Read Ebook: Socialism: Positive and Negative by La Monte Robert Rives

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 285 lines and 31603 words, and 6 pages

Well, then, if he produces in three or four hours a value equal to the value of his labor-power or wages, why doesn't he stop work then, and take his coat and hat and go home and devote the rest of the day to study, reading, games, recreation and amusement? He don't because he can't. He has to agree to any conditions that the class who by owning his tools own him choose to impose upon him, and the lash of the competition of the unemployed, Capital's Reserve Army, as Marx called it, is ever ready to fall upon his naked back.

Why is he so helpless? Because he and his class have been robbed of the land and the tools and all the means of sustenance and production, and have nothing left them but that empty bauble, legal liberty, liberty to accept wages so small that they barely enable them to live like beasts, or liberty to starve to death and be buried in unmarked graves by the public authorities.

The wage system necessarily implies this surplus labor or unpaid labor. So long as there are wages, workingmen, you will never get the full product of your labor. Let no reformer beguile you into a struggle which simply aims to secure a modification of the wage system! Nothing short of the annihilation of the wage system will give you justice and give you the full product of your labor.

But while wages necessarily imply surplus-labor, the reverse is not true. You can have surplus-labor without wages. Surplus-labor is not an invention of modern capitalists. Since Mankind emerged from the state of Primitive Communism typified by the Garden of Eden in the Hebraic myth, there have been three great systems of economic organization: 1. Slavery; 2. Serfdom; 3. The Wage System. It is interesting to note the varying appearances of surplus or unpaid labor under these three systems.

Under the first, Slavery, all labor appears as unpaid labor. This is only a false appearance, however. During a part of the day the slave only reproduces the value of his maintenance or "keep." During that part of the day he works for himself just as truly as the modern wage slave works for himself during a part of his day. But the property relation conceals the paid labor.

Under the second system, Serfdom, or the Feudal System,--the paid labor and the unpaid labor are absolutely separate and distinct, so that not even the most gifted orthodox political economist can confuse them.

THE CLASS STRUGGLE

The third of the great ideas that will always be associated with the name of Karl Marx is that of the Class Struggle. The Class Struggle is logically such a necessary consequence of both the Materialistic Conception of History and the Law of Surplus-Value, that as we have discussed them at some length, but little need be said of the Class Struggle itself. In discussing the Materialistic Conception of History we showed with sufficient fullness and clearness that, in the language of the Communist Manifesto, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of Class Struggles." Hence it is clear the doctrine of class struggles is a key to past history. But it is more than this. It is a compass by which to steer in the present struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat, who cannot, fortunately, emancipate themselves without emancipating and ennobling all mankind.

Until a man perceives and is keenly conscious of this class conflict, a conflict which admits of no truce or compromise, and ranges himself on the side of the workers to remain there until the battle is fought and the victory won, until the proletariat shall have conquered the public powers, taken possession of that class instrument, the State and made it in the hands of the working class a tool to abolish private ownership in the tools and the land, in the means of production and distribution, and to abolish all classes by absorbing them all in the Brotherhood of Man; until a man has thus shown himself clearly conscious of the Class Struggle, with its necessary implications, his heart may be in the right place, but laboring men can not trust him as a leader. The fact that the hearts of many popular reformers, political candidates and so-called "friends of labor," who ignore the class struggle, are on the right side, but gives them added power to mislead and betray workingmen. Workingmen, I beg you to follow no leader who has not a clear enough head to see that there is a class struggle, and a large enough heart to place himself on your side of that struggle. But remember that you are not fighting the battle of a class alone. You are fighting for the future welfare of the whole human race. But while this is true, it is also true that your class must bear the brunt of this battle, for yours is the only class that, in the language of the Manifesto, "has nothing but its chains to lose, and a World to gain!" The rich have much to lose, and this very real and tangible risk of loss not unnaturally blinds the eyes of most of them to the more remote, though infinitely greater compensations that Socialism has to offer them. The Middle Class, even down to those who are just a round above the proletarians on the social ladder, love to ape the very rich and the capitalist magnates. It tickles their silly vanity to fancy that their interests are capitalistic interests, and their mental horizon is too hopelessly limited for them to perceive that the proletariat whom it pleases them to despise as the great army of the "unwashed" are in truth fighting their battles for them, and receiving instead of gratitude, contempt, gibes and sneers. Socialism does occasionally receive a recruit from the very highest stratum of society, but I tell you it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a member of the Middle Class to become a scientific socialist.

