
 cial transportation and communication, and all land." 
 
 By an overwhelming majority, the members of the 
 Socialist Party decided to amend the platform by omit- 
 ting the words " and all land." It was also decided to 
 amend the statement of " General Principles " contained 
 in the platform by inserting the following significant 
 paragraph : 
 
 "There can be no absolute private title to land. All 
 
 [87 1 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Socialism, it cannot be too strongly em- 
 phasized, is not the fulfillment of a great plan 
 of social organization, the principal feature 
 of which is that the State owns and controls 
 everything and aims to administer things 
 with approximate equality of benefits and du- 
 ties. It is an ideal, objectively considered, 
 of a society in which there is no parasitic 
 class preying upon the wealth-producers. 
 Subjectively considered, it is a struggle on the 
 part of the producers to throw off the ex- 
 ploiters, the parasites, in order that the ideal 
 may be attained. 
 
 Of course, under Socialism, as in every 
 
 private titles, whether called fee simple or otherwise, 
 are and must be subordinate to the public title. The 
 Socialist Party strives to prevent land from being used 
 for the purpose of exploitation and speculation. It de- 
 mands the collective possession, control or manage- 
 ment of land to whatever extent may be necessary to 
 attain that end. It is not opposed to the occupation 
 and possession of land by those using it in a useful and 
 bona fide manner without exploitation." 
 
 It can, I think, be fairly claimed that these amend- 
 ments conclusively prove that the views advanced in 
 these pages are thoroughly representative of the views, 
 of American Socialists generally. — J. S. 
 
 [88] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 civilized society, private property of all kinds 
 would be subject to the ultimate rule of so- 
 ciety. The interests of society as a whole, 
 that is to say, would be regarded as superior 
 to those of the individual. Subject to this 
 superior social right, there is no reason why 
 private property should not be far more wide- 
 spread under Socialism than to-day. Take, 
 for example, the matter of homes. The 
 great mass of the people do not own their 
 own homes, though there can hardly be any 
 question that the great mass of people desire 
 to own homes of their own. It is conceiv- 
 able that in a Socialist state of society every 
 person who desired it could own a home for 
 himself and family. On the other hand, it 
 is not conceivable that the State would have 
 any interest whatsoever in forbidding the 
 ownership of homes. Since all families must 
 have homes in which to live, whether pro- 
 vided by the State or otherwise, there could 
 be no reason for the State's insisting upon 
 being the universal landlord. Government 
 ownership of dwellings in preference to the 
 [8 9 1 
 
The S u'S stun c e of Socialism 
 
 ownership of the dwellings of the many by 
 a few extortioners, certainly; but there is no 
 more reason, so far as the central principle 
 of Socialism is concerned, for denying the 
 right of a man to own his home than there 
 is to deny him the right to own his hat. 
 
 [90] 
 
V 
 
 FROM the foregoing it will be seen that 
 not only does Socialism not involve the 
 abolition of all private property, but 
 that, on the contrary, a wide extension of pri- 
 vate property is quite compatible with Social- 
 ism as taught by Marx and his followers. It 
 is not an insignificant thing that the Socialist 
 party of the United States, in its national plat- 
 form of 1904, charged that "Capitalism is 
 the enemy and destroyer of essential private 
 property." The Socialist protest against 
 capitalism is that it destroys the economic 
 independence of the producers. The restor- 
 ation of that independence is the grand aim 
 of all Socialist endeavor. 
 
 Failure to recognize with clearness the 
 principle set forth in the foregoing pages pro- 
 duces inability to distinguish between Gov- 
 ernment ownership and Socialism. Many 
 [9i] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 t — — i^— ^— 
 
 persons marvel that the Socialists do not hail 
 with gladness, and join forces with, the vari- 
 ous movements aiming at public ownership 
 as they arise, and thus achieve Socialism 
 piecemeal. Every proposal to extend the 
 area of Government ownership and manage- 
 ment is at once hailed as a " step toward So- 
 cialism." For example, a strong movement 
 arises for the Government ownership of in- 
 terstate railroads, or the telegraph systems, 
 and people wonder that the Socialists pre- 
 serve their equanimity, stand aloof, appar- 
 ently unconcerned, and decline to join the 
 movement. Such persons confound — as 
 many Socialists do — the external forms of 
 the Socialist programme, its non-essentials, 
 with its fundamental, essential principle. 
 They do not see that the form of ownership 
 is relatively unimportant according to the So- 
 cialist philosophy. 
 
 It is quite as possible for a Government 
 to exploit the workers in the interests of a 
 privileged class as it is for private individ- 
 uals, or quasi-private corporations, to do so. 
 [92] 
 
T he S ub start c e of Socialism 
 
 Germany with her state-owned railroads, or 
 Austria-Hungary and Russia with their great 
 Government monopolies, are not more Social- 
 istic, but less so, than the United States, 
 where these things are owned by individ- 
 uals or corporations. The United States is * 
 nearer Socialism for the reason that its po- 
 litical institutions have developed farther to- 
 ward pure democracy than those of the other 
 countries named. True, in Germany, Aus- 
 tria-Hungary, Russia and other countries of 
 the Old World, there is a good deal of Gov- 
 ernment ownership, but the Governments are 
 class Governments and the workers are ex- 
 ploited for the benefit of the ruling classes. 
 Obviously, the workers are no better off as 
 a result of changing the channel of exploita- 
 tion merely, while the amount of exploita- 
 tion is left unchanged. The real motif of 
 Socialism is not merely to change the form 
 of industrial organization and ownership, 
 but to eliminate exploitation. 
 
 To sum up : the whole matter may be very 
 briefly expressed in the form of a declaration 
 [931 
 
The Substance o'f Socialism 
 
 of principles, as follows: Socialism is not 
 hostile to private property, except where such 
 property is used to exploit the labor of others 
 than its owners. The socialization of prop- 
 erty in the Socialist State would be confined 
 to (i) such things as in their nature could 
 not be held by private owners without sub- 
 jecting the community to exploitation or hu- 
 miliation; (2) such things as the citizens 
 might agree to own in common to attain su- 
 perior efficiency in their management. 
 
 [94] 
 
VI 
 
 GRANTED the foregoing conclusions, it 
 is evident that the fear of a huge bu- 
 reaucratic Government as an inevitable 
 condition of Socialism loses its force. Such 
 a bureaucracy might be created, it is true, but 
 it would not result inevitably from the amount 
 of administrative work involved in the man- 
 agement of all property and " all the means 
 of production, distribution and exchange." 
 In fact, there is no good reason for disbeliev- 
 ing the claim made by modern Socialists that 
 the amount of Government- control over the 
 individual would be far less than we are now 
 accustomed to. 
 
 In this connection it must be remembered 
 that the regulation of capitalistic property in 
 modern society, especially in the great social 
 services — such as the railroads, lighting 
 companies and the like — involves an enor- 
 [95] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 mous amount of government which, under 
 such a condition as that suggested as belong- 
 ing to Socialism, would be wholly superflu- 
 ous. When one thinks of the tremendous 
 amount of legislative and administrative ef- 
 fort which experience, not theorizing, has 
 shown to be requisite for the restraint of cap- 
 italist enterprise, the mind is staggered by 
 the stupendous total. No one knows, for it 
 has never been computed, how much it has 
 cost the United States during the last ten 
 years to " regulate " the railroads in their 
 relations to the public. This much we do 
 know — that it hasi been found necessary to 
 enact an immense body of legislation for the 
 regulation of capitalistic enterprise. To en- 
 act this legislation has cost an enormous sum 
 of money; to enforce it has cost a great deal 
 more in the way of maintaining an army of 
 inspectors, judges and officials of one sort 
 and another. 
 
