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CHAPTER XXXVII

ECONOMIC RADICALISM

There exists in every economic organization a group of people who, because of certain characteristics which are more or less common to them, come to be looked upon by the rest of the economic organization as "radicals." Some of the most noticeable characteristics of the members of radical groups may be outlined briefly as follows: (1) The evils and faults of society look bigger to them than to the average person; wrongs tower into outrages, economic conditions cry out with indecencies, and the troubles and wants of the less fortunate classes of society loom up into atrocious evils and glaring crimes against humanity. (2) Radicals as a rule are more impatient for correction of economic faults than the average person. Delay is in their eyes criminal procrastination, and the faults of society require quick and effective action. (3) Radicals as a group place great stress upon the right of freedom of thought, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of agitation. The vocabulary of radicalism emphasizes and reëmphasizes the word freedom from first to last,-a perfectly natural rationalization of their burning desire to be immune from restraint in preaching and spreading the doctrines of radicalism. (4) Radicals demand changes which are more drastic and far-reaching than appeal to the ordinary man. They look upon mild reforms and ordinary reconstruction as mere patchwork; what they want is a transformation of society, a remaking of fundamentals, a complete remodeling of economic structure. (5) Radicals give every appearance of feelings of bitterness and hate toward classes who stand in their way. They dwell upon pictures of the class war, and the class struggle, and anticipate the destruction of a class of oppressors. For the mass of people, for the labor groups especially, they evince genuine love and sympathy, and this is all the stronger reason why they show hatred of oppressors. (6) They look forward to an organization of economic society in which group action shall predominate, and collective and coöperative institutions shall supersede private business. Political groups and non-political coöperative groups compose the anticipated structure of their rebuilt economic society. (7) Radicals place great faith in the willingness of the individual under the proposed régime to subordinate self-motives to social motives, and to abandon desires for selfish acquisition or aggrandizement in order to make way for desires of public service and the common good. It is prophesied that under the new régime public-spiritedness will be paramount.

These characteristics of radicals naturally set them off as unique and queer, and as different and dangerous. Some people feel that the only adequate treatment for such specimens of humanity is to jail them, lynch them, shoot them, or deport them. There come from time to time waves of popular feeling when this attitude takes possession of nearly the whole of society. Such an outburst of public feeling came during the years immediately following the World War. Even during these waves. of feeling, however, there are certain groups which take the stand that radical doctrines are after all not harmful if they are treated intelligently, and that if radicalism is empty and has no basis in fact, it will die a natural death, or will draw an insignificant band of followers, while if it has any basis in fact, society can quietly and in an orderly manner correct the wrongs, and thereby draw the sting out of radicalism. In ordinary times, the group of people who act upon this interpretation of the radical movement are usually the predominant group.

There are distinguishable shades or degrees of radicalism. Some are moderate and patient, and although they believe in drastic changes, they are willing to take time in reaching them. Economic evolution is their principle of action. Others speak of evolutionary revolution, indicating that they want revolutionary changes in economic structure, and although they will proceed by law and order to secure the changes, yet at the same time they will hurry up the process of evolution, and speed the day of drastic transformation with all their might and main. Others plan for a great upheaval, for a bloodless revolution, for the seizure of all things by the emancipated classes and the surrender of the oppressors. And still others deliberately calculate on force and violence as the means of overthrow of the capitalist power and the rule of the working classes everywhere.

Radicalism has not merely its various shades and degrees, but also its various parties, or schools of thought. Radicalism is synonymous to most people with socialism, but socialism and radicalism have so many divisions and parties that it is difficult to give the common essence of them all. The case is somewhat as in religion, where a great number of denominations, factions and groups appear, and the interpretation of religion made by each is different from that made by any other. Hence, it is more illuminating than a definition to state that all branches of radicalism partake in some shade and degree of the main characteristics of radicalism which were drawn up at the beginning of this section. Some of the main branches and their main individual peculiarities will be listed below.

1. State socialism looks toward state ownership and operation of the main industries of the country by a political government which has eliminated the capitalist classes from power. The German experiments in state ownership and operation before the World War were state capitalism rather than state socialism in the strict sense of the term. State capitalism is often considered by socialists as a stepping-stone toward state socialism. An important part of the program of the American

Socialist Party has been state ownership and operation of leading industries. In recent years American socialism has shown a drift toward the principles of guild socialism, which are described in later paragraphs. The experiments of North Dakota under the Non-Partisan League with state-owned grain elevators, state banks, and the like had the salient characteristics of state socialism. The construction of the Panama Canal has often been cited by socialists as proof of the practicability of state enterprises. However, none of these examples constituted 100 per cent state socialism, for the reason that the government itself remained capitalistic in its fundamental nature.

2. Guild socialism proposes a dual organization of politics and industry, under which each branch of industry would govern its own productive activity through the organization of its workers, while coördination of the various branches of industry would be effected through the federative organizations of the various industries, or through the control of the political state, or through a combination of both these methods. The workers would elect committees and councils to assume the leadership in production, and each branch of industry would thus put the control and operation of its own production in the hands of its workers. The state, representing more particularly consumers, would be a mediating and harmonizing agency, to effect proper adjustments between the several producers' organizations, and to protect the interests of society as a whole. The proposed Plumb plan for operation of the American railroads comes the nearest to the principles of Guild socialism of any project that is well known to this country, but the main stronghold of Guild socialism is among certain influential intellectual groups of Great Britain.