I have said the Class Struggle is a compass to steer by in the present struggle for the emancipation of the working class. If we steer by this compass, we will resolutely reject all overtures from political parties representing the interests of other classes, even when such parties in their platform endorse some of the immediate demands of the socialists; we will "fear the Greeks bringing gifts;" we will not be seduced for a moment by the idea of fusion with any so-called Socialist party which is not avowedly based on the Class Struggle; especially as individuals will we avoid giving our votes or our support to any Middle Class party which we may at times fancy to be "moving in the right direction." The history of the class conflicts of the past shows that whenever the proletarians have joined forces with the Middle Class or any section of it, the proletarians have had to bear the heat and burden of the day and when the victory has been won their allies have robbed them of its fruits.

You, yourselves, then, Workingmen, must fight this battle! To win, it is true, you will need the help of members of the other classes. But this help the economic evolution is constantly bringing you. It is a law of the economic evolution that with the progress of industrialism the ratio of the returns of capital to the capital invested constantly diminishes, . You see this in the constant lowering of the rate of interest. Now, as their incomes decrease, the small capitalists and the middle class, who form the vast majority of the possessing class, become unable to continue to support the members of the liberal professions, the priests, preachers, lawyers, editors, lecturers, etc., whose chief function heretofore has been to fool the working class into supporting or at least submitting to the present system. Now, when the income of these unproductive laborers, an income drawn from the class hostile to the proletariat, shall sensibly decrease or, worse still, cease, these educated members of the liberal professions will desert the army of Capital and bring a much-needed reinforcement to the Army of Labor.

Some of the more far-seeing upholders of the present system are keenly conscious of this danger. And this danger , is one of the most potent causes of the Imperialism, Militarism, and Jingoism which are at present disgracing the civilized world. England in Africa, and America in the Philippines are pursuing their present criminal policies, not solely to open new markets for English and American goods, but also to secure new fields for the investment of English and American capital, and thus to stop the continuous dropping of the rate of interest and profits, for if this cannot be stopped, the intellectual proletariat will join the sweating proletariat, and the Co-operative Commonwealth will be established and then the poor capitalists will have to work for their livings like other people.

This was clearly pointed out by a capitalist writer in an essay in a recent number of the Atlantic Monthly, who warned the capitalist opponents of McKinley, Destiny & Co.'s policy of expansion that they were attempting to close the only safety-valve which under present conditions could, not avert, but postpone the Social Revolution.

But, friends, nothing can postpone it long, for the industrial crises and financial panics are recurring at shorter and shorter intervals, and the process of recovery from them is slower and slower, and every panic and crisis forces thousands of educated, intelligent members of the middle class off their narrow and precarious foothold down into the ranks of the proletariat, where the hard logic of the facts will convert them to class-conscious Socialism.

Workingmen, I congratulate you upon the approaching victory of the workers and the advent of the Co-operative Commonwealth, for I tell you, in the language of an English comrade:

"Failure on failure may seem to defeat us; ultimate failure is impossible.

Seeing what is to be done then, seeing what the reward is,

Seeing what the terms are,--are you willing to join us? Will you lend us the aid of your voice, your money, your sympathy?

May we take you by the hand and call you 'Comrade'?"

FOOTNOTE:

The expansion policy also acts as a safety-valve by promoting the emigration of the discontented and by providing employment abroad for the educated proletarians who would, no doubt, become "dangerous and incendiary Socialist agitators" in their native lands.

What are "wrong," "right," "vice," "virtue," "bad" and "good"? Mere whips to scourge the backs that naked bear The burden of the world--bent backs that dare Not rise erect, defy the tyrant, "Should," And freely, boldly do the things they would. In living's joy they rarely have a share; They look beyond the grave, and hope that there They'll be repaid, poor fools, for being good.

To serve thy master, that is virtue, Slave; To do thy will, enjoy sweet life, is vice. Poor duty-ridden serf, rebel, forget Thy master-taught morality; be brave Enough to make this earth a Paradise Whereon the Sun of Joy shall never set!

Thanks to modern science--the child of the machine process--the universality of the law of cause and effect is now assumed on all hands. In Labriola's strong words, "Nothing happens by chance." The Marxist believes this in all its fulness. To him systems of religion, codes of ethics and schools of art are, in the last analysis, just as much products of material causes as are boots or sausages. There are some intellectual Socialists whose mode of life has shielded them from the discipline of the Machine Process--the inexorable inculcator of causation--who attempt to place religion and ethics and other ideological phenomena in a separate category not to be accounted for by the materialistic conception of history. These may turn to Marx and weary their auditors by their iteration of "Lord! Lord!" but verily they know not the mind of the Master.

The man who narrows this dialectic materialism down to economic determinism and then defines the latter as meaning that the economic factor has been the "dominant" factor--among many independent factors--in producing the civilization of to-day, may be a sincere Socialist, but he is no Marxist.

The work of the theoretical Marxist will not be done till the origin and development of all religions, philosophies, and systems of ethics have been explained and accounted for by reference to material and economic causes. To understand history the primary requisite is to understand the processes by which the material means of life have been produced and distributed.