 It has been said in criticism of the methods 
 of conducting our public services that the 
 [96] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 amount actually spent in doing the work is in 
 many cases only a fraction of the total cost. 
 To illustrate: the actual operation of a street 
 railway, including the men who make the cars 
 and lay the tracks, the men in the power- 
 house, motormen and conductors, is said to 
 represent less labor than what may be called 
 the bookkeeping of the railway — the army 
 of " spotters," inspectors, collectors, cashiers, 
 clerks, bookkeepers, accountants and the like. 
 Most of these workers are in reality para- 
 sites; their labor is only rendered necessary 
 by the preying of private interests upon the 
 body social. 
 
 Similarly, it may be said that much of our 
 Government is in a like manner parasitic, ren- 
 dered necessary only by the preying of pri- 
 vate interests upon the body social. The so- 
 cialization of all the natural monopolies and 
 the restoration of economic independence to 
 the great mass of the people would render 
 obsolete an astonishingly large body of laws, 
 many of them irritating and humiliating to a 
 [ 97 ] 
 
The Substance o'f Socialism 
 
 i 
 
 degree that is oppressive, and would turn a 
 large army of workers from parasitic to gen- 
 uinely useful occupations. 
 
 Every abuse of capitalism calls forth a 
 fresh installment of legislation restrictive of 
 personal liberty, with an army of prying offi- 
 cials. Legislators keep busy making laws, 
 judges keep busy interpreting and enforcing 
 them, and a swarm of petty officials are kept 
 busy attending to this intricate machine of 
 popular government. In sober truth, it must 
 be said that capitalism has created, and could 
 not exist without, the very bureaucracy it 
 charges Socialism with attempting to foist 
 upon the nation. 
 
 There is, then, nothing in Socialism itself 
 to warrant the assumption that it would en- 
 thrall the individual to the yoke of a bureau- 
 cratic government. There is no reason for 
 regarding as impossible and absurd the as- 
 sumption that, under a Socialist regime, the 
 bounds of personal liberty would be greatly 
 extended and the scope of government 
 greatly narrowed. Whatever views one may 
 [98] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 > 
 
 entertain concerning Socialism, either as an 
 ideal or as a movement, it is necessary and 
 just to weigh seriously the claim, made in the 
 national platform of the Socialist party for 
 the year 1904, that it is "the only political 
 movement standing for the programme and 
 principles by which the liberty of the indi- 
 vidual may become a fact." And, further, 
 that " it comes to rescue the people from the 
 fast-increasing and successful assault of capi- 
 talism upon the liberty of the individual." 
 That claim cannot be waved aside by mere 
 rhetoric, nor silenced by abuse. The fact 
 remains that Socialism menaces neither pri- 
 vate property nor personal liberty. There is 
 nothing inconsistent with Socialism in the idea 
 that Government interference with the indi- 
 vidual should be as little as possible. 
 
 It will be said, doubtless, that the princi- 
 ples and the programme here sketched are 
 those of Individualism rather than of Social- 
 ism as commonly understood. Granted that 
 they satisfy the man who calls himself an 
 Individualist, they are not therefore anti-So- 
 [99] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 cialist. Socialism is not the antithesis of In- 
 dividualism — except Individualism of the 
 " Devil-take-the-hindmost," laissez faire, 
 school. To that crude form of individual- 
 ism, so-called, which accepts the doctrine that 
 " Might is Right," under which the asser- 
 tion of one man's might destroys the indi- 
 vidual liberty of others, Socialists are op- 
 posed, just as the enlightened Individualist 
 must be opposed. To the Individualism that 
 is based upon equality of opportunity, the ab- 
 sence of privilege and the destruction of all 
 artificial inequalities, so that Nature's inequal- 
 ities alone manifest themselves, Socialism is 
 not opposed. Indeed, Socialism comes as 
 the fulfillment of that ideal. 
 
 Ninety-nine out of every hundred persons 
 discussing this subject not only regard So- 
 cialism, as the antithesis of Individualism 
 without any qualification whatsoever, but 
 they make the far more serious blunder qf 
 regarding the present social system — if, in- 
 deed, one may use the word " system " to 
 connote our industrial anarchy! — as a sys- 
 [ioo] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 tem of Individualism. Nothing could be 
 more fallacious than this. The Individual- 
 ism of the Fathers of the Republic, particu- 
 larly of Jefferson and Samuel Adams, bears 
 no relation to our present system with its 
 ramifications of privilege. Free competition 
 between man and man belongs to the concept 
 of Individualism, but not so the competition, 
 so-called, which takes place between the cor- 
 poration and the individual. To make an 
 artificial person, for legal purposes, of a 
 great corporation such as the Standard Oil 
 Company, and then to regard a struggle be- 
 tween it and an individual refiner or dealer 
 as " free competition," is to do violence to 
 language and reason. 
 
 Illustrative of the confusion of thought 
 upon this subject which pervades all ranks of 
 society, we have the declaration of the Ohio 
 Republican Convention, in asserting the 
 claims of Mr. Taft to be the successor of 
 President Roosevelt, defining the issue in 
 American politics in the year I908 as " In- 
 dividualism against Socialism " — the Repub- 
 [101] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 lican party and Mr. Taft representing Indi- 
 vidualism! Could anything be more gro- 
 tesque than the application of the word In- 
 dividualism to the Rooseveltian policies? 
 Could the word be more abused than by its 
 application to the Republican party pro- 
 gramme? If Socialism represents one side 
 of the issue fought out in our national poli- 
 tics in 1908, the other side is not Individ- 
 ualism, but Capitalism with its privileges, its 
 invasions of personal liberty, its artificial in- 
 equalities and its economic servitude of class 
 to class. 
 
 The Socialist ideal may be vain and chi- 
 merical, but no thinking person can deny that 
 the influence of the ideal upon masses of our 
 citizens is a wholesome one. The political 
 Socialist movement may spend itself blazing 
 trails for others to follow, opening a way to 
 a promised land it may not enter; but the 
 world will be the better for its existence. 
 Fanaticism, in the name of Socialism, and 
 under its banners, may seek to do away with 
 private property and personal liberty; but 
 [ 102 J 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 that will be a caricature of the Socialism for 
 which so many millions of earnest men and 
 women in all lands are living lives of conse- 
 crated sacrifice. 
 
 [ 103 1 
 
Ill 
 
 THE MORAL VALUE 
 OF. CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
IN the popular literature of political Social- 
 ism no phrase is more frequently encoun- 
 tered than " class consciousness," and no 
 other phrase has been so bitterly attacked 
 and denounced by the enemies of Socialism. 
 It has provided the text for many of the 
 fiercest onslaughts upon the Socialist theory 
 and the Socialist movement. When Mr. 
 Roosevelt, during his term of office as Presi- 
 dent of the United States, denounced the So- 
 cialists for preaching " the foul doctrine of 
 class consciousness " he simply voiced with 
 characteristic vigor a very common and wide- 
 spread feeling. 
 
 It may be that the Socialists themselves, 
 rather than the doctrine itself, are responsible 
 for this feeling. Possibly much of the bit- 
 ter hatred with which so many good people 
 regard the doctrine is due to the failure of its 
 [107 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 exponents to state it clearly and with wisdom. 
 However that may be, no sane Socialist, and 
 no citizen seriously desiring the peaceful and 
 just solution of the momentous issues in- 
 volved in the challenge which Socialism 
 brings to society, can afford to treat the mat- 
 ter with light-hearted indifference, or fail to 
 desire the removal of all misunderstanding 
 and prejudice. 
 
 Now, there are at least three propositions 
 upon which all earnest and thoughtful men 
 and women, whether Socialists or not, ought 
 to be able to agree: 
 
 First: If the doctrine of class conscious- 
 ness is the wicked thing implied by Mr. 
 Roosevelt's denunciation of it, if it is untrue 
 and anti-social, it should be opposed by all 
 good citizens by every legitimate means ; and 
 if the Socialist theory and programme neces- 
 sarily rest upon it, opposition to Socialism 
 becomes a civic duty; while if there is no such 
 necessary connection between the doctrine 
 and the Socialist theory and programme the 
 [108I 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Socialists should frankly and at once aban- 
 don it. 
 
 Second: If the opposition to the doctrine 
 springs from misunderstanding, due either to 
 the failure of its advocates to state it clearly 
 and wisely, or to the failure of its critics to 
 give it careful and candid study, or to both 
 causes combined, all good men and women, 
 regardless of party or creed, should aim at re- 
 moving the misunderstanding and welcome 
 every honest and intelligent effort to place 
 the discussion of the subject upon the plane 
 of calm reason, above the evil influence of 
 prejudice. 
 
 Third: If, when properly stated, the doc- 
 trine is found to be true and helpful, all who 
 have the interests of the Republic at heart 
 should support it, regardless of ignorant 
 prejudice, and should steadfastly and sternly 
 rebuke all demagogues, of whatever station 
 in life, who seek to oppose it by misrepre- 
 sentation and appeals to passion and preju- 
 dice. 
 
 [ 109 1 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 There will be little dissent from these plat- 
 itudes. They form a platform on which all 
 who are actuated by a sense of wise civic 
 patriotism can stand. What we have most 
 reason to desire is calm reasoning concerning 
 all our great social and political problems, en- 
 tirely free from passion and prejudice; what 
 we have most reason to fear is an appeal to 
 base passion and prejudice. No man is 
 quite so dangerous in a democracy as he who 
 appeals to prejudice instead of to reason. 
 All such demagogues should be sternly re- 
 buked, and the higher their station and 
 greater their influence the more need is there 
 to rebuke them. Upon this and every other 
 great question we need to adopt the attitude 
 indicated by the cry of the ancient prophet 
 of Israel, " Come, let us reason together." 
 
 In that spirit, then, I desire to present the 
 moral value of this doctrine of class con- 
 sciousness as I conceive it. I have long be- 
 lieved that the most bitter and relentless at- 
 tacks upon the doctrine arise from misunder- 
 standing and misinterpretation of its mean- 
 [no] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 ing. That its Socialist advocates are wholly 
 free from responsibility for this, that they 
 have invariably presented the doctrine with 
 candor, thoughtfulness and care, it is im- 
 possible to believe. Upon both sides of the 
 discussion there has been much crudeness and 
 recklessness of statement. The temper of 
 the discussion has been wholly controversial, 
 and in the heat of controversy the weaknesses 
 of human nature assert themselves. 
 
 [in] 
 
II 
 
 MOST of those who have assailed the So- 
 cialists for preaching the doctrine of 
 class consciousness seem to have be- 
 lieved that the Socialists deliberately aim to 
 create class antagonisms; that they desire to 
 set class against class, and therefore strive to 
 engender a spirit of bitter hatred on the part 
 of the wage-workers against the capitalists. 
 Of course, that would be a monstrous thing to 
 do, a thing to be abhorred by all right-think- 
 ing men and women. If that were a true in- 
 terpretation of the doctrine or of its practical 
 consequences, its preachers would merit the 
 treatment we accord to the unhappy victims 
 of homicidal mania. Every thoughtful So- 
 cialist recognizes this as clearly as the most 
 acute critic of Socialism can do. 
 
 But indeed the doctrine of class conscious- 
 ness involves none of the evil implications 
 
 [112] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 thus set forth, and those who oppose it for 
 any such reasons are attacking a hideous 
 caricature only. The class conscious Social- 
 ist — just because he is class conscious — 
 seeks, not to create class antagonisms, but to 
 put an end to class antagonisms already ex- 
 isting ; not to make the wageworker hate the 
 capitalist, but to teach him not to hate the 
 capitalist, and to recognize the injustice and 
 the folly of doing so. That is the function 
 of class consciousness as the ablest exponents 
 of the doctrine have always conceived it, and 
 if they are right the doctrine is not immoral, 
 but essentially moral; not a foul thing to be 
 hated and abhorred of men, but a truth to 
 be welcomed, and its value to a democracy, 
 in which the forces of envy and passion are 
 so easily awakened, is incalculably great. 
 
 The doctrine of class consciousness is part 
 of the class struggle theory, which is the very 
 essence of the Socialism represented by the 
 modern political Socialist movement. The 
 supreme aim of this movement is not, as many 
 people suppose, the transfer of all capital- 
 [ii3] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 istically owned industry to the control of a 
 democratic State. That is not the end aimed 
 at, the final goal, but rather a means to the 
 end. It is a programme, the method be- 
 lieved to be best adapted to the attainment 
 of the end desired. And that end, it cannot 
 be too often repeated, is to do away with 
 class antagonism altogether; to put an end to 
 the exploitation of class by class, and thus 
 to end once and forever that war of the 
 classes which characterizes modern society. 
 Failure to bear this in mind, confusion of the 
 end with the means chosen to secure its re- 
 alization, lies at the root of most of the mis- 
 understandings of the Socialist movement. 
 
 The class struggle theory in which millions 
 of Socialists believe, and upon which the po- 
 litical policies of all the Socialist parties of 
 the world are based, is very simple. It was 
 first formulated by Karl Marx and Friedrich 
 Engels in their celebrated pamphlet, The 
 Communist Manifesto, in 1848. Marx and 
 Engels were not the first to discern the 
 [114] 
 
The Substance o f, S o c ial is m 
 
 fact that class antagonisms exist. That had 
 been done long before, especially by English 
 and French writers at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century. They simply discovered 
 the role of class struggles in social evolution. 
 They showed that class struggles had ex- 
 isted from time immemorial, ever since the 
 institution of private property was evolved; 
 that history is in the main a record of class 
 struggles. They pointed out that the great 
 cardinal epochs of human history, such as the 
 development from slavery to feudalism, and 
 from feudalism to capitalism, were possible 
 only through the rise of new classes wresting 
 the power from existing ruling classes, 
 through the control of the economic re- 
 sources most vital to the life of society. That 
 class antagonisms existed before Marx and 
 Engels were born, and were clearly recog- 
 nized, is evident from every page of human 
 history. Those who think that the class 
 struggle is a deliberate creation of wicked 
 agitators, and that the interests of the capi- 
 [ii5] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 talists and the workers are naturally identical, 
 ought to read the writings of the great po- 
 litical economists — Adam Smith, for exam- 
 ple. 
 
 [n61 
 
Ill 
 
 THE theory may be very briefly outlined 
 as follows : Society as we know it to- 
 day is the resultant of uncounted centur- 
 ies of evolution. Our economic and political 
 institutions, our customs and laws, are not in- 
 ventions born of great inspirations, but devel- 
 opments resulting from human experience and 
 effort. The greatest force in the evolutionary 
 process has been the economic needs and strug- 
 gles of the race. The material conditions of 
 life, the means of wealth production, have 
 counted for most among all the forces impell- 
 ing progress. " Man is a tool-using animal," 
 said Aristotle, and we may add that man's 
 history is essentially the history of his tools. 
 It is not contended that only economic forces 
 have influenced the evolution of society. 
 The supporters of this materialistic interpre- 
 tation of history do not deny the influence 
 [117] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 of ideals, or religion, or patriotism, for ex- 
 ample : they simply urge that the life of man 
 has its roots in the soil of economic condi- 
 tions. This, in brief, is the view of history 
 which Marx and Engels so clearly formu- 
 lated more than sixty years ago. 
 
 The philosophy of Marxian Socialism rests 
 upon this conception of the economic motivi- 
 sation of historical development. While the 
 earlier Socialist ideologists believed that the 
 genius of some inspired individual would de- 
 vise a perfect social state, the advantages of 
 which would be set forth with convincing 
 power, also by some inspired genius, the mod- 
 ern Marxian Socialist rests implicitly upon 
 the laws of evolution. The Socialist state, 
 he believes, will be — indeed, is being — 
 evolved from the existing state as it was 
 evolved from earlier forms of society. 
 
 Socialism is not a theory of economic fa- 
 talism, however. While the Socialist be- 
 lieves Socialism to be inevitable, he does not 
 believe that the change will come about re- 
 gardless of human efforts and desires; that 
 [118] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 it makes no difference whether we want So- 
 cialism or not, whether we work for it or 
 against it. A few addle-pated vendors of 
 half-digested Marxian ideas may so represent 
 the " inevitability " of Socialism, but every 
 Socialist competent to speak for the move- 
 ment knows that such notions are ridiculously 
 absurd. The Socialist state will not come 
 into being of itself, fully developed, through 
 the automatic operation of economic forces, 
 without the agency of human effort. The 
 very fact that every Socialist is a propagan- 
 dist, earnestly seeking to convert others to his 
 faith, proves that no such fatalistic belief in 
 the automatic development of Socialism is 
 generally held. 
 
 What is meant when it is said that Social- 
 ism is inevitable, that it must come as a re- 
 sult of economic conditions, is that economic 
 conditions will make the change to Socialism 
 inevitable in the sense that, because self- 
 preservation is the great law of life, and be- 
 cause the economic interest is primal and 
 fundamental, men and women will be forced 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 to see in Socialism their only hope and op- 
 portunity for self-preservation. 
 
 " Man does not live by bread alone," and 
 it would be the height of folly seriously to 
 contend, as some few misguided zealots have 
 done from time to time, that individuals are 
 never actuated by other than economic mo- 
 tives. The splendid idealism and the heroic 
 self-sacrifice of many of the greatest leaders 
 in the Socialist movement, and of its rank 
 and file, prove that such a view is preposter- 
 ous. Under the spell of a great ideal or pas- 
 sion, individuals have time and again sacri- 
 ficed every economic interest, and even life 
 itself. Still, it remains a fact that bread is 
 essential to life, and that the preservation of 
 life is the strongest instinct in all animals, 
 man included. 
 
 In every epoch of history, ever since pri- 
 vate property first became the dominant eco- 
 nomic characteristic of human society, there 
 have been class divisions and class conflicts. 
 Master and slave might have, and often did 
 have, many interests in common, but in their 
 [120] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 special relation as master and slave there was 
 no bond of common interest. Similarly, the 
 modern wageworker, whose condition is a, 
 form of slavery, as Herbert Spencer has 
 very clearly shown, may have many interests 
 in common with his employer, but in the spe- 
 cial relation of wageworker and wage-paying 
 employer there is no commonality of interest. 
 If both are Jews they may have a common 
 interest in protecting their race against anti- 
 semitic agitations; if both are prohibitionists, 
 they may find a common interest in the war 
 against the saloon; if both are victims of 
 civic mismanagement they may have a com- 
 mon interest in securing a change in the city 
 government. And any of these interests 
 may prove strong enough to compel both to 
 disregard, for the time at least, every other 
 interest. 
 
 They may even have a common industrial 
 interest. If, for example, it is proposed to 
 do away with certain industry by legislative 
 enactment, the men engaged in it as wage- 
 workers will very naturally join with their 
 
 [121] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 employers in opposing the legislation, mak- 
 ing common cause with their exploiters to the 
 exclusion of other interests which form the 
 basis of the antagonisms which characterize 
 their normal relationship. We have had 
 admirable examples of this temporary cessa- 
 tion of hostilities and union upon common in- 
 terests in the manner in which the workers in 
 the brewing industry have joined their em- 
 ployers in opposing laws for the prohibition 
 of the manufacture and sale of liquor and in 
 the similar union of employers and employees 
 upon tariff legislation. 
 
 Normally, however, all other things being 
 equal, separate and distinct economic inter- 
 ests divide the workers and their employers 
 into hostile classes. No matter what group- 
 ings may take place outside of their special 
 relation as employers and employed, within 
 those interests they become hostile classes. 
 It is to the interest of every employer to get 
 as much profit out of the labor of the men he 
 employs as possible; it is equally to their in- 
 [ 122] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 terest to get as large wages as possible, a 
 maximum of the total production. All this 
 was clearly enough demonstrated by Adam 
 Smith in his Wealth of Nations, and has 
 never been seriously questioned by any econ- 
 omist of note. Upon no other basis can the 
 constant industrial warfare indicated by 
 strikes, lockouts and boycotts, trade unions 
 and employers' associations be explained. 
 
 Modern industrial society is characterized 
 by the fact that it is capitalistic ; that all pro- 
 duction is carried on for profit rather than for 
 use. The motive of the ordinary manufac- 
 turer is not the production of simple use- 
 values. He is interested only in producing 
 social use-values, things to be sold at a profit. 
 He would as soon manufacture coffins as cra- 
 dles, idols for heathens as prayer books for 
 Christians, provided only that equal profits 
 might be made. We have a class — numer- 
 ically large, but relatively small — owning 
 and controlling the great agencies of wealth 
 production and distribution, and a vastly 
 [123] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 larger class, which, not owning the great 
 agencies of wealth production, must work for 
 wages. This class, it is evident, must pro- 
 duce a surplus-value over and above the 
 amount it receives in wages if the " silent 
 partners," the investors of capital, are to re- 
 ceive anything in the shape of interest upon 
 their invested capital. 
 
 This surplus-value is the bone of conten- 
 tion, the casus belli, of the great industrial 
 conflict. And so long as the capitalist 
 method of production prevails that conflict 
 must continue. If all men were angels or 
 saints, it is conceivable that they might agree 
 perfectly as to the division of both labor and 
 wealth. The harmony might be as perfect 
 as the National Civic Federation professes 
 to desire. It might then be possible for the 
 workers and the capitalists so to agree that 
 each class should render the other equal recip- 
 rocal service, and that the wealth should be 
 equitably shared. But since men are neither 
 angels nor saints, and perfection is not, and 
 has never been, a human attribute, that har- 
 [124] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 mony does not and cannot exist. Instead of 
 harmony we have a constant struggle ; unions 
 of workers and unions of employers face each 
 other in a great conflict. 
 
 [ 125 ] 
 
IV 
 
 NOW, while this struggle of the two 
 classes is the most obvious feature of 
 our social and political life, dominat- 
 ing, to a large extent, our legislation and poli- 
 tics, it is foolish to contend, as many Socialist 
 writers have done, that a clear line of cleavage 
 runs through modern society, all the capitalist 
 goats being arrayed on one side of it, and all 
 the proletarian sheep upon the other — these 
 two groups including the entire popula- 
 tion. This crude concept of the class group- 
 ings in capitalist society has been sadly prev- 
 alent in the popular literature of Socialism, 
 and it is probably responsible for some of the 
 disrepute in which the class struggle theory 
 is held. 
 
 Here is a man who is a wageworker, em- 
 ployed in one of our great factories. About 
 his status there would seem to be no room for 
 [126] 
 
The Substance of Socialis 
 
 m 
 
 doubt. He is a wageworker. But we dis- 
 cover that he has inherited, or perhaps saved, 
 a thousand dollars, which he has invested in 
 railroad stock. How shall we classify him 
 now? He is surely, to the limited extent of 
 his investment, a capitalist, and is just as anx- 
 ious to get large returns upon his invested 
 capital as the millionaire investor. On the 
 other hand, as a wage-earner, he may be quite 
 as anxious as any of his fellows to get high 
 wages and be exploited as little as possible. 
 
 Again: Here is a physician. He has no 
 capital invested, and his only source of in- 
 come is the practice of his profession. He 
 is not conscious of any affiliation with either 
 of the two classes under discussion. If asked 
 about it he would say that he belongs to a 
 " middle class," a class equally distinct from 
 the capitalist and the proletariat. But if you 
 only recognize two classes where will you 
 place him — with the capitalists or with the 
 workers? Surely not with the capitalists 
 (bearing in mind that he does not exploit the 
 workers, having no capital invested), and 
 [127] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 equally surely not with the proletariat (bear- 
 ing in mind that he is not exploited, and that 
 his income is perhaps several times larger 
 than that of the best paid wageworkers) . 
 Much the same may be said of many other 
 professional men — clergymen, artists, writ- 
 ers, and so on. 
 
 Or, yet again, take the case of the small 
 employer, the man who works quite as hard 
 as the man he employs, and alongside of 
 him. His income is little or none at all 
 higher than that of the man he employs. 
 True, he is an employer and a capitalist, but 
 he is much more of a proletarian in his sym- 
 pathies than many a salaried employee, even 
 though the latter may be directly exploited 
 quite as surely — though perhaps to a less 
 degree — as the ordinary manual worker. It 
 is very evident that if we are to insist upon 
 such a classification as will include in one 
 class only those who are in the strict sense of 
 the word proletarians, all others being ar- 
 rayed in another class against them, the pro- 
 letarians cannot hope to win by political 
 [128] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 methods, since they must be hopelessly out- 
 numbered and outvoted. 
 
 Karl Marx died leaving the second and 
 third volumes of Das Kapital unfinished. 
 The manuscript of the third volume ends at 
 the beginning of a chapter which he had in- 
 tended to devote to class groupings. It is 
 more than probable that had he lived to com- 
 plete that chapter we should have been saved 
 from a great many of those crude expositions 
 of the class struggle theory which remind one 
 so forcibly of the naivete of that Czar of Rus- 
 sia who drew a straight line across the map 
 when asked to indicate the course to be fol- 
 lowed by a railroad that was to be built. 
 Marx was far too wise and acute a thinker 
 not to realize that to range the actual prole- 
 tariat against all the rest of the people would 
 be equivalent to proclaiming the hopelessness 
 of their political struggle. 
 
 He knew very well that outside of the 
 
 ranks of the actual proletariat there are many 
 
 who will naturally join it in its struggle 
 
 against the capitalist class. Some because, 
 
 [129] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 while they are not actually of the proletariat, 
 such as the small dealers, tenant farmers, 
 petty manufacturers, and so on, they feel that 
 their interests draw them closer to the prole- 
 tariat than to the capitalist class. They are 
 oppressed and exploited by the great capital- 
 ist combinations as surely as the proletariat 
 is, though in other ways. Therefore, in fur- 
 therance of their economic interests, they 
 are driven into union with the proletariat. 
 Then there are others — a very large class, 
 in fact — who, while they do not feel that 
 their economic interests are such as to ally 
 them with either of the two contending 
 classes, feel the justice of the workers' cause, 
 or recognize the stern facts of the historical 
 movement, and so unite with the workers 
 against the capitalists in the political arena. 
 Finally, there are some, even within the capi- 
 talist class itself, who are just enough and 
 humane enough to see that the workers' cause 
 is righteous, or wise enough to see that their 
 triumph is inevitable. 
 
 Probably the view expressed by that great 
 [130 J 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 man, Wilhelm Liebknecht, the most astute po- 
 litical leader the Socialist movement has yet 
 produced, comes nearer than any other to the 
 thought of Marx, his friend and master. On 
 the first anniversary of Liebknecht's death the 
 Berlin Vorwarts, the leading daily newspaper 
 of the German Social Democracy, published 
 some fragments of an unfinished work by 
 Liebknecht, the manuscript of which had been 
 found among his papers. Emphasis is laid 
 in these posthumously published fragments 
 upon the fact that "the number of those 
 whose interest forces them into the ranks of 
 our enemies is so small that it is becoming 
 almost negligible, and that the immense ma- 
 jority of those who have a hostile, or at least 
 hardly a friendly attitude toward us, take this 
 position only through ignorance of their own 
 situation and of our efforts, and that we ought 
 to exert all our strength to enlighten this ma- 
 jority and win it over." 
 
 Liebknecht is very generous in his definition 
 of the working class : " We must not limit 
 our conception of the term ' working class ' 
 [ i3i ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 too narrowly. As we have explained in 
 speeches, tracts, and articles, we include in 
 the working class all who live exclusively or 
 principally by means of their own labor, and 
 who do not grow rich through the work of 
 others. 
 
 " Thus, besides the wage-earners, we 
 should include in the working class the small 
 farmers and small shopkeepers, who tend 
 more and more to drop to the level of the 
 proletariat — in other words, all those who 
 suffer from our present system of production 
 on a large scale. 
 
 " Some maintain, it is true, that the wage- 
 earning proletariat is the only really revolu- 
 tionary class, that it alone forms the Socialist 
 army, and that we ought to regard with sus- 
 picion all adherents belonging to other classes 
 or other conditions of life. Fortunately 
 these senseless ideas have never taken hold of 
 the German Social Democracy. 
 
 " The wage-earning class is most directly 
 affected by capitalist exploitation; it stands 
 face to face with those who exploit it, and 
 [132] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 it has the especial advantage of being concen- 
 trated in the factories and yards, so that it is 
 naturally led to think things out more ener- 
 getically and finds itself automatically organ- 
 ized into ' Battalions of workers.' This state 
 of things gives it a revolutionary character 
 which no other part of society has to the same 
 degree. We must recognize this frankly. 
 
 ' " Every wage-earner is either a Socialist 
 already, or on the highroad to becoming one. 
 The wage-earners of the national workshops 
 in France, whom the middle class government 
 of the February Republic wished to make use 
 of against the Social proletariat, went over 
 to the enemy at the crucial moment. In the 
 same way we see how those trades unions that 
 were started by the agents of the German 
 middle-class to oppose the Socialist workmen, 
 either have maintained only the shadow of an 
 existence or have in their turn been swept into 
 the current of Socialist ideas. The wage- 
 earner is led toward Socialism by all his sur- 
 roundings, by all the conditions in which he 
 finds himself. He is forced to think by the 
 I 133 1 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 very conditions of. his life, and as soon as he 
 thinks he becomes a Socialist. 
 
 " But if the wage-earner suffers more di- 
 rectly and visibly under the system of capital- 
 ist exploitation, the small farmers and shop- 
 keepers are as truly affected by it, although 
 in a less direct and obvious manner. 
 
 " The unhappy situation of the small farm- 
 ers almost all over Germany is as well known 
 as the artisan movement. It is true that 
 both small farmers and small shopkeepers 
 are still in the camp of our adversaries, 
 but only because they do not understand the 
 profound causes that underlie their deplora- 
 ble condition; it is of prime importance for 
 our party to enlighten them and bring them 
 over to our side. This is a vital question 
 for our party, because these two classes form 
 the majority of the nation. 
 
 " The German Socialists . . . have 
 long understood the importance of propa- 
 ganda and the necessity of winning over the 
 small shopkeeping class and the small farm- 
 ers. 
 
 [134] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 " A tiny minority alone demands that the 
 Socialist movement shall be limited to the 
 wage-earning class. 
 
 " The hyper-revolutionary dress-parade 
 Socialism, that addresses itself exclusively to 
 ' the horny-handed sons of toil ' has two ad- 
 vantages for the reaction. First, it limits the 
 Socialist movement to a class that in Ger- 
 many at least is not large enough to bring 
 about a revolution; and besides this, it is an 
 excellent way of frightening the main body 
 of the people who are half indifferent, es- 
 pecially the peasants and the petty bour- 
 geoisie, who have not yet organized any in- 
 dependent political activity. 
 
 ****** 
 
 " We ought not to ask, Are you a wage- 
 earner?' but 'Are you a Socialist?' 
 
 " // it is limited to the mage-earners, So- 
 cialism cannot conquer. If it includes all the 
 workers and the moral and intellectual elite 
 of the nation, its victory is certain." 
 [135 J 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 Later on Liebknecht still further empha- 
 sizes his position by declaring that the Social 
 Democracy is " the party of all the people 
 with the exception of two hundred thousand 
 great proprietors, small proprietors, and 
 priests." 
 
 It would be exceedingly disingenuous for 
 me to suggest that Liebknecht's fine utterance 
 is thoroughly representative of Socialist ut- 
 terances upon the subject. The extremist 
 view — which would so effectually limit the 
 Socialist movement to the dimensions of a 
 mere sect — has been more generally pro- 
 claimed in America probably than in any 
 other country. There are historical reasons 
 for this, reasons inhering in the development 
 of American Socialism, into which it is im- 
 possible to enter here. But — and this fact 
 is of prime importance — despite all the ex- 
 tremist utterances upon the subject, the ac- 
 tual movement, in its policies, has followed 
 the line of Liebknecht's reasoning. This is 
 shown by the great strength of the party in 
 such states as Oklahoma, by the relatively 
 [ 136 J 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 large number of professional men and small 
 shopkeepers in the Socialist party, and by the 
 propaganda that is carried on in the colleges 
 and universities. 
 
 [ 137 1 
 
M 
 
 IT is evident that the class struggle is not an 
 artificial product of the passion roused by 
 reckless and embittered agitators preach- 
 ing social discontent, but it grows inevitably 
 out of harsh and inequitable economic condi- 
 tions. To blame the Socialist agitator for 
 talking of the class struggle, and to regard 
 him as being in some way responsible for its 
 existence, is foolish in the extreme. Agita- 
 tors do not create class antagonisms and social 
 unrest ; at most they are but the voices of ex- 
 isting deep-seated discontent. 
 
 How foolish it is to condemn the men and 
 women who point to the existence of the class 
 struggle in modern society may be aptly illus- 
 trated by an analogue. Suppose a man leav- 
 ing his home in the morning to go to his 
 work; just as he has reached the street, his 
 wife calls him back and says, " John, do you 
 [ 138 1 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 not see that it is beginning to rain, and that 
 the heavy clouds betoken an approaching 
 storm? Be wise; put on an overcoat and 
 overshoes and take an umbrella with you and 
 so protect yourself against taking cold." 
 And suppose, further, that the man should 
 turn in anger and scold his wife, saying, 
 "You are a dangerous, wicked woman; you 
 are a most undesirable person. Why do you 
 not keep quiet? Instead of leaving well 
 enough alone, you are always trying to create 
 storms." Such a man would be quite as wise 
 as are those who accuse the Socialists of cre- 
 ating class strife. The Socialist no more cre- 
 ates the class conflict than the thoughtful wife 
 creates the rain. He is in the position of one 
 who gives the workers warning of the storm, 
 and urges them to prepare for it — to equip 
 themselves with overcoats, overshoes and um- 
 brellas, so to speak. 
 
 The war of the classes is a fact. Those 
 
 who seek to deny its existence simply emulate 
 
 the stupid ostrich, which ignorantly hides its 
 
 head in the sand to avoid the sight of the 
 
 1 : 39 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 danger that threatens its life. The fact that 
 it does not see the hunter when its head is 
 buried in the sand does not save the poor 
 creature from its fate, nor does the fact that 
 some men vociferously deny the existence of 
 the class struggle alter the fact that it exists 
 or save the workers from the suffering it in- 
 volves. Nelson's action in placing the tele- 
 scope to his blind eye and saying, " I can see 
 no danger," was an admirable bit of bravado, 
 but the danger was none the less real because 
 he refused to see it. 
 
 It will be observed from the foregoing that 
 this is not at all a moral question. There is 
 not the slightest suggestion that the struggle 
 takes form of proletarian virtue against cap- 
 italistic vice. Both classes are motived by 
 their self-interest, and if the worker and the 
 capitalist could change places each would 
 act about as the other now acts. Infinite mis- 
 chief has been wrought in the past by giving 
 the struggle the aspect of a fight between 
 wicked capitalists and virtuous workers. Who 
 is there that is not familiar with that melo- 
 [ 140 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 dramatic conception? It is one of the great- 
 est merits of Marx's doctrine of the class 
 struggle that it guards the workers against 
 that mischief. The philosophy of the class 
 struggle enables the worker to see that the 
 employer is no more responsible for condi- 
 tions than himself. He sees that hatred of 
 the capitalists, either individually or collect- 
 ively, is at once futile, foolish, and unjust. 
 
 He understands that the system of produc- 
 tion for profit is the result of centuries of evo- 
 lution ; that so long as we have production for 
 profit we shall have one class owning the 
 means of life and subjecting another class to 
 its rule. He learns that as the great epochs 
 of human history have been ushered in by 
 the victory of classes over oppressing classes, 
 the class to which he belongs has a historic 
 mission to fulfill; that the only effective re- 
 lief for his class that is possible must come 
 from the action of the class itself exerting its 
 powers to destroy the power of the capitalist 
 class to exploit it. That can only be done by 
 abolishing production for profit; by making 
 [Hi] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 the great agencies of production upon which 
 all depend subject to the common control 
 which belongs to common ownership. If 
 that end be attained, it is obvious, class own- 
 ership disappears and is supplanted by com- 
 mon ownership, and class rule disappears with 
 class ownership ; there can be no class antag- 
 onisms in society when class ownership has 
 disappeared. The workers cannot become 
 class conscious — conscious, that is, of the se- 
 cret of the exploitation of their class, and 
 of the historic mission and function of their 
 class — without getting the inspiration of the 
 great dream of a world without class antag- 
 onisms, in which the interest of each shall be 
 the interest of all. Surely that is a spiritual 
 attribute of the doctrine of class conscious- 
 ness worthy to be reckoned ! 
 
 When we have grasped the fact that the 
 Socialists do not make the class struggle, but 
 simply recognize it as an inherent feature of 
 our social life, resulting from the nature of 
 our economic system, it becomes fairly obvi- 
 ous that much of the criticism to which they 
 [142] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 are subjected is unjust and based upon en- 
 tirely false premises. It would be quite as 
 reasonable and just to blame the physician 
 for the existence of the disease he discovers in 
 the patient as to blame the Socialist for rec- 
 ognizing the class antagonisms in society. Of 
 course, if the Socialists gloated over the class 
 struggle, if they rejoiced in its existence and 
 desired its perpetuation, they would justly de- 
 serve condemnation. 
 
 But the recognition of an evil by no means 
 implies approval of it. The physician does 
 not desire the continuance of the disease he 
 discerns in the patient, but its eradication. 
 The sanitarian who directs attention to a dan- 
 gerous plague spot is not condemned and ac- 
 cused of desiring to maintain it. We know 
 that the frank recognition of the disease and 
 the plague spot is a necessary condition to 
 their removal. It is to the great credit of 
 the Socialists that they are striving, in the 
 face of difficulties of colossal magnitude, to 
 bring about the changes in our economic sys- 
 tem which they believe will put an end to class 
 [ 143 1 
 
The Substance of Socialism. 
 
 divisions and struggles. It is part of the So- 
 cialist indictment of capitalist society that by 
 its very nature it divides into hostile classes 
 instead of uniting in bonds of common social 
 interest. It is part of its splendid inspira- 
 tion to millions of men and women in all 
 lands that the Socialist ideal comprehends a 
 world free from class strife, welded into 
 glorious solidarity and brotherhood. 
 
 [144] 
 
iVI 
 
 IT is true that Socialist agitators are con- 
 stantly trying to rouse the workers to class 
 consciousness. That is to say, the Social- 
 ist propaganda aims at uniting the workers 
 upon the basis of their class interests. For 
 this they are bitterly condemned by many sin- 
 cere and thoughtful persons. " Why is it nec- 
 essary," they ask, " to carry on an agitation 
 for the purpose of rousing the workers ? If 
 the class struggle is an elemental fact of our 
 social life, produced naturally and inevitably 
 by the fundamental economic relations, surely 
 the workers must already be only too pain- 
 fully aware of the fact that the struggle ex- 
 ists, and of its nature. What need, then, of 
 a special propaganda to make known the 
 obvious? Why not lay all the emphasis of 
 the propaganda for Socialism upon remedial 
 [145] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 measures, rather than upon morbid diagnosis 
 and analysis of existing conditions? " 
 
 The critical attitude thus indicated is very 
 common, and its honest questioning must be 
 as honestly met. In the first place, it may be 
 said in reply that no effective advocacy of 
 remedial measures is possible, or even con- 
 ceivable, which does not lay stress upon the 
 nature and the magnitude of the evils for 
 which remedy is desired. Just as the sani- 
 tarian, in order to induce the citizens to take 
 the necessary steps to remove a plague spot, 
 must insist upon the extent of the danger and 
 peril it involves, so the Socialist, in order to 
 induce men and women to work for the re- 
 moval of the ills and perils of class rule, must 
 dwell constantly upon the nature and magni- 
 tude of those ills and perils. It is not from 
 any desire to indulge in morbid and sensa- 
 tional discussion, nor from love of alarmist 
 agitation, that the Socialists dwell so much 
 upon the facts of the class warfare in society, 
 but because there is no other way by means 
 of which they can rouse and enlist the moral 
 [146] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 passion requisite for the attainment of their 
 ideal. 
 
 But that is not all. There is a yet 
 weightier and prof ounder reason. Not all en- 
 gaged in the social struggle, even its worst 
 victims, are conscious of the nature of the 
 struggle. To borrow yet another illustra- 
 tion from pathology, the physician finds his 
 patient weak and ill, suffering from the dread 
 consumption. Suffering, the patient is under 
 the delusion that he has only a severe cold 
 with cough. Because he is under that de- 
 lusion, he hopes to cure himself by the use 
 of patent cough remedies and other quack- 
 eries, a fatally foolish thing. The wise phy- 
 sician knows that he can do nothing effective 
 until he has disabused the mind of his patient 
 of this dangerous delusion, made him realize 
 the nature of his illness, and the folly and 
 worse than folly of dependence upon quack 
 nostrums. Consciousness of his condition is 
 necessary to the patient in order that he may 
 intelligently cooperate with his physician. In 
 like manner it is necessary to educate the 
 [147] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 workers to a consciousness of their class, of 
 its position, of its wrongs, of its powers. 
 
 Many of the workers who suffer most from 
 the ills of our social system are in a position 
 similar to that of the deluded patient. They 
 are not conscious of the real nature of their 
 trouble, and are the pathetic victims of all 
 kinds of social quackery. Just as the poor 
 sufferer from consumption gets the flaunting 
 advertisements of dangerous nostrums thrust 
 constantly before him, so the worker gets the 
 cheap and nasty nostrums of a multitude of 
 social quacks thrust before him. For exam- 
 ple, he is told from the pulpit and from po- 
 litical platforms that there are no classes in 
 America, until he is persuaded that it is so. 
 By the persistent preaching of would-be-mor- 
 alists and professional reformers, he is made 
 to believe that the whole social problem is 
 one of moral failings merely ; that it is not a 
 question of class arrayed against class, but of 
 man against man. He is persuaded that the 
 social evils which impose so much suffering 
 upon him and his fellows spring from the 
 [148] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 wickedness of men; that it is all a question 
 of wickedness and greed ; of there being more 
 bad men than good ones in control of the 
 great powers of life. 
 
 This is the doctrine which Mr. Roosevelt 
 has so powerfully and consistently preached, 
 a doctrine which has always seemed to me to 
 be revolting in its immorality, and fraught 
 with the possibilities of terrible disaster to 
 the nation. It is social quackery in its worst 
 and most dangerous form. That the preach- 
 ers of such a doctrine, which is essentially im- 
 moral and subversive of all social order, 
 should have the effrontery to accuse the So- 
 cialists of preaching " foul " and " immoral " 
 doctrines is a remarkable illustration of the 
 potency of class interests to blunt the moral 
 senses and warp the mental vision. 
 
 C 149 1 
 
VII 
 
 I KNOW that these are terrible words, but 
 they are terribly true. And the time has 
 come when the truth must be spoken. 
 Therefore I dare assert that every preacher 
 of the Rooseveltian doctrine which is here out- 
 lined is preaching a dangerously immoral doc- 
 trine, a doctrine which, if it ever takes hold of 
 the minds and hearts of the proletariat of 
 America, will lead to such a reign of anarchy 
 and terror as no democracy can ever with- 
 stand. No Anarchist ever preached a doc- 
 trine so well calculated to let down the flood- 
 gates of envy and hate. 
 
 If this verdict seems too strong and sweep- 
 ing, let me ask you to apply to it a very prac- 
 tical test. Here is a laborer; he is out of 
 work, poor, miserable and helpless. All his 
 life long he has lived in poverty, and suffered 
 the pains of the struggle which are the herit- 
 [150] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 age of his class. The black shadow of pov- 
 erty rested over his cradle in infancy, and 
 darkened the pathway of his childhood, fill- 
 ing it with terror. When he ought to have 
 been enjoying childhood's right to play he 
 was obliged to work in a mill, to bear upon 
 his undeveloped shoulders the heavy yoke of 
 toil; to breathe and move to the time set by 
 a soulless machine. Now, from no fault of 
 his own, but simply because of an ill-working 
 social system, he is without work and without 
 the means of obtaining bread for himself and 
 his family. In his ears from early dawn 
 till night brings exhaustion and forgetfulness 
 there rings the cry of his wife and baby for 
 bread, for life. The picture is not over- 
 drawn — there are many thousands of such 
 men in our great cities. 
 
 As he goes forth into the city in a weary 
 quest for bread and work he sees confronting 
 him the splendor and luxury of the man by 
 whom he was employed. He contrasts his 
 poverty with the wealth and splendor, and 
 the sinister thought is born within him that 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 he was robbed of his fruits of his toil to en- 
 rich that employer. Not as a result of any 
 agitator's appeals to his envy, but as the bit- 
 ter fruitage of his hard life, he has come to 
 regard the rich employer as the robber by 
 whom he has been despoiled. Let there be 
 no mistake about this: the natural state of 
 mind for such a man as the one described is 
 hatred and envy of the rich and powerful. 
 It is an instinctive attitude: agitators can do 
 no more than fan the flames of passion into 
 fury. 
 
 Now, go to that man with this gospel of 
 " individual morality," of which we have 
 heard so much from our professional reform- 
 ers in high places. Teach him that his suf- 
 ferings are due to the misdeeds of individ- 
 uals, of "malefactors of great wealth." 
 Teach him with all the authority of Church 
 and State that he and his loved ones endure 
 the pangs of hunger and hopeless poverty be- 
 cause his employer is not a just man, or be- 
 cause some financier has the instincts of a 
 [152] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 brute and a ghoul. What effect can you ex- 
 pect such teaching to have upon his mind, 
 other than to deepen and intensify his natural, 
 instinctive hatred and envy? Have you not 
 given authority and sanction to his worst and 
 most dangerous thoughts? When you have 
 made him believe that the wickedness of indi- 
 viduals has brought such terrible suffering 
 upon himself and those he loves, will you 
 marvel that he should cherish in his heart 
 bitter hatred of the individuals whom you 
 have taught him to regard as responsible, or 
 that the bitter feelings should lead to desper- 
 ate deeds? 
 
 Can you not see that such preaching feeds 
 the most dangerous anarchy the world has 
 known? That it kindles fires of hatred 
 which may at any time burst into unrestrained 
 fury and destroy society ? No frenzied crea- 
 ture, mad with the sense of injustice and 
 filled with passion for revenge, ever yet took 
 the law into his own hands, grasping torch 
 or knife or bomb and working destruction, 
 
 [ *S3 1 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 who was not the victim of this delusion which 
 the opponents of Socialism are constantly 
 preaching in the name of " morality " and 
 " good order." That we have not had a 
 reign of terror in consequence of the constant 
 preaching of this Rooseveltian doctrine, is 
 due to the fact that its preachers have not 
 been able to impress the masses with a pas- 
 sionate belief in it. Yet they have not wholly 
 failed; we have not altogether escaped its 
 evil consequences, for every careful observer 
 must have observed that, as a result of the 
 wild denunciation of " malefactors of great 
 wealth," we came perilously near the point 
 where an appeal to popular passion against 
 a Rockefeller or a Harfiman would secure 
 the passage of almost any legislation, how- 
 ever defective or vicious. 
 
 The fact is that the capitalists are no more 
 to blame than the workers; our social prob- 
 lems are not due to the machinations of a 
 few magnates, who must therefore be singled 
 out as " malefactors," but to the great forces 
 of economic development which condition the 
 [iS4] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 lives of us all, rich and poor alike. To 
 preach otherwise is to preach falsehood in 
 the name of truth, and to incite red-handed 
 anarchy. 
 
 I i5S 3 
 
VIII 
 
 BUT if we take our victim of the social 
 struggle and give him the message of 
 Socialism, he is soon turned from the 
 path of anarchy and hatred. It is no accident 
 that in these lands where Socialism is strongest 
 Anarchism is weakest and that recourse to 
 dagger and bomb is most frequent where the 
 Socialist movement is weakest. The Socialist 
 propaganda reaches such a victim of the so- 
 cial struggle as I have described and teaches 
 him at the very outset that no individual is to 
 blame for conditions so terrible; that the 
 evils do not arise from the wickedness of in- 
 dividuals, but from great social causes de- 
 veloped by centuries of evolution. It teaches 
 him that the capitalist is no more to blame 
 than himself; that we are all creatures of con- 
 ditions. 
 
 He gets from the Socialist propaganda a 
 [ 156 ] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 new view of the social problem. He sees it 
 as it is, as a product of the struggle of cen- 
 turies. He sees that his old hatred of the 
 capitalist was wrong, illogical and unjust. 
 When a man becomes conscious of his posi- 
 tion as a member of the working class, and 
 understands that the class struggle is not an 
 artificial thing created by scheming and 
 wicked men, but a necessary and natural con- 
 dition of the existing economic order, he can 
 no longer entertain bitter hatred toward the 
 capitalist, nor harbor desire for revenge. In- 
 stead of a passion for personal revenge, he 
 becomes mastered by a sense of class loyalty 
 and relies, not upon individual acts of vio- 
 lence, but upon the cooperation of his fellows 
 in furtherance of their class interest. And 
 this cooperation of the working class is not 
 to the end that punishment may be inflicted 
 upon the members of the present ruling class, 
 but that the economic basis of society be so 
 changed as to make it impossible for classes 
 to exist. 
 
 It is one of the incomprehensible marvels 
 
 [157] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 of our time that so few of the critics of So- 
 cialism see this very obvious truth. Here 
 we have a great world-wide movement, em- 
 bracing many millions of people of all lands 
 and races, taking the unlearned and blind dis- 
 content of the world, teaching it and guiding 
 it away from mad, abortive violence into the 
 broad, free channels of patiently organized 
 political effort, and the critics are blind to 
 this glorious mission. I make the claim for 
 the Socialist movement of the world that it 
 is the one great conscious agent which is 
 teaching the wrongfulness and the futility of 
 hatred and violence, and guiding the ever- 
 growing discontent of the disinherited and 
 despoiled millions into channels of safe, pa- 
 tient, constructive effort. 
 
 [ 158 ] 
 
IX 
 
 IT would be idle, of course, to deny that 
 class consciousness may manifest itself in 
 violent uprisings. In countries where, as 
 in Russia, for example, the great masses of the 
 people are deprived of the political powers 
 which make peaceful, legal action possible, 
 violent rebellion may be the only means open 
 to them in their struggle for freedom. Bitter 
 as such a struggle must be, terrible as its 
 methods must be, the righteousness of such 
 rebellion can scarcely be questioned by Anglo- 
 Saxons. 
 
 And it is surely better that there should 
 be a collective struggle for freedom, likely 
 to prove successful because of the great army 
 of fighters, than that there should be num- 
 berless futile and abortive acts of violence 
 by individuals. In lands where the workers 
 catf use the ballot to redress their grievances 
 [159] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 experience shows that the struggle for free- 
 dom invariably takes the form of a political 
 struggle. For us in America, therefore, the 
 choice is between individual acts of violence 
 and collective political effort along legal, con- 
 stitutional channels. The former is the log- 
 ical outcome of the philosophy of which Mr. 
 Roosevelt has been a most conspicuous ex- 
 ponent; the latter of the philosophy which 
 guides and inspires the Socialist movement. 
 
 For the reasons which I have thus briefly 
 indicated I have come to regard the Socialist 
 teaching of class consciousness as a great ethi- 
 cal force in the world, of incalculable value. 
 Where the doctrine of class consciousness 
 makes headway, there abortive acts of re- 
 vengful violence are rarest; where class con- 
 sciousness is rare, there it is a common thing 
 for enraged individuals to seek revenge. 
 The greatest safeguard against the assassin's 
 dagger and the incendiary's torch is the bal- 
 lot in the hands of class conscious working- 
 men. Class consciousness is the one thing 
 [160] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 that can save the nation from individual re- 
 volt, blind, stupid and cruel. 
 
 To make a discontented workingman class 
 conscious is to make him a safe man, whose 
 revolt is always against the system and never 
 against individuals; it is to make him a just 
 man, too wise and just to hold individuals re- 
 sponsible for the evils of the system; it is to 
 make him a wise and patient man, too wise to 
 attempt to make things better by venting his 
 personal anger in savage deeds, patient 
 enough to work with his fellows year after 
 year to bring about the economic changes 
 which will make freedom possible for all 
 mankind. Finally, to make a workingman 
 class conscious is to bring hope into his life, 
 light into his eyes and music into his heart. 
 It is to hold out to him the vision of millions 
 of his fellows uniting with himself, establish- 
 ing through the power of their citizenship 
 conditions of life which will make possible the 
 realization of human- brotherhood, and set all 
 men free to live lives of greater purpose and 
 [161] 
 
The Substance of Socialism 
 
 beauty than we have seen in our brightest and 
 holiest dreams. 
 
 For that the prophets lived and died. For 
 that the unconquerable Human Spirit has 
 struggled and sufered through the uncounted 
 ages. For that, too, the brave pioneers went 
 forth into the forest undaunted and laid the 
 foundations of this great Republic and freely 
 gave their life blood to cement its pillars. 
 
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