3. Marxian socialism refers to socialistic doctrines based upon the writings of a great German economist of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx. His most famous work, Das Kapital, has often been called the socialist "bible." Its elaborate attempt at a scientific diagnosis of capitalistic society has led many to refer to Marxian socialism as "scientific" socialism. Two of the most important doctrines of Marx are the surplus value theory and the class struggle theory. The surplus value theory has been defined in a previous chapter dealing with value theories. Its emphasis upon the tendency of capital to appropriate the product of labor over and above that remuneration necessary to provide the bare means of subsistence has long furnished inspiration for those socialistic. leaders who hold that capitalism inevitably means the exploitation of the proletariat. The class struggle theory has come to be widely known under the heading of the economic or materialistic interpretation of history. Marx taught that economic forces would in the long run be the undoing of capitalism itself, for concentration in industry would steadily. grow greater and greater, and this would ever more widely divide workers from capitalists. A class feeling would grow sharper and sharper, the greediness of the big capitalists would bring increasing misery to the workers, and the class war would eventuate. In the class

war the workers would unite and strip the capitalist exploiters of their property and decree that land and capital should be owned in common. The militant character of Marxian doctrine has caused it to be referred to frequently as revolutionary socialism.

4. Utopian socialism, as the name implies, refers to the somewhat idealistic proposals of many reformers. Prominent among this group of socialists have been Saint-Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen, and Bellamy. Many community experiments were tried in the collective ownership of property, but practical difficulties brought such experiments to an unsuccessful close. The most important permanent influence of the Utopian socialists was the coöperative movement among consumers.

5. Parliamentary socialism refers not so much to a separate school of thought as to a distinct method of bringing socialism about. Parliamentary tactics are aimed not at sudden revolution but at gradual evolution. They consist largely of reform laws passed by parliaments, congresses, and legislatures. The Fabian socialists of England are prominent advocates of such tactics, but almost every type of socialism utilizes some measure of parliamentary strategy. In the milder sense of the word, every social reformer who favors industrial and social legislation is a parliamentary socialist. Minimum wage and child labor legislation belongs within this category.

6. Syndicalism is a branch of socialism which exalts the organization of the producers in each line of industry as the supreme form of economic institution. Instead of using parliamentary tactics as a means to attaining power, syndicalists would use trade union tactics. Syndicalists believe in using trade unions as agencies of direct action by industrial methods. Direct action includes sabotage, i.e., spoiling machinery or product as a means of struggle against employers; boycotts and labels; and most important of all, strikes. The day is anticipated when the workers in one big union will declare the General Strike against the whole capitalist structure, and with the overturn of capitalism will win control of all industry. The stronghold of syndicalism is in the French labor movement, but a group of American syndicalists have sprung up independently, under the title of the Industrial Workers of the World. Their strength as an organization dwindled greatly in America during and following the war, but men imbued with their doctrines penetrated the organizations of ordinary trade unions in a great many cases, although the extent of this penetration is practically impossible to estimate with any degree of accuracy.

7. Communism is similar to other forms of socialism in its proposals for the organization of production, but differs sharply in its proposals for distribution of consumers' goods. Communism pools the earnings and ownings of people, and divides the common fund on some such basis as, for example, "to each according to his needs." Equality of income is more closely reached under communism than under any other form of socialism.

8. The Soviet is the name given to the form of political machinery

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which has been established in the Russian socialistic experiment. socialism which has been tried out in Russia has been a peculiar combination of some of the main principles of Karl Marx, of communism among peasants and workers, of opportunistic tactics to meet military and industrial crises, and of the dictatorship of a small minority of the proletariat over the bulk of the population. Bolshevism is the creed of the political party which is in power, and has the same relation to the Soviet as the platform of the party in power in a democratic state has to the general political organization of democracy. The effort to install communism encountered determined resistance from the Russian peasants and from many groups of workmen and capitalists. In the face of such resistance, the leaders of the Bolshevist party made numerous concessions for the sake of expediency. These concessions were in the nature of a compromise with capitalism, and have been called the NEP, or New Economic Policy. Soviet operation of some industries exists side by side with capitalistic operation of others. Particularly, what amounts to private ownership of land has been conceded to the peasants. The Russian experiment has been marked by periods of violence on both sides. Its frank hostility to capitalism everywhere has aroused the enmity of outside countries. It would be fruitless to prejudge the experiment. It is still in the stages of experimentation, struggling to survive in spite of the antagonism of all other great industrial countries.

The Economic Difficulties Confronting Socialism.—The arguments of the socialist commonly arouse more emotional excitement than rational analysis. They stir up a great deal of impassioned vituperation but only a small amount of careful reflection. Economic criticism should endeavor to avoid the pitfalls of mere denunciation of a project. It should endeavor to weigh the favorable and unfavorable considerations as evenly as possible. And it should not undertake to rush into a premature verdict that the project will or will not be a failure.

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Approaching the problem with these things in mind, we cannot lay down a final conclusion that socialism will or will not succeed. most that we can do is to describe on the one hand the economic difficulties confronting socialism, and on the other hand the socialistic methods for combating these difficulties. Whether or not the difficulties will prove to be insurmountable is a question which must be left to the future to decide.

The discussion may be grouped under four main headings, namely, the difficulties of production, the difficulties of consumption, the difficulties of distribution, and the difficulties of exchange. These headings, it will be noted, correspond with the four main divisions of the subject of economics.

The Difficulties of Socialistic Production.-The size of the socialistic organization encounters the law of diminishing returns. In nearly all branches of economic activity there is a limit to the size of business unit which can attain maximum efficiency. This limit exists even in lines of industry where standardized mechanical processes predominate, but

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