"The ruling ideas of every age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class." This applies of ideas of right and wrong--of what is commonly known as morality--as fully as to ideas of any other kind.

Conduct that has tended to perpetuate the power of the economically dominant class--since the increase of wealth has divided society into classes--has ever been accounted moral conduct; conduct that has tended to weaken or subvert the power of the ruling class has always been branded as immoral. There you have the key to all the varying codes of ethics the world has seen. For it must never be forgotten that ideas of right and wrong are not absolute, but relative; not fixed, but fluid, changing with the changes in our modes of producing food, clothes and shelter. Morality varies not only with time, but with social altitude. What was accounted a virtue in a bold baron of the feudal days was a crime in that same baron's serf. The pipe-line hand who regulates his daily life by the same moral ideas which have made John D. Rockefeller a shining example of piety will find himself behind prison bars.

But there is an ever-growing portion of the working class whom the ever-increasing severity of the discipline of the machine process is teaching more and more to think solely in terms of material cause and effect. To them, just as much as to the scholar who has learned by study the relativity of ethics, current morality has ceased to appeal. It is idle to talk of the will of God, or of abstract, absolute ideas of right and wrong to the sociological scholar and the proletarian of the factory alike.

George Bernard Shaw, in the preface to "Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant," says: "I have no respect for popular morality." A few weeks since, a workingman, who had been listening to a stereotyped sentimental harangue emitted by one of our amiable Utopian comrades, showed me the palms of his hands, which were thickly studded with callouses, and asked me, "What the hell has a fellow with a pair of mits like those to do with morality? What I want is the goods." Shaw meant just what he wrote; yet the critics will continue to treat his utterance as one of Bernard Shaw's "delightfully witty paradoxes." My friend meant just what he said; yet Salvation Armyists and other good Christians will continue to preach to him and his kind a religion and a morality which have become meaningless to them.

Organized government, with its power to make laws and levy taxes--in other words, the State--only came into existence with the division of society into classes. The State is, in its very essence, a class instrument--an agency in the hands of the ruling class to keep the masses in subjection. Hence the name, "State," cannot fitly be applied to the social organization of a society in which there are no classes, whether that society be the primitive communist group of savagery or the co-operative commonwealth of the future.

The word "capital," cannot be applied to the machinery and means of production in any and every society. They only become capital when they are used as means to exploit a subject class of workers, and when they shall cease to be so used they will cease to be capital. The word "wages," necessarily implies the extraction of surplus-value from the workers by a parasitic class; hence, that share of the social product which the workers of the future will devote to individual consumption cannot be correctly spoken of as "wages."

In the same way, morality is, in its very essence, a class institution--a set of rules of conduct enforced or inculcated for the benefit of a class. Hence, to speak of the morality of the future, when one refers to the classless society to which Socialists look forward, is the height or the depth of absurdity. In the free fellowship of the future there will be no morality. This is not saying that there will be no criteria by which conduct will be praised or deplored; it is simply saying that with the abolition of classes, morality, like the State, capital and wages, being a product of class-divisions, will cease to exist.

While the revolutionary proletariat have no respect for current morality, it is none the less true that they have in process of growth a morality of their own--a morality that has already emerged from the embryonic stage. The proletariat are to be the active agents in bringing to pass the social revolution which is to put a period to Capitalism and usher in the new order. During this transition period and until the change is fully accomplished, they will be a distinct class with special class interests of their own. As fast as they become class-conscious they will recognize and praise as moral all conduct that tends to hasten the social revolution--the triumph of their class, and they will condemn as unhesitatingly as immoral all conduct that tends to prolong the dominance of the capitalist class. Already we can note manifestations of this new proletarian morality in that sense of class solidarity exhibited by the workers in the many acts of kindness and assistance of the employed to the unemployed, and more especially in the detestation in which the scab is held.

The revolutionary workingman, be he avowed Socialist or not, who repudiates the current or capitalist morality, does not abandon himself to unbridled license, but is straightway bound by the obligations of the adolescent proletarian morality which is enforced with ever greater vigor by the public opinion of his class as his class grows in class-consciousness.

Does the new morality condemn what the old branded as "crimes against property?" It must be confessed that the revolutionary worker has absolutely no respect for natural rights--including the right of property--as such. Hence, as the act of an individual in appropriating the goods of another is not likely either to help or to injure his class, he neither approves or condemns it on moral grounds; but knowing, as he does, that his class enemies, the capitalists, own not only "the goods," but also the courts and the police, he condemns theft by a workingman as suicidal folly.

The Marxist absolutely denies the freedom of the will. Every human action is inevitable. "Nothing happens by chance." Every thing is because it cannot but be. How then can we consistently praise or blame any conduct? If one cares to make hair-splitting distinctions, it may be replied that we cannot, but none the less we can rejoice at some actions and deplore others. And the love of praise, with its obverse, the fear of blame, has ever been one of the strongest motives to human conduct. It is not necessarily the applause of the thoughtless multitude that one seeks; but in writing this paper, which I know will be misunderstood or condemned by the majority of those who read it, undoubtedly one of my motives is to win the approbation of the discerning few for whose good opinion I deeply care.

While there will be no morality in Socialist society; while in the perfect solidarity of a classless society there can be no conflict of individual with social interests; there will nevertheless be certain actions exceptionally fitted to increase the welfare and augment the happiness of the community, and the men and women who perform these acts will undoubtedly be rewarded by the plaudits and the love of their comrades. Indeed, we with our debased standards are incapable of conceiving how dear to them this reward will be. It is because I believe that this love of one's fellows under Socialism will be a joy far exceeding in intensity any pleasure known to us, that I look for dramatic art to reach under Socialism a perfection and influence to-day inconceivable.

The most striking phenomenon in the field of ethics to-day is the rapid growth of the new proletarian morality; and one of the principal functions of the Socialist agitator and propagandist is to facilitate and further this growth. He is the teacher of a new morality and, if one accepted Matthew Arnold's definition of religion as "morality touched with emotion," he might be called the preacher of a new religion. Let who will call this sentimentalism, it is none the less hard fact. For, after all, this new proletarian ethic is nothing else than class-consciousness under a new name. And what Socialist will deny that the chief function of the militant Socialist is to develop class-consciousness in the workers? The one hope of the world to-day is in the victory of the proletariat--aye, it is more than a hope, it is a certainty; but this victory can only be won by a proletariat permeated with the sense of solidarity; and the workingman imbued with this sense of proletarian solidarity will be a living incarnation of the new morality.

While we continue devoting our whole energies to arousing in our fellow-workers a keen and clear consciousness of the hideous class-struggle now waging in all its brutal bitterness, let us keep our courage high and our hope bright by keeping our eyes ever fixed upon the glorious future, upon the "wonderful days a-coming when all shall be better than well!"

FOOTNOTE:

INSTEAD OF A FOOTNOTE

A photograph of a Fifth Avenue mansion, taken from the partition wall in the back-yard, might be a perfectly accurate picture and yet give a very inadequate idea of the house as a whole. This article on "Marxism and Ethics" is, in a sense, just such a picture. In writing it, space limitations compelled me to confine myself wholly to impressing upon the reader the relative and transitory character of moral codes. But in the popular concept of morality there are elements that are relatively permanent. Darwin in his "Descent of Man" showed that the gregarious and social traits that make associated life possible antedate, not only the division of society into classes, but even antedate humanity itself, since they plainly appear in the so-called lower animals.

So that my contention that morality only came into being with the division of society into classes and will pass away when class divisions are abolished, becomes a question of definition. If we include in our definition of morality the almost universal and relatively permanent gregarious traits of men and beasts, then morality has existed longer than humanity itself, and will continue to exist under Socialism. But it cannot be denied that moral codes were not formulated until after class-divisions had arisen. Every moral code of which we have any knowledge has been moulded by the cultural discipline of a society based on class-divisions. In every one of them there is implied the relation of status, of a superior, natural or supernatural, with the right or power to formulate "commandments," and of an inferior class whose lot it is to obey. We find this implication of status in even the noblest expressions of current ethical aspirations. Wordsworth's immortal Ode to Duty begins, "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!"

Since then morality as a word through the force of immemorial habit unavoidably suggests to the mind the relation of status, it appears to me that its use to describe truly social conduct in a society of equals can lead to nothing but confusion. What we really need is the right word to apply to the highest conduct in a classless society; and, I am inclined to think that a generation to whom the idea of status will have become wholly alien will find the word "social" entirely adequate for this purpose, though I frankly confess it is not adequate for us

"In the days of the years we dwell in, that wear our lives away."

My statement that the Revolutionary worker abstains from crimes against property from expediency rather than from principle must not be construed into an allegation that fear of personal punishment is the only ground for abstaining from such crimes. If it were not for the stupidity and malice of our opponents I would feel that I was insulting my readers by making this explanation; but for their benefit be it said that in a society based economically upon the institution of private property social life is impossible without respect for private property. Crimes against property are distinctly unsocial. But respect for the rights of property is rapidly disintegrating both among trust magnates and proletarians. The Natural Rights Philosophy still has much vitality in the middle classes, but as a broad statement it will hold good that the millionaire or the proletarian who shows respect for private property does so chiefly on grounds of expediency.

The socialist materialist is well content to leave this whole question of ethics to adjust itself, since he knows that equality of condition, the economic basis of Socialism, will necessarily evolve a mode of living, and standards of conduct in perfect harmony with their economic environment.

FOOTNOTES:

It may be as well to state that this was written before the writer had read Karl Kautsky's illuminating work, "Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History."

THE NIHILISM OF SOCIALISM.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet