Jf*l' W W W V *~^ 
 
 CIAI/IS 
 
 F O R 
 
 JOSEPH E, COHEN
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 University of California 
 
 IRVINE
 
 Socialism for Students 
 
 By 
 JOS. E. COHEN 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
 1910
 
 Copyright 1909 
 By Charles H. Kerr & Company
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This little work consists of a series of 
 articles reprinted from the columns of "The 
 International Socialist Review," and written in 
 answer to the request of its editor for a study 
 course in 'Socialism. 
 
 The aim of the author is to indicate in 
 briefest outline some of the more salient points 
 in the Socialist philosophy, so as to give the 
 reader an inkling into the nature of the modern 
 Socialist movement. At best this treatise can 
 serve only as a framework. The much more 
 important task of rearing the structure remains 
 for the student. It is hoped that the course 
 of reading, suggested in the appendix, will be 
 found of service in this respect. 
 
 So far as possible the author has followed the 
 beaten path of Socialist thought and purposely 
 tried to avoid phases of the question over 
 which there is serious dispute. Where any- 
 thing new is offered, of course he alone is 
 responsible. J. E. C. 
 
 Philadelphia, June 24, 1909.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 APPENDIX . 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 III. 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 VI. 
 
 Page 
 
 3 
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 THE SOCIALIST INDICTMENT.. 18 
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 31 
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 47 
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 62 
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 78 
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 94 
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY 114 
 
 SOCIALIST STATEMAJJSHIP 130 
 
 ..149
 
 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Socialism is the issue to-day. It is the in- 
 spiration of press, pulpit and forum, the theme 
 of artist and poet, the problem of problems 
 confronting the statesman. For many years 
 the Socialists of Germany, France and other 
 European countries have been able to say that 
 their governments formulated no policy with- 
 out first considering how it would affect the So- 
 cialist movement. In America the new force 
 was a little slow in coming to be felt. But the 
 spectre of Socialism has entered the White 
 House and is being wrestled with by the two 
 dominant political parties. 
 
 While Socialism is the all-absorbing topic 
 of discussion, it is a subject concerning which 
 the greatest misunderstanding prevails. Thus, 
 within recent years Eugene Richter, while 
 member of the German Reichstag, wrote a 
 book called "Pictures of the Future," in which 
 he most effectively demolished tHe straw man 
 who advocates governmental interference in 
 every detail of life. And in the campaign of 
 1906 our own Speaker of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, Joseph G. Cannon, unburdened him- 
 self of the "stalest of the stale" that "Social- 
 
 7
 
 g SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 ism means dividing up." We are still told that 
 Socialism would reduce us to a dead level, or 
 that human nature is too imperfect to permit 
 of the realization of the new order ; that Social- 
 ism means paternalism extension of govern- 
 mental regulation, or anarchy destruction of 
 all government; that Socialism existed thou- 
 sands of years ago, or that it is a thousand 
 years ahead of the times; that Socialism is a 
 beautiful but impossible Utopia, or that it is 
 the coming slavery. 
 
 We need not pause here to meet these com- 
 mon objections to Socialism. They have been 
 admirably answered by Work, Spargo, Vail, 
 Hyndman, Plechanoff and Marx and Engels. 
 The objections usually encountered are found 
 to spring either from misinformation as to 
 what Socialism is, or, more particularly, the aim 
 of the Socialist movement. In studying Social- 
 ism, we can, in a great measure, note the his- 
 torical situations that gave rise toother schools 
 of thought and that prompt the criticisms 
 offered by the opponents of Socialism. 
 
 If Socialism is not what the non-Socialists 
 declare it to be what is it? 
 
 Here is the word of an authority: 
 
 "Modern Socialism," says Engels, in his 
 "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific," "is in its 
 essence, the direct product of the recognition, 
 on the one hand, of the class antagonism exist- 
 ing in the society of to-day, between proprietors 
 and non-proprietors, between capitalists and 
 wage-workers; on the other hand of the 
 anarchy existing in production."
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 Let us dwell upon this definition. It contains 
 several points, indispensable for a clear under- 
 standing of the question. 
 
 First of all, we are dealing with modern 
 Socialism not the early socialism of Owen, 
 St. Simon, Fourier and the like. We are not 
 dealing with the many attempts that, from 
 Plato to Bellamy, have been made to design 
 a beautiful utopia upon the impression that, 
 irrespective of actual conditions, it needs but 
 to be presented to any people in order to be 
 promptly accepted. We are not dealing with 
 the prehistoric communism of tribal society, 
 nor with the communism practiced in the early 
 days of Christianity. 
 
 The Socialism of our time flows out of 
 circumstances "existing in the society of to- 
 day," not that of five hundred years ago or ten 
 thousand years ago. Here we at once part 
 company with many non-Socialist political 
 economists. Unlike them, we shall not trespass 
 upon Robinson Crusoe's mythical island. The 
 Indian with his bow and arrow shall, for the 
 time being, be allowed to rest his oft-troubled 
 bones in peace in his happy hunting ground; 
 the Esquimaux and South Sea Islanders, too, 
 shall be permitted to go their own way re- 
 joicing. For, in this connection, we shall deal 
 only with countries in a state of civilization. 
 
 The circumstances which concern us here 
 are the heritage especially of the industrial 
 revolution of the last century. Certain dis- 
 coveries and inventions gave us steam and
 
 10 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 electricity for power, which, applied to the 
 simple, inexpensive tool, through the trans- 
 mitting mechanism of fly-wheels, shafting, 
 pulleys, etc., transformed it into a complicated, 
 expensive machine. With the industrial revo- 
 lution, society began to separate, roughly 
 speaking, into two classes; those who own the 
 machines and those who operate them. In 
 other words, a small number of the people, 
 capitalists, possess as their exclusive private 
 property the land, mines, factories, railroads 
 and other important instruments by the use 
 of which goods are produced to satisfy human 
 wants; while the great mass of the people, 
 workers, possess only their brain and brawn, 
 which they dispose of to the capitalists for 
 wages. 
 
 - Employers and employes meet upon the 
 labor market, the capitalists as buyers, the 
 workers as sellers, of labor power. The capital- 
 ists aim to buy the labor power of the workers 
 as cheaply as possible ; the workers aim to sell 
 their labor power as dearly as possible. Out 
 of this inherent conflict of interests between 
 them arises the class struggle. 
 
 The industrial revolution, at the same time, 
 brought about the factory system with its 
 division of labor and the world market. In 
 the factory thousands of men and women and 
 children toil together, each performing but a 
 single task, the results of hundreds of opera- 
 tions being finally assembled into the finished 
 article. More than that, the four corners of
 
 INTRODUCTION U 
 
 the earth vie with each other in contributing 
 food and clothing for employer and employe, 
 and the building material, illumination, fuel, 
 raw material, machinery and power, for the 
 factory. Again, the factory product is not re- 
 tained by those who have toiled together to 
 bring it forth, but by the factory owner. But 
 rarely does the owner use even a morsel of 
 the goods produced in his factory. He pro- 
 duces, not for his own use, but for sale. Almost 
 invariably he thrusts the article upon the 
 market in competition with the wares of other 
 lands. Commerce thus breaks down all 
 barriers, destroys all geographical boundaries, 
 establishes international relations and makes 
 the working class of the whole world kin. 
 Merchandise is your most persistent globe 
 trotter. 
 
 But while the production of goods is a social 
 affair, it is nevertheless carried on by the 
 capitalist class for their private profit; that is 
 to say, production is social, while ownership 
 and distribution are individual. The workers. 
 make, and the capitalists take. It fs this con- 
 tradiction between socialized production and 
 capitalist appropriation which causes the waste, 
 lack of order and anarchy that prevails in the 
 making and disposing of goods. 
 
 Thus we have the anarchy in production and 
 the consequent class struggle. To explain 
 fully the capitalist system of production, 
 showing that the more useless the capitalists 
 become the richer do they wax in the unpaid
 
 12 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 labor of the workers, showing that the system 
 is responsible for the economic ills from which 
 we suffer, showing that the trend of industrial 
 progress is toward the collective, social owner- 
 ship by the whole people of the means of pro- 
 duction they use in common that is Socialist 
 political economy. To organize, upon the basis 
 of the class struggle, those who are dissatisfied 
 with present arrangements, voicing the aims 
 of the oppressed, fighting their battles and 
 having for its ultimate object the elimination 
 of the anarchy in production and the ending 
 of the class struggle that is the Socialist 
 movement. 
 
 To aid him in clearly understanding present 
 society, the Socialist turns to the discoveries 
 in the modern sciences, embraces the theory 
 that evolution lies in a change from the simple 
 to the complex, and that every organism and 
 organization rises, flourishes and carries within 
 itself the seeds of growth to a higher order. 
 The Socialist brings to light the hidden secrets 
 of past society as his contribution toward the 
 solution of the "riddle of the unierse." And 
 the result of this excursion is the materialistic 
 interpretation of history, the theory that, from 
 epoch to epoch, changes in the forms of govern- 
 ment, human nature, arts, sciences, philosophies 
 and conceptions of the purpose of existence 
 can be accounted for only by considering the 
 changes in the manner of securing a livelihood; 
 that, consequently, since prehistoric commun- 
 ism, one struggle between oppressors and op-
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 pressed has followed another, these struggles 
 being always political in character, and that 
 the time has now come when the industrial 
 revolution must be supplemented by a political 
 and social revolution, whereby the workers, in 
 securing power, once and for all abolish class 
 distinctions. Modern Socialism is therefore 
 scientific. The 'Socialist movement is therefore 
 a political movement. 
 
 Relying upon the assurance that every 
 transformation in the economic basis of so- 
 ciety is attended by a transformation in the 
 intellectual superstructure, Socialism maintains 
 that once the economic question is settled, 
 that once the lust of gain at the expense of 
 our fellow men is no longer the paramount 
 incentive, as it is to-day breaking up the 
 family into a camp of enemies that once the 
 economic pressure is removed, there will follow 
 such a blossoming of what is best in human 
 nature as will be a veritable rebirth of the 
 soul of man. 
 
 The Socialist ideal, therefore, rests upon a 
 solid foundation. 
 
 The Socialist traces the development of the 
 family, property and the state, from ancient 
 down to modern times. By knowledge of 
 the changes the form of the family has under- 
 gone in the past, he can more intelligently con- 
 sider the problems of morality and ethics. In 
 like manner, knowledge of the history of 
 property and government enables him to ex- 
 plain ideas of justice and equity, duties and
 
 14 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 rights. Especially is this of service in setting 
 aside the evils that can be treated immediately 
 from those that will only adjust themselves 
 after the fundamental wrong is righted. The 
 sociology of the Socialist, therefore, assumes 
 the broadest dimensions. 
 
 The Socialist then directs his attention to 
 the manner in which the human brain operates. 
 He inquires into the process of thinking and 
 ascertains the method by which the mind forms 
 ideas and spins philosophies. He discovers 
 that the material is the substance of the ideal ; 
 but, that they complement each other in a 
 universal conception. By so doing the Social- 
 ist exposes the false reasoning and undermines 
 the last stronghold, the dualism, of his op- 
 ponents ; he establishes a monistic view of life 
 growing out of historical materialism, and 
 completes the synthetic philosophy of Social- 
 ism. 
 
 In thus dividing 'Socialism into a system of 
 political economy, a theory of social evolution 
 and an ideal, and showing its relation to 
 modern science, sociology and philosophy, we 
 are just as arbitrary as is Shakespeare in 
 dividing the span of man's life into seven ages. 
 For Socialism is not a piece of mechanism, 
 which can be decomposed into its parts, re- 
 quiring only lubrication and the touch of some 
 man's finger to start it a-going. To the thirty 
 millions of men and women of all climes and 
 complexions who constitute the international 
 Socialist movement, Socialism is a compact
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 whole, one and indivisible, striving for the free- 
 dom of the human race from economic bondage. 
 
 Because capitalism degrades woman even 
 more than man, and because the emancipation 
 of society at large depends upon the emanci- 
 pation of woman, woman takes her place by 
 the side of man in the Socialist movement ; be- 
 cause society is divided into two contending 
 classes, the Socialist movement is a class 
 movement; because economic questions are 
 political questions, the Socialist movement is a 
 political movement; because the working class 
 are without a country, migrating from one end 
 of the earth to the other in search of masters, 
 because capitalism is international, the So- 
 cialist movement is international; because the 
 source of the trouble is the contradiction be- 
 tween socialized production and capitalistic 
 appropriation, not reform but social revolu- 
 tion is the remedy ; because the workers cannot 
 free themselves without at the same time free- 
 ing all mankind, the Socialist movement has 
 the grandest ideal known to history. 
 
 (Socialism is something more than the passing 
 of one order in favor of another. It is born of 
 the slavery, the anguish and the travail of the 
 world's toilers. The story of labor's struggle 
 upward out of bondage is written in tears and 
 blood. It is a record of bold spirits who have 
 been ostracized and exiled because of their 
 convictions. It is a record of noble men who 
 have gladly abandoned lives of ease and luxury 
 to bend their genius to the cause of the op- 
 pressed. It is a record of a mighty host who
 
 16 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 have gone to their graves "unwept, unhonored 
 and unsung," because of the unquenchable fire 
 of justice burning in their bosoms. It is A 
 record of the sublimest comradeship that ever 
 encircled the earth. 
 
 With the rise of the Socialist movement, 
 labor ceases to be an object of pity and charity. 
 Conscious of its wrongs and how to right them, 
 it no longer looks to the upper class for its 
 salvation, but sounds the call for the solidarity 
 of the workers of the world. Against the 
 political economy, the science, the philosophy, 
 the law, the ethics, the art and the ideals of the 
 masters, it submits its own political economy, 
 science, philosophy, law, ethics, art and ideal. 
 Against the present labor offers the future- 
 
 'Finally, the Socialist recognizes that, while 
 the revolutions of the past have been fought 
 and won by the lower classes without either 
 they or the upper classes having a well- 
 defined idea of the outcome, the benefits have, 
 on that account, accrued largely to the upper 
 classes; that the social revolution which it is 
 the mission of the working class, as a class, to 
 accomplish, because it is a movement for the 
 benefit of the masses, requires the intelligence 
 of the workers and particularly a thorough 
 familiarity with Socialist thought by those 
 who ally themselves with the cause of the 
 workers. The slogan of the Socialist is, there- 
 fore: "More light, more light!" His emblem 
 Is the arm and torch. 
 
 Through the labyrinths of darkness and 
 gloom the seeker after truth must wend his
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 way for the golden thread of knowledge. It 
 is thus that the torchlight is ever borne aloft 
 by her apostles, now to flicker and wane 
 among the crags, then to illuminate the sombre 
 wilderness ; now to be lost in the caverns, then 
 to burst forth anew from the mountain peaks: 
 ever forward, ever onward, ever upward !
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 s THE SOCIALIST INDICTMENT 
 
 The present order in which we live did not 
 begin the moment the first human being had 
 the breath of life blown into his nostrils. It 
 came much later. In fact it is less than six 
 hundred years old, having developed out of a 
 former social order, known as feudalism, which 
 was based upon the ownership of land by lords 
 and barons. 
 
 Nor was the present order ushered in with 
 the hearty approval of those most concerned. 
 Quite the contrary. The manner of its coming 
 is fairly indicative of its whole career. 
 
 Let us turn to the last part of volume I of 
 "Capital", dealing with "The So-called Prim- 
 itive Accumulation," for light upon this point. 
 Here we learn that in the transition period 
 between feudalism and capitalism, bands of 
 feudal retainers were broken up, arable land 
 was transformed into sheep walks, the church 
 was despoiled of its property, crown lands 
 were stolen, the commons were enclosed, 
 estates were "cleared" of the peasants, several 
 Irish villages thus being depopulated at one 
 blow, while in Scotland areas as large as 
 German principalities were swept clean. In a 
 "clearing" made for the Duchess of Sutherland, 
 15,000 inhabitants were rooted out, their 
 
 18
 
 THE SOCIALIST INDICTMENT 19 
 
 villages destroyed and burnt and their fields 
 turned into pasturage. By this means the 
 Duchess appropriated some 794,000 acres of 
 land that had from time immemorial belonged 
 to the clan. 
 
 Marx also tells of the "bloody legislation" 
 by which feudal serfs were bludgeoned into 
 becoming factory workers. Anyone idling 
 about for three days was branded with a red 
 hot iron with a V on his breast, refusal to 
 work forfeited a man's economic freedom ; did 
 he absent himself a fortnight from his master, 
 he was branded with an S, upon his back, after 
 which, did he run away thrice, he was executed 
 as a felon. 
 
 "The discovery of gold and silver in America, 
 the extirpation, enslavement and entombment 
 in mines of the aboriginal population, the be- 
 ginning of the conquest and looting of the East 
 Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for 
 the commercial hunting of black-skins, signal- 
 ised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist pro- 
 duction. .These idyllic proceedings are the 
 chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On 
 their heels tread the commercial wars of the 
 European nations, with the globe for a 
 theatre." 
 
 True enough is it, as Marx says: "In actual 
 history it is notorious that conquest, enslave- 
 ment, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the 
 great part." In short, "Capital comes drip- 
 ping from head to foot, from every pore, with 
 blood and dirt."
 
 20 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 And when the industrial revolution had been 
 accomplished, when feudalism had been sup- 
 planted by capitalism, what was the result? 
 Great blotches upon the earth's surface called 
 cities eclipsed the hills, the meadows, the 
 lanes, the running brooks and the glorious 
 sunsets of rural life, great cities in which the 
 inhabitants are huddled together in a mad 
 struggle for existence. Engels has described 
 England as he found it half a century after the 
 introduction of machinery: "In London, fifty 
 thousand human beings get up every morning, 
 not knowing where they will lay their heads at 
 night. . . . The poverty is so great in Dublin, 
 that a single benevolent institution, the Men- 
 dicity Association, gives relief to 2,500 persons 
 or one per cent of the population daily, re- 
 ceiving and feeding them for the day and dis- 
 missing them at night." Similar conditions 
 are cited for Glasgow, Edinburgh and other 
 cities. Engels enumerates the diseases peculiar 
 to the workers and gives figures to show 
 that the death rate among the poor is twice 
 that among the rich. And after telling of 
 the terrible conditions under which factory 
 "hands" are compelled to work, he concludes: 
 "Women made unfit for child bearing, chil- 
 dren deformed, men enfeebled, limbs crushed, 
 whole generations wrecked, afflicted with 
 disease and infirmity, purely to fill the purses 
 of the bourgeoisie." 
 
 Of the hardships inflicted upon the children 
 John A. Hobson says : "There is no page in the
 
 THE SOCIALIST INDICTMENT 21 
 
 history of our nation so infamous as that which 
 tells the details of the unbridled greed of these 
 pioneers of modern commercialism, feeding on 
 the misery and degradation of English chil- 
 dren." 
 
 The same charges with even a greater 
 burden of proof can be made against the 
 England of to-day. For example, turn to Jack 
 London's "People of the Abyss," narrating ex- 
 periences which befell him in the largest city 
 in the world in the summer of 1902, during a 
 period of "good times." 
 
 "One million, eight hundred thousand people 
 in London live on the poverty line and below 
 it, and another 1,000,000 live with one week's 
 wages between them and pauperism," he de- 
 clares. "The population of London is one- 
 seventh of the total population of the United 
 Kingdom and in London, year in and year out, 
 an adult in every four dies on public charity, 
 either in the workhouse, the hospital or the 
 asylum." "There are 300,000 people in London, 
 divided into families, that live in one-room 
 tenements. Far, far more live in two and three 
 rooms and are as badly crowded, regardless of 
 sex, as those that live in one room. . . . There 
 are 900,000 people living in less than the 
 400 cubic feet of space prescribed by the law." 
 And of those who have employment, according 
 to Sir A. Forwood : "One of every 1400 work- 
 men is killed annually, one of every 2,500 
 workmen is totally disabled ; one of every 300 
 workmen is temporarily disabled three or four 
 weeks."
 
 28 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 But these are only figures. And figures are 
 cold and lifeless they do not touch the human 
 heart. Let us take a few incidents, which are 
 just as true of American cities. "The shadow 
 of Christ's church falls across Spitalfields Gar- 
 den, and in the shadow of Christ's Church, at 
 three o'clock in the afternoon, I saw a sight I 
 
 never wish to see again 'Those women 
 
 there/ said our guide (pointing to a group of 
 the 35,000 wretches of the slums, not depraved 
 women, who are homeless), 'will sell them- 
 selves for thru' pence, or tu' pence, or a loaf 
 of stale bread/ " Also, this experience, which 
 London tells of his two companions, a carter 
 and a carpenter: "From the slimy sidewalk, 
 they were picking up bits of orange peel, apple 
 skin, and grape stems, and they were eating 
 them. The pits of green gage plums they 
 cracked between their teeth for the kernels in- 
 side. They picked up stray crumbs of bread 
 the size of peas, apple cores so black and dirty 
 one would not take them to be apple cores, 
 and these things these two men took in their 
 mouths, and chewed them, and swallowed 
 them." 
 
 The author sums it up thus : "In short, the 
 London Abyss is a vast shambles. Year by 
 year, and decade after decade, rural England 
 pours in a flood of vigorous strong life, that 
 not only does not renew itself, but perishes 
 by the third generation." And, quoting the 
 scientist Huxley: "Were the alternative 
 presented to me I would deliberately prefer the
 
 THE SOCIALIST INDICTMENT 28 
 
 life of the savage to that of those people of 
 Christian London." 
 
 So much for the "classic land of capitalism." 
 What song does America sing? America, the 
 new world, the Canaan of natural resources, 
 with its vast expanse of fertile soil, magnificent 
 forests, navigable rivers, and unlimited op- 
 portunities? Here, as in the old world, the 
 "primitive accumulation" began with immense 
 land grants, bestowed upon court favorites by 
 kings at the expense of the original inhabitants, 
 with no other warrant than that "possession is 
 nine points of the law." Stealing of lands is 
 quite a gentlemanly occupation. Some of the 
 colonial surveyors patriots, all were not 
 averse to doing it, and, in our own time, several 
 eminent gentlemen have been exposed as tim- 
 ber land thieves. And speaking of patriotism, 
 we may here note that just that time when 
 love of country runs strongest is seized by un- 
 scrupulous men of means to defraud the people, 
 in filling army contracts and taking advantage 
 of the financial embarrassment of the govern- 
 ment. That this has been so all down our 
 history, Laurens, in the Revolution, Lincoln, 
 in the Civil War, and General Miles, in the 
 war with Spain, bear witness. 
 
 Another method in vogue generally and in 
 line with primitive accumulation is the despoil- 
 ing of inventive genius. Not only do the bene- 
 fits of progress inure largely to the few, but it 
 is considered axiomatic that inventors must fill 
 paupers' graves. Edison is such a shining ex-
 
 24 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 ception to this rule, that he is regarded as the 
 marvel of the age. 
 
 Well, capitalism is established in America. 
 We know it by its fruits. For when Robert 
 Hunter stated the problem of poverty, he 
 rendered so many counts in the indictment 
 against the present social system. "These 
 fragments of information, indicative of a wide- 
 spread poverty," he says, "fall under the fol- 
 lowing heads : Pauperism, the general distress, 
 the number of evictions, the pauper burials ; 
 the overcrowding and insanitation due to im- 
 proper housing; the death rate from tubercu- 
 losis ; the unemployment, and the number of 
 accidents in certain trades." 
 
 The many fragments of information gleaned 
 by Hunter are summarized by him as follows : 
 "There are probably in fairly prosperous years 
 no less than 10,000,000 persons in poverty ; that 
 is to say, underfed, underclothed and poorly 
 housed. Of these about 4,000,000 are public 
 paupers. Over 2,000,000 workingmen are un- 
 employed from four to six months in the year. 
 About 500,000 male immigrants arrive yearly 
 and seek work in the very districts where un- 
 employment is the greatest. Nearly half of the 
 families in the country are propertyless. Over 
 1,700,000 little children are forced to become 
 wage-earners when they should still be in 
 school. About 5,000,000 women find it neces- 
 sary to work and about 2,000,000 are employed 
 in factories, mills, etc. Probably no less than 
 1,000,000 workers are injured or killed each 
 year while doing their work, and about
 
 THE SOCIALIST INDICTMENT 25 
 
 10,000,000 of the persons now living, will, if 
 the present ratio is kept up, die of the prevent- 
 able disease, tuberculosis." 
 
 Between eighty and ninety-four per cent of 
 the houses in the large cities are rented ; in the 
 year 1903, 60,463 of such "homes" in Manhat- 
 tan, fourteen per cent of the total, were broken 
 up by forcible eviction. In the city of New 
 York, too, one out of every ten persons who 
 dies is buried at public expense in Potter's 
 Field. 
 
 Isador Ladoff also furnishes us with some 
 interesting data. Over one hundred and twenty- 
 five millions of dollars is spent annually in the 
 State of New York alone for charity. Dr. 
 Savage is quoted as saying that one-fourth of 
 the tenement population take advantage of the 
 free treatment of the dispensaries. A specific 
 instance of conditions in the large cities sur- 
 rounding modern industrial enterprise is de- 
 scribed by A. M. Simons in his "Packing- 
 town," the antecedent of "The Jungle." 
 
 Under- the influence of the chapter on "The 
 Child" in "Poverty," John Spargo made a more 
 thorough investigation into the hardships of 
 child life, the results of which he gives us in his 
 work, "The Bitter Cry of the Children." We 
 can here only hint at the wealth of information 
 that work contains. "In Chicago, the death 
 rate varies from about twelve per thousand in 
 the wards where the well-to-do reside to 
 thirty-seven per thousand in the tenement 
 wards." "I think it can safely be said that in 
 this country, the richest and greatest country
 
 28 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 in the world's history, poverty is responsible 
 for at least 80,000 lives every year." In con- 
 nection with which this should be considered : 
 "The experts say that the baby of the tenement 
 is born physically equal to the baby of the 
 mansion." 
 
 "Sanitary conditions do not make any real 
 difference at all; it is food and food alone," 
 declares Dr. Vincent. Personal examinations 
 conducted by Spargo showed that as many as 
 20 per cent of school children are underfed. 
 
 The employment of children who belong in 
 school, child-slavery, is the blackest crime in 
 our social arrangement. The frightful condi- 
 tion depicted by Engels wherein children from 
 orphan asylums and other institutions were 
 hired by mill owners never to return alive, has 
 been equaled by a similar condition in the 
 glass factories of New Jersey, within our own 
 time. In the coal regions of Pennsylvania and 
 other states, thousands of breaker boys sit all 
 day long before the shutes down which rushes 
 tons of coal and slate. Their fingers are* 
 bruised and distorted by the work. They are 
 not only deprived of schooling, but even of the 
 opportunity of exchanging a thought with 
 their mates unless they shout at the top of 
 their lungs, so great is the din. And while 
 children of tender years are employed through- 
 out New England and all industrial states, it is 
 only when we cross the Mason and Dixon 
 Line to the sunny South that the institution of 
 child slavery is presented to us in all its horror. 
 
 We cite a few instances taken from the
 
 27 
 
 United States Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor 
 for May, 1904. At that time, whatever im- 
 provements may since have been made, South 
 Carolina prohibited the labor of tots only under 
 ten years of age, but had no provision for 
 factory inspection. Georgia had no age limit, 
 and Alabama none to speak of. North Carolina 
 prohibited the employment of children under 
 12 years of age but had no provision for carry- 
 ing this into effect, so that children 6 and 7 
 years of age were found working. Violations 
 were plentiful in every state. Except for a 
 very few in two establishments, the children 
 in the Southern States were white children. 
 The working hours were as many as sixty-six 
 a week. None of the children reported for 
 North and South Carolina and Alabama had 
 foreign-born parents, while in some instances 
 no less than thirty-seven per cent were unable 
 to read and write English. And the number of 
 child slaves is constantly increasing! 
 
 But this is only part of the price the working 
 class pay for the privilege of dragging their 
 weary bodies from the cradle to the grave. 
 For the profit of the capitalist class, so we are 
 informed by Dr. Wiley, after twenty-five years' 
 work in the Department of Agriculture, 
 practically everything we eat and drink is 
 adulterated. 
 
 For the profit of the capitalist class there are 
 "he" towns and "she" towns, with the result 
 that hundreds of thousands of men and women 
 pass their lives in enforced celibacy. And 
 worse than that, the inability of young men to
 
 28 
 
 earn enough to support families, is responsible 
 for the fact that half a million women peddle 
 their virtue as merchandise upon the street. 
 And so great is the marital incompatibility, due 
 in no small measure to economic reasons, that 
 it is reported there were a million divorces in 
 the United States within the last three years. 
 
 From year to year, as the rich grow richer 
 and the poor poorer, the contrast between the 
 two classes is intensified. At one pole, the 
 upper class is steeped in degeneracy. At the 
 other pole, there sinks an element, creatures of 
 the city "dumps" and "slums", into the under 
 world. Both scum and dregs are lost to the 
 race. 
 
 Periodically the entire system is thrown out 
 of joint by industrial crises, due to the ex- 
 ploitation of labor, the anarchy in production, 
 and the fact that the capitalist class cannot 
 control the Frankenstein, the productive forces, 
 they have conjured into being. During a 
 commercial depression, the industrial reserve 
 army of out of works is increased by millions 
 of recruits, with a consequent demoralization 
 of the whole working class. At such a time, 
 the feeling of insecurity as to the present and 
 uncertainty as to what may come, that ever 
 haunts the workers, grows into a veritable 
 nightmare. It is just this fear of the morrow 
 that stings more than poverty itself and that 
 is the strongest charge in the indictment of 
 capitalism. 
 
 Thousands of babies are every year the 
 victims of preventable diseases, caused in the
 
 THE SOCIALIST INDICTMENT 29 
 
 main by malnutrition; women are unfitted for 
 the function of motherhood, due to their toiling 
 in the factories, while to name the dangerous 
 occupations in which men are employed is to 
 give an inventory of occuptions almost every 
 trade having its special disease. In some 
 cases it is the monotony of work that wrecks 
 the nervous system ; in others, the strain upon 
 certain parts of the body or certain organs ; in 
 others, the unsanitary conditions of the work- 
 shop ; in others, the handling of dyes and 
 poisons, or the inhaling of foul air and dust. 
 It is the last named particularly that is re- 
 sponsible for tuberculosis. 
 
 Tuberculosis is not only a social disease it 
 is a poverty disease, a working class plague 
 well named the Great White Plague. One 
 glance at the map at a tuberculosis exhibit 
 suffices to show where the "lung" districts are 
 suffices to prove that out of the working 
 class comes the hundreds of thousands of men 
 and women and children in America who fall 
 in the white massacre. Every occupation has 
 its distinct disease ; tuberculosis is the distinct 
 disease of capitalism. 
 
 This, then, is the Socialist indictment: That 
 after thousands of years of toil and trial, after 
 having stolen the secrets of the skies and 
 harnessed the forces of nature, society is still 
 engaged in a fiendish struggle '^r animal 
 existence, a struggle that dooms the great mass 
 of the people to poverty and misery, degrada- 
 tion and disease, slavery and untimely death. 
 And the Socialist charges that the great under-
 
 30 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 lying wrong out of which these evils arise is 
 the fact that the few own what the many need. 
 And the Socialist declares that only when so- 
 ciety holds as common property the means of 
 wealth production will the social ills that we 
 are heir to be banished, for only then will the 
 toil of the people inure to the common weal 
 and make for the common good.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 
 
 Political economy concerns itself with the 
 bread and butter question. To study this 
 question in all its aspects, to understand the 
 material conditions of life, which Hegel termed 
 "civic society," is the purpose of political 
 economy. For, as Marx said: "The anatomy 
 of that civic society is to be found in political 
 economy." 
 
 Just now we are going to examine the 
 anatomy of present day society capitalist so- 
 ciety. How can we distinguish capitalism from 
 feudalism and chattel slavery? What is 
 capital? "Capital," say the non-Socialist 
 economists, "is that part of wealth used to 
 create more wealth." This definition is about 
 as satisfactory as the old Greek's description of 
 man "a featherless biped." It is true that 
 man is a featherless biped, but there are other 
 featherless bipeds and all featherless bipeds 
 are not men. Man is something more than 
 a featherless two-legged animal. And, in the 
 same way, capital is something more than "that 
 part of wealth used to create more wealth." 
 
 We know that capitalists are not feudal 
 lords and that capitalists are not slave owners. 
 No one but a non-Socialist economist would
 
 32 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 think of saying there were capitalists in the 
 dark ages any more so than he would think of 
 speaking of the astronomy of Adam's day. A 
 definition of capital, to be worth anything, 
 must lay stress upon its historical character as 
 well as its peculiar function ; it can be true 
 only of certain countries at certain times under 
 certain conditions. Capital is a transitory ar- 
 rangement and the laws of capitalist produc- 
 tion apply only to capitalism. They do not 
 apply to the finding of diamonds on the street, 
 or to handicraft, or to the fine arts. The 
 laws of capitalist production do not apply to 
 all production carried on to-day, and do not 
 apply to other systems of production, such as 
 chattel slavery and feudalism. 
 
 Here is the definition of John A. Hobson: 
 "Capitalism may provisionally be defined as 
 the organization of business upon a large scale 
 by an employer or company of employers 
 possessing an accumulated stock of wealth 
 wherewith to acquire raw materials and tools, 
 and hire labor, so as to produce an increased 
 quantity of wealth which shall constitute 
 profit." 
 
 Capitalism, therefore, requires: Production 
 on a large scale; the workers divorced from 
 the ownership both of the means of production 
 and the product of their labor; the capitalist 
 class owning the means of production, hiring 
 the workers for wages and retaining the product 
 of the workers' labor; production for sale and 
 the profit of the capitalist class. 
 
 With that we are ready for Marx's illu-
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 38 
 
 initiating sentence, which is a keynote to the 
 critical analysis of capitalism: "The wealth of 
 those societies, in which the capitalist mode 
 of production prevails, presents itself as an 
 immense accumulation of commodities, its unit 
 being 1 a single commodity." 
 
 A commodity is something bought and sold. 
 It is an article that satisfies some human want 
 or fancy. It is a product of labor. But while 
 every commodity is a product of labor, every 
 product of labor is not a commodity. 
 
 Every product of labor that serves a useful 
 purpose has use value. Yet a thing may be 
 very useful to the man who makes it, such as 
 the raft of the backwoodsman, and not be a 
 commodity. 
 
 To be a commodity, a product of labor must 
 bring a price upon the market. It must be a 
 common object of trade and produced with the 
 end in view of being exchanged for money 
 of being sold. In addition to having use value, 
 to be a commodity it must possess exchange 
 value. 
 
 Use value may be a personal affair ; exchange 
 value is a social relation. 
 
 It is the possession of exchange value that 
 turns a labor product into a commodity. Under 
 all systems of production are articles produced 
 for their use value. It is the particular pro- 
 duction of exchange values, or commodities, 
 that distinguishes capitalism from feudalism, 
 chattel slavery and primitive communism. In 
 capitalist society exchange value is so much
 
 34 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 more important than use value, that whenever 
 we speak of value we mean exchange value. 
 
 Let us now see how value is determined. 
 
 "Labor produces all weath," say some po- 
 litical economists. This is another "featherless 
 biped" definition. For we must know what 
 sort of labor produces use value and what sort 
 of labor produces exchange value. And on this 
 point a dignified silence is too of ten maintained. 
 
 To produce use value, such as hats, it re- 
 quires labor of a certain kind, the labor of 
 hatters, not that of cigarmakers. This labor 
 of a certain kind, the labor of hatters in shaping 
 hats or the labor of cigarmakers in rolling 
 cigars, is called concrete labor. Concrete labor 
 produces use value. 
 
 Now, when we say , "This hat is worth four 
 dollars, while this box of cigars is worth only 
 two dollars," it is because hats and cigars have 
 something in common, other than that they 
 contain concrete labor. We take it for granted 
 that the hat was made by hatters, not cigar- 
 makers, and that the cigars were not made by 
 hatters. Exchange yalue is not created by 
 concrete labor. The problem here is not "what 
 kind," but "how much?" Exchange values 
 are quantities, not qualities. 
 
 Exchange value is determined by the amount 
 of labor in the commodity. It is not the 
 particular labor of hatters and cigar makers 
 that you buy with dollars, so much as a certain 
 amount of general labor. You pay four dollars 
 for a hat and two dollars for a box of cigars, 
 because, as a rule, twice as much average labor
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 35 
 
 has been spent in making the hat as was spent 
 in making the box of cigars, just as you pay 
 twice as much for two boxes of cigars as you 
 pay for one. This labor that you buy with 
 money, because it is considered apart from the 
 nature of the labor performed, is called ab- 
 stract labor. This, then, is the difference be- 
 tween the two: 
 
 Concrete labor produces use value. Abstract 
 labor measures exchange value. 
 
 Further: All labor is not of one grade. But 
 the more skilled can be reduced to the less 
 skilled; one day's high class labor is worth, 
 say, two day's simple labor. This is not a very 
 difficult thing to do since, as Marx tells us, 
 "Unskilled labor constitutes the bulk of all 
 labor performed in capitalist society, as may be 
 seen from all statistics." Nor do we deal with 
 the actual labor of the individual. Production 
 is for the market and the competition of other 
 producers is involved. Value is a social rela- 
 tion. A more exact definition, therefore, would 
 be: Exchange value is measured by the aver- 
 age amount of simple, abstract labor, socially 
 necessary to produce the commodity. 
 
 Commodities produced, they are next ex- 
 changed. Money is the medium of exchange, 
 accepted in all countries reached by capitalism ; 
 money is the universal equivalent. While the 
 money paid for some commodities, their price, 
 is above their value, and the price of others is 
 below their value, value is at the bottom of 
 price and, taking the whole field of capitalist
 
 36 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 production into consideration, commodities 
 may be said to exchange at about their value. 
 The tendency is for exchange to be between 
 equal values. 
 
 But if only labor creates value, and if com- 
 modities exchange at about their value, how 
 does it come that Mr. Coldcash, who owns a 
 factory, who does no labor, but is taking the 
 rest cure at Monte Carlo, receives a very satis- 
 factory yearly income? 
 
 Here another character steps upon the scene. 
 
 This character is the worker. He comes to 
 the market where only commodities are bought 
 and sold. He owns no commodities, He has 
 no hats, cigars, or diamonds to sell at least 
 not in any considerable quantity, and capitalism 
 concerns itself only with production on a large 
 scale. He cannot sell commodities, yet this is 
 a commodity age. What can he sell? 
 
 He has something to sell which every capital- 
 ist is anxious to buy. The worker sells his 
 labor power, the use of his brain and brawn, 
 for wages. Wage-labor is an institution pe- 
 culiar to capitalism, as against serfdom and 
 chattel slavery. And the worker throws his 
 labor power upon the market as a commodity. 
 
 Mr. Coldcash is in business purely for busi- 
 ness. Now, the price of the commodity labor 
 power, like all commodities, rests upon its 
 value. And the principal factor in determining 
 its value is the amount of abstract labor it re- 
 quires to keep glowing the spark of life in the 
 workers and enable them to reproduce the
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 37 
 
 species; that is to say, the amount of food, 
 clothing and shelter required to sustain life. 
 
 We say "principal factor," not the only 
 factor. Socialists do not hold to the 
 "iron law of wages." For, to quote 
 Marx, "There are some peculiar features 
 which distinguish . the value of the labor- 
 ing power, or the value of labor, from the 
 value of other commodities. The value of 
 laboring power is formed by two elements 
 the one merely physical, the other historical or 
 social. Its ultimate limit is determined by the 
 physical element, that is to say, to maintain 
 and reproduce itself, to perpetuate its physical 
 existence, the working class must receive the 
 necessaries absolutely indispensable for living 
 and multiplying. . . . Besides this mere physical 
 element, the value of labor is in every country 
 determined by a traditional standard of life. It 
 is not merely physical life, but it is the satis- 
 faction of certain wants springing from the 
 social conditions in which people are placed 
 and reared up." 
 
 For the rest, that the cost of production is 
 the principal element in determining wages is 
 illustrated by the fact that scales of wages 
 vary from town to town according to the 
 different standards of living. 
 
 Labor power is sold as a commodity. What 
 happens? Mr. Coldcash starts in business by 
 paying so much for raw material, machinery, 
 heat, light, etc., and so much for labor power. 
 Let us say he invests $1,000,000, of which
 
 38 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 $200,000 goes for wages during the year. At 
 the end of that time there are profits to the 
 amount of $400,000. By what magic did Mr. 
 Coldcash's $1,000,000 breed $400,000 while Mr. 
 Coldcash was taking the rest cure at Monte 
 Carlo? 
 
 Once again, what entered into the pro 
 duction? 
 
 First of all, raw material, machinery, fuel, 
 light, power, etc., worth $800,000 and, let us 
 say, all used up. Turn these commodities 
 about as you will, equal values exchange for 
 equal values, whether before or after produc- 
 tion. The $800,000 worth of goods are worth 
 just that amount in the finished products. 
 
 There was also $200,000 worth of labor 
 power. Let us follow that a little more closely. 
 
 When a worker sells his labor power, he sells 
 it for about what it costs him to produce it. 
 A day's pay is about what it costs the worker 
 to live a day. But the amount of time he 
 works that day has next to nothing to do with 
 his cost of living. That is regulated by the 
 competition of workers for employment, the 
 strength of unions, factory legislation, etc. 
 And, mark it well, regardless of whatever in- 
 fluences may favor him, there is a considerable 
 difference between the number of hours it 
 takes him to produce value equal to his wages 
 and the total number of hours, constituting the 
 working day, for which he has to work for 
 those wages. There is a substantial difference 
 between the value the worker creates and the 
 wage he receives for creating it. When the
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 39 
 
 capitalist buys labor power for a day, he pays 
 for the number of hours it takes the worker 
 to produce the equivalent of his wages ; he 
 pays for, say, three hours. When the capitalist 
 sells the worker's product he sells the total 
 number of hours the worker has toiled ; he 
 sells, say, nine hours. This difference of six 
 hours' labor time and value the capitalist 
 pockets. This is surplus value. 
 
 Thus while Mr. Coldcash's manager buys 
 and sells labor power at its value, he neverthe- 
 less realizes $400,000 worth of surplus value. 
 "Surplus value is unpaid labor," is the theory 
 that Marx was the first to critically examine 
 and elucidate. And unpaid labor is the corner 
 stone of the present social order. 
 
 Let us follow Mr. Coldcash. That worthy 
 gentleman does not pocket all of the $400,000. 
 He has rented the factory from Mr. Codfish, a 
 a member of the landed aristocracy. Mr. Cod- 
 fish must maintain himself in a manner be- 
 coming his station, which means that he must 
 not soil his lily white hands or wrinkle his 
 brow with work. To avoid doing so, he exacts 
 rent, say $40,000 a year. Moreover, Mr. Cold- 
 cash is under some obligations to Mr. Money- 
 bags, the financier, who lent Mr. Coldcash the 
 $1,000,000 with which he started in business. 
 Mr. Moneybags is also one of the pillars of 
 society and must be supported in idleness. So 
 Mr. Moneybags very graciously receives back 
 his principal with interest at the current rate, 
 say $60,000. What Mr. Coldcash retains as his 
 share, $300,000, is industrial profit. While this
 
 4 1 ) SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 division does not always take place, one in- 
 dividual often officiating in two or even the 
 three capacities, yet if for no other reason than 
 to explain their different stages historically, 
 we divide surplus value into rent, interest and 
 profit. 
 
 The distinction between profit and surplus 
 value should be emphasized. Profits are calcu- 
 lated on the total investment. Surplus value 
 represents the exploitation of labor and is 
 based upon the wages only. In the case here 
 given, the entire profits were about $400,000 
 on the $1,000,000 invested, or 40 per cent. At 
 the same time that $400,000 was extracted out 
 of the labor of the workers whose wages were 
 $200,000. The rate of surplus value was 200 
 per cenj. 
 
 The difference between profit and surplus 
 value is so marked that one may increase 
 while the other decreases. For example, take 
 the "law of diminishing returns," offered by 
 Mr. Coldcash's apologists to excuse his pocket- 
 ing the unearned increment. It happens that 
 normally, in a number of commercial enter- 
 prises, by the increase of invested capital laid 
 out in more expensive machinery, etc., as well 
 as artificially, by over-capitalization, watering 
 of stocks, lobbying and bribery of public 
 officials, keeping a double set of books, and 
 such other methods best known to the eminent- 
 ly respectable Mr. Coldcash, the average rate 
 of profit may be shown to be dwindling from 
 year to year. The rate of exploitation, how- 
 ever, constantly increases, due to labor-dis-
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 41 
 
 placing machinery, the growth of the industrial 
 reserve army and the consequent intenser 
 struggle for work, so that labor, and not 
 capital, brings in diminishing returns. This, 
 and this alone, accounts for the tremendous in- 
 crease in the national wealth and the making of 
 multi-millionaries. 
 
 We may, in passing, also consider a few 
 more of the explanations offered to show cause 
 why Mr. Coldcash and his colleagues are en- 
 titled to retain their unearned increment. 
 Here is one holy trinity that is frequently 
 encountered: Mr. Coldcash's profits are 
 merely his wages of risk, superintendence and 
 abstinence. Wages or risk by which it is 
 claimed that the worker should insure Mr. 
 Coldcash against the risk of not realizing 
 surplus value. Wages of superintendence 
 which overlooks the fact that surplus values 
 were never so scarce as when Mr. Coldcash 
 superintended the business and never so 
 abundant as when Mr. Coldcash was taking the 
 rest cure at Monte Carlo. Wages of ab- 
 stinence which ignores the fact that Mr. 
 Coldcash was only abstinent when the surplus 
 value was meagre ; now that it is plentiful he is 
 no longer ascetic, but leads a life of debauch- 
 ery or, rather, takes the rest cure at Monte 
 Carlo. 
 
 But if the capitalist class are to be re- 
 munerated for lack of risk, superintendence 
 and abstinence, why not the workers who do 
 run all risk of life and limb, do the super- 
 intending, and whose wages compel them to
 
 42 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 be abstinent? Why is it that, for the workers, 
 "virtue is its only reward?" The fact that 
 dividends come to owners whether they be 
 children, insane or degenerate, shows that 
 surplus value is secured without returning 
 an equivalent. 
 
 In view of the ground we have now covered, 
 let us amplify our definitions. Here is what 
 Marx says of capital : "Capital does not consist 
 of means of subsistence, implements of labor, 
 and raw materials alone, nor only of material 
 products ; it consists just as much of exchange 
 values. All the products of which it consists 
 are commodities. Thus capital is not merely 
 the sum of material products ; it is a sum of 
 commodities, of exchange values, of social 
 quantities." Hyndman and Untermann, be- 
 sides Marx, have developed this thought 
 further, illustrating the many garbs in which 
 capital appears, also the divers functions money 
 performs. 
 
 As to value and price, Untermann quotes 
 Kautsky upon an important point. "It is not 
 the value, but the price of production, which 
 forms under a developed capitalist mode of 
 production the level, around which market 
 prices fluctuate under the influence of demand 
 and supply. The price of production, however, 
 is not floating on air, but rests upon value." 
 The price of production consists of the cost 
 plus the average rate of profits which the 
 capitalists are able to secure at the particular 
 time. In regard to value, price of production 
 and market price, it is well to heed what Marx
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 43 
 
 says: "By comparing the standard wages or 
 values of labor in different countries, and by 
 comparing them in different historical epochs 
 of the same country, you will find that the 
 value of labor itself is not fixed but a variable 
 magnitude, even supposing the values of all 
 other commodities to remain constant. A 
 similar comparison would prove that not only 
 the market rates of profit change, but its 
 average rates." 
 
 Whatever the ups and downs of the market, 
 such as supply and demand, "buying cheap 
 and selling dear," the influence of monopoly 
 and such other "higgling of the market," which 
 affect prices and give one capitalist the ad- 
 vantage over another, however turbulent the 
 sea of conflicting emotions upon which capital- 
 ists are tossed as to the desirability of securing 
 a slow, small and sure return on their invest- 
 ments as against a quick, large, but uncertain 
 return, the workers remain the sole producers 
 of value and the capitalists remain the idlers 
 and appropriators of surplus value. When 
 commodities have been produced, exchanged 
 and distributed under the methods generally 
 prevailing (all of which is included in the term 
 production), the only exploitation of the 
 workers peculiar to capitalism has been ac- 
 complished. 
 
 With Marx's theory of surplus value as an 
 X-ray, to borrow an idea from one of Rata 
 Langa's masterly cartoons, we can lay bare the 
 mechanism of capitalist production. It is the 
 exploitation of labor, the accumulation of
 
 44 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 surplus values in the shape of exchange values 
 in such quantity as to glut the market, that 
 is the primary cause of commercial crises. A 
 commercial crisis apprehends Messrs. Cold- 
 cash, Codfish and Moneybags in the act of 
 "getting away with the goods." Here we may 
 insert, both D. A. Wells and Hyndman note 
 that the crisi? of 1873 was the first to indicate 
 that peoples even remotejy connected with 
 capitalism are bound up with it in sharing the 
 shock of an industrial disturbance. Capitalism 
 scourges the whole world. 
 
 During a crisis, the enterprise of smaller 
 capitalists is assimilated by the industrial 
 giants. This also results from attacks upon 
 the "malefactors of wealth," and from in- 
 surance scandal and "frenzied finance" ex- 
 posures. For the timid, petty traders are al- 
 ways first to sell when the market takes a bad 
 turn and thus play into the hands of the big 
 holders. 
 
 Aside from any "illegal" measure, which is 
 but the hissing steam signifying that the water, 
 the current of commerce, has reached the boil- 
 ing point the point wherein consolidation is 
 inevitable the tendency for capital to concen- 
 trate in every industry and to centralize into the 
 hands of fewer capitalists, is only a higher 
 form of the present system of production. In- 
 vestment continues until an industry is 
 saturated with capital, then independent 
 companies are merged into one, the corpora- 
 tion next absorbs the business closely allied 
 with it, the tentacles of the more successful
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 45 
 
 promoters and captains of industry spread out 
 in every direction until there comes "the en- 
 tanglement of all peoples in the net of the 
 world market and, with this, the international 
 character of the capitalistic regime." 
 
 Vandervelde and John A. Hobson describe 
 the trust tendency. Hobson shows that in the 
 manufacture of American agricultural imple- 
 ments, just as in other manufactures, the num- 
 ber of establishments has declined appreciably 
 from 1880 to 1900. Altogether, in that time, the 
 dependent class has increased 73.6 per cent, 
 while the employing or independent class has 
 increased only 27.4 per cent. Curiously, data 
 to show how rapidly the number of manu- 
 facturing establishments is decreasing crept in- 
 to the Republican Campaign Text Book for 
 1908. At the same time, it is true, as Hobson 
 says further along, "We find that it is precise- 
 ly in those trades which are most highly or- 
 ganized, provided with the most advanced 
 machinery, and composed of the largest units 
 of capital, that the fiercest and most un- 
 scrupulous competition has shown itself." Such 
 death grapples for mastery end in still greater 
 consolidation and serve notice that the time 
 is ripe for making the means of production the 
 collective property of the people. 
 
 In the hands of the Socialist, political 
 economy ceases to be the "dismal science." 
 The Marxian school, the historical school, 
 vitalized political economy. More than that, 
 the Socialist is not concerned with economic 
 measures that oppress the capitalists of one
 
 46 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 country for the benefit of those of another 
 country. He knows that exploitation has no 
 fatherland. The Socialist is not a nationalist, 
 but an internationalist. In his hands political 
 economy becomes a social science. 
 
 Only by the aid of the Marxian theories can 
 we fully understand capitalist production, ac- 
 count for the poverty of the workers and the 
 riches of the idlers, explain the widening gulf 
 between the two classes, the periodic industrial 
 depressions and the rise of monopoly. 
 
 To the Socialist, capitalism when fully de- 
 veloped is at the point where it is in a condition 
 of socialized production ready for socialized 
 ownership, whereby the means of production 
 will be stripped of their present class character 
 as capital, so that labor power will no longer 
 be a commodity and exploitation of the pro- 
 ducer will cease. Then the workers will re- 
 ceive the value they create, distress in the 
 midst of plenty will be impossible, the world's 
 productive forces will be scientifically and 
 planfully con trolled, and the problem of political 
 economy will be solved: To so arrange the 
 material conditions of life as to result in the 
 happiness of the whole people.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 
 
 "The history of all hitherto existing society 
 is the history of class struggles," say Marx and 
 Engels, in the "Communist Manifesto." These 
 are the first words written on modern 'So- 
 cialism. The recognition of the fact that the 
 condition of the workers cannot be improved 
 by an appeal to the innate goodness of man- 
 kind at large, but can come only through the 
 conscious action of the workers, as a class 
 that is what distinguishes the Socialist move- 
 ment from all other movements. Reduced to 
 a sentence, Socialism is the workers' side of the 
 class struggle. Unless it acknowledges its 
 class character, Socialism is like the play of 
 Hamlet without "the melancholy Dane," like 
 a ship at sea without a chart. 
 
 Marx and Engels were not the first to note 
 that a conflict rages between economic classes 
 amounting to war. Plato said as much. Here 
 in America, Madison wrote in "The Federal- 
 ist," at the very beginning of the nation's 
 career : "The most common and durable source 
 of factions has been the various and unequal 
 distribution of property. Those who hold and 
 those who are without property have ever 
 formed distinct interests in society." And John 
 
 47
 
 48 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 C. Calhoun declared almost a score years be- 
 fore the "Manifesto" appeared: "I. hold then, 
 that there never has yet existed a wealthy and 
 civilized society in which one portion of the 
 community did not, in point of fact, live on the 
 
 labor of the other It is useless to disguise 
 
 the fact. There is and always has been, in an 
 advanced stage of wealth and civilization, a 
 conflict between labor and capital." 
 
 It is the special merit of Marx and Engels to 
 have first observed that the class struggles of 
 history are a "series of evolution," characteriz- 
 ing the change from one social arrangement to 
 another, and constituting a law of social 
 development. 
 
 In America, more so than elsewhere, the 
 impression prevails that because our form of 
 government is republican, there are on that 
 account no classes in society. Yet that very 
 word "society" proves the reverse. When the 
 papers tell us that Miss Coldcash is about to 
 make her debut, they do not mean that she is 
 about to be born. They serve notice on a 
 certain exclusive set who are "society," that 
 Miss Coldcash is open for matrimonial engage- 
 ments. Daughters of the lower class never 
 make their debut. When an industrial depres- 
 sion sets in, said to be caused by "overpro- 
 duction," no one imagines that the surplus is 
 in the hands of the workers that the poor are 
 in distress because they possess too much. 
 Nor does anyone imagine that old-age pensions 
 are for retired millionaires. 
 
 Classes are and always have been in Ameri-
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 49 
 
 ca, because classes have been all down re- 
 corded history. The class struggle was the first 
 fruit of private property. But the simple fact 
 of the class struggle is often obscured by the 
 glamor of romance, which is the principal 
 stock-in-trade of many historians. Austin 
 Lewis is entirely right when he says of the 
 American Revolution : "It was carried through 
 with the most pompous announcements of 
 human liberty which hardly veiled the real 
 designs of its instigators. It denied its pro- 
 fessed theories at its very inception by the pro- 
 clamation of human rights and the acceptance 
 of chattel slavery." Not only the black race, 
 but thousands of whites, were held in bondage 
 for years, while political liberty was restricted 
 to such an extent that less than one-fourth of 
 the adult males had a vote in the first election. 
 It is true, however, that while there always 
 have been classes in America, class lines have 
 not been so sharply defined as they are just 
 now. John Adams is reported to have said 
 that he hoped the time would never come when 
 a man would be worth a million dollars. To- 
 day a million dollars is of little consequence in 
 the commercial world. We are reaching the 
 billionaire stage. About half a century after 
 Adams, Oliver Wendell Holmes thanked his 
 stars that "it was but three generations rJe- 
 tween shirt sleeves and shirt sleeves." The 
 third generation of our time run little risk of 
 returning to the plow or forge. However 
 prodigal they may be, they can hardly squan- 
 der their income, let alone impair their capital,
 
 50 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 which indeed, is often held in trust for theru 
 After Holmes, Lincoln, in his first message to 
 Congress, wrote: "A few men own capital, 
 and that few avoid labor themselves, and with 
 their capital hire or buy another few to labor 
 for them. A large majority belong to neither 
 class neither work for others nor have others 
 work for them." Today labor for wages is 
 the ordinary manner of gaining a livelihood ; 
 capital is supreme it is a jealous god and will 
 have no other gods before.it. 
 
 Again, John Adams said: "America is a 
 nation of husbandmen, planted on a vast con- 
 tinent of wild, uncultivated land ; and there is, 
 and will be for centuries, no way in which 
 these people can get a living and advance their 
 interests so much as by agriculture. They can 
 apply themselves to manufactures only to fill 
 up interstices of time, in which they cannot 
 labor on their lands, and to commerce only to 
 carry the produce of their lands, the raw 
 materials of manufactures, to the European 
 market." Yet the American Revolution was 
 fought to free the manufacturers and indebted 
 Southern planters no less than the farmers, 
 fishermen and merchants of New England, 
 whom Adams served. Moreover, Adams was 
 the second and last president to look after the 
 interests of the sea cost, being defeated largely 
 by the combination of the interests he con- 
 sidered of secondary importance. And how- 
 ever little Adams represented the Northern 
 agricultural element, which his words refer to, 
 with his defeat that element never again con-
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 51 
 
 trolled the national government. Still the 
 farmer of the Revolution, who "fired the shot 
 heard round the world," has given us a line of 
 sturdy sons of the soil, who have fired many a 
 good shot since; in our own time through the 
 Grange movement, the Greenback and Peoples 
 parties and, in conjunction with the workers 
 of the shop, through the Socialist party. So it 
 has come about that, as Ghent puts it: 
 "America may have been another name for 
 opportunity, as Emerson said, but it is evident 
 that to hundreds of thousands of persons op- 
 portunity itself was but a name." 
 
 The class structure of society to-day has 
 been most clearly defined in the tables macfe 
 by the thorough and painstaking Lucien'Sanial. 
 He divides the total number of employed 
 persons, ten years of age and upwards, into 
 three classes. The plutocratic class numbers 
 250,251, is 0.9 per cent of the total, possesses 
 $67,000,000,000 or 70.5 per cent of the total 
 wealth; the middle class numbers 8,429,845, is 
 29 per cent ofthe total, possesses $24,000,000,- 
 000 or 25.3 per cent of the total wealth; the 
 proletarian class numbers 20,393,137, is 70,1 per 
 cent of the total, possesses $4,000,000,000 or 
 4.2 per cent of the total wealth. Sanial himself 
 points out that the wealth of the working 
 class consists largely of tools and household 
 goods. It averages about $200 a person 
 hardly enough to drive Standard Oil out of 
 business. The middle class, while serving as 
 a cushion between the two classes, nevertheless 
 comprises divergent interests so incapable of
 
 52 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 concerted action as to be of much less im- 
 portance than their strength of numbers and 
 wealth would lead one to suppose. They are 
 ground between the upper and nether mill- 
 stones. For all practical purposes, there are 
 two classes in society. Such a conservative 
 trades union leader as John Mitchell admits 
 that the workers can no longer hope to rise out 
 of their class. The matter of fact of it is, a 
 handful of money kings sway the nation's 
 course. 
 
 It is not meant to imply that these class 
 lines are rigid and absolute. The contention is 
 that, whatever shifting of individuals there 
 may be from one class to another, however in- 
 definite the lines of demarcation may be, there 
 still remain the capitalist class and the working 
 class, distinct from each other, with antagon- 
 istic and irreconcilable interests. Even were 
 this shifting of individuals increasing instead of 
 decreasing, so long as the means of life are 
 permitted to be privately owned, there must 
 of neccessity be a capitalist class and a working 
 class, exploiters and exploited. 
 
 Nor does the theory of the class struggle 
 imply that all is smooth sailing for the class 
 rising to power. A revolution is often followed 
 by a reaction or a counter-revolution ; a class 
 secures power only to find itself unable to 
 handle it and is compelled to share it with the 
 class it has superseded. Thus Untermann de- 
 scribes the present dominant class: "The 
 history of bourgeois revolutions is a succession 
 of compromises. . . Indecision and compromise
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 58 
 
 are bred in the bourgeois blood. It was the 
 fate of the bourgeoisie to be born between two 
 fires. In the attempt to extinguish the one and 
 keep from being extinguished by the other, 
 the bourgeois nature developed that weather 
 vane mind for which it has become historically 
 disreputable." Thus the American government 
 was established through concessions of the 
 commercial and manufacturing classes to the 
 slave owners of the South, who belonged to an 
 obsolete social order. Thus, also, prior to the 
 Civil War, Hinton Rowan Helper, in his "Im- 
 pending Crisis," argued that the non-slave 
 holding whites of the South were being ruined 
 by "King Cotton," and called upon them to 
 stamp out the "peculiar institution." On the 
 other hand, the Southern oligarchy always 
 looked down with disdain upon the business 
 shrewd Yankee. 
 
 Further, while capitalism tends to urge in- 
 dustrial and financial capital to the top, it by 
 no means eliminates other forms of capital. 
 The frequent occurrence of "rent riots" in the 
 larger cities indicates that landlords have not 
 forgotten how to turn the screws upon the 
 workers. But to learn how all-powerful in- 
 dustrial and financial capital is today, we need 
 but follow the acts of government. Thus, the 
 treaty of peace recently made between Japan 
 and Russia is attributed to the banking houses 
 of Rothschild and Morgan. Study a nation's 
 policies and you can readily tell what class is 
 in the saddle. Political power is the handmaid 
 of economic power.
 
 54 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 The capitalist class ever availed themselves 
 of governmental force to keep the workers 
 down. As Marx records, in addition to com- 
 pelling agricultural laborers to become factory 
 hands, the English government was success- 
 fully invoked to extend the length of the work- 
 ing day, establish a maximum scale of wages, 
 with fines for those who accepted anything 
 above it, and to outlaw trades unions. Later 
 some of these measures became unnecessary, 
 because of the growth of the industrial reserve 
 army, while others were battered down by the 
 workers themselves taking a hand in politics. 
 
 For their part, the workers are, as Shelley's 
 verse runs, "heroes of unwritten story." "The 
 unwritten history of this country is the history 
 of the American working people," says Unter- 
 mann. During ancient and mediaeval times, 
 except for occasional outbursts in the shape of 
 revolts, which were more or less quickly sup- 
 pressed, the workers occupy the background 
 in the social drama, apparently content to shed 
 their blood for their masters. The foreground 
 is pre-empted by the ruling classes, quarreling 
 over pelf and place. Feudal lords succeed slave 
 ohners; capitalists wrest the sceptre from 
 feudal lords; each in turn exploits and op- 
 presses the wealth producers. Every time a 
 ruling class goes down, it opens the way for 
 the next struggle. Yet the field ever narrows 
 until only the workers and capitalists remain. 
 The grapple between these two marks the 
 close of the series, for when the workers free
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 55 
 
 themselves they free humanity from all class ' 
 distinctions. 
 
 At the same time, the workers were plunged 
 into capitalism amid the clashing of tremendous 
 forces, the roar of the cannon no less than that 
 of the steam engine. The spirit of the toilers 
 has been militant down the decades. Strikes 
 began in colonial days, although the labor 
 movement dates from about 1830, the year the ' 
 first steam engine was introduced in America. 
 Says Simons : "It is to these early working 
 class rebels that we owe to a larger degree 
 than to any other cause not only our public 
 school system, but abolition of imprisonment 
 for debt, the mechanic's lien law, freedom of 
 association, universal suffrage, improvement in 
 prison administration, direct election of presi- 
 dential electors and in fact nearly everything 
 of a democratic character in our present social 
 and political institutions. . . . For the working 
 class directly they succeeded in shortening 
 hours and improving conditions in many di- 
 rections. They even brought sufficient pressure 
 to bear upon the national government to 
 compel the enactment of a ten hour law and 
 the abolition of the old legislation against 
 trades unions, which had made labor organiza- 
 tions conspiracies." This was accomplished 
 about the same time similar reforms were won 
 in England. 
 
 It was not until about twenty years later 
 that the organized labor movement began in 
 earnest. With the discovery of gold in Cali- 
 fornia, in 1848, the point farthest west was
 
 56 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 reached. The frontier was annexed to the At- 
 lantic' Coast when trans-continental railways 
 swung- out through Chicago ten years later. 
 When the West became neighbor to the East, 
 there was an exchange of ideas; the West 
 benefited by Eastern culture, while the East 
 profited by the Western spirit. That, together 
 with the fall of the slave oligarchy, cleared the 
 road of all obstacles in the way of modern 
 capitalism, and since then its development has 
 been phenomenal. But lurking behind rampant 
 capitalism, its very shadow, has been the 
 modern labor movement. 
 
 Within the period covered by a decade either 
 side of the Civil War, most of the international 
 trades unions no*w in existence were organized. 
 Keeping step with the expanse of capital, in- 
 dustrial conflicts assumed greater proportions, 
 involving an ever larger number of workers, 
 until, in 1877, for the first time something like 
 a general strike prevailed. This grew out of a 
 reduction in wages among railroad men, one 
 of the burdens labor bore because of the crisis 
 of 1873. The workers of the country again 
 joined hands for the inauguration of the eight 
 hour day on May 1, 1886. In 1894 a sym- 
 pathetic strike of the American Railway Union 
 tied up the nation's arteries of traffic. Again, 
 in 1902, America was shaken from coast to 
 coast when the coal miners went on strike. 
 
 In the trouble of 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes, 
 then president, ordered the federal troops to 
 the scene to cow the strikers into submission. 
 In 1886 a more expedient method was found
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE gf 
 
 by hanging- some leaders of the movement, 
 upon the flimsy and unsupported charge of 
 their being responsible for the Haymarket 
 bomb explosion. The strike of 1894 was broken 
 by the usurpation of both judicial and executive 
 branches of the government. "Government by 
 injunction" was resorted to and found effective 
 after Preside! Cleveland failed to break the * 
 strike with lederal troops, sent to Chicago / 
 over the protest of the mayor of the city and 
 the governor of the state. The strike of 1902 
 was more diplomatically broken by President 
 Roosevelt's coming, like the Greeks, bearing 
 gifts gifts of honeyed words for the miners 
 and flattery for their leaders. 
 
 It is well nigh impossible to compile a list 
 of the many instances in which city and state 
 executives have wielded the strong arm of the 
 government to end strikes. The most ne- 
 farious methods ever used, probably, are those 
 of the mine owner's association and its sister 
 corporations, in the war on the metalliferous 
 miners. In the Coeur d'Alenes, in the late 
 '90's, and in Colorado, culminating in the 
 stormy days of 1904, the master class excelled 
 themselves. The workers were deprived of 
 their constitutional rights, herded by the 
 militia wholesale into filthy enclosures known 
 as bull pens unprotected from the elements, 
 and subjected to every conceivable indignity. 
 Their women folk were outraged by the 
 Hessians, their stores and property destroyed 
 and they themselves often bayonetted out of ! 
 town or deported by train and warned never to '
 
 58 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 return on penalty of death. In this gentle 
 manner have the profit-thirsty capitalists taken 
 pains to demonstrate that "there are no classes 
 in America!" 
 
 Possibly the most outrageous violation of 
 law and liberty came when Moyer, Haywood 
 and Pettibone, prominent in the Western 
 Federation of Miners, were kidnaped from 
 their homes at night, and confined in prison 
 for over a year and a half before being brought 
 to trial. The noteworthy feature of this case 
 was the abject servility to capital with which 
 the partners in the conspiracy against the 
 miners, from Washington to Boise, performed 
 their parts, and the fact that the Supreme 
 Court, in so many words, handed down the 
 Dred Scott decision of wage-slavery: The 
 workers have no rights their masters are bound 
 to respect. 
 
 While strikes seem to be clumsy weapons in 
 the arsenal of the workers, in consideration of 
 the money spent, the sacrifices endured and the 
 frequency of failure, their importance should 
 not be underestimated. They have that price- 
 less educational value that comes only from ex- 
 perience. They implant in the toilers the 
 feeling of solidarity and concern for a common 
 cause ; in tying up an industry, they show by a 
 stroke that labor alone is indispensable for the 
 welfare of society. In breaking the continuity 
 of their humdrum existence, opportunity is 
 offered to the workers to clear their lungs of 
 factory grime, to loaf their souls in the sun- 
 shine, to learn that there is a life outside of
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 59 
 
 that of the noise of machinery, to listen to the 
 song of brooks and books, to be something 
 more than dirt under the industrial juggernaut. 
 And especially to learn the lesson that the 
 labor question is a political question. 
 
 Here it would be well to mention two 
 matters. It is only by the broadening of their 
 mental horizon that the workers fit themselves 
 to cope with the critical situations that must 
 arise in the passing of capitalism and the 
 coming of Socialism. In such days the workers 
 will profit by the tragedy of the Paris Com- 
 mune where, because of a constellation of in- 
 cidents, due to being unprepared and mis- 
 judging the nature of their enemy, the first 
 attempt of the workers at self-rule was 
 drowned in a sea of their blood. Secondly, 
 with the complete ascendency of the capitalist 
 class, intellectual progress ceases or, worse 
 still, degenerates into intellectual prostitution. 
 Carnegie libraries, bearing the stain of Home- 
 stead, fawn upon the searcher after knowledge. 
 To the workers, therefore, falls the mantle of 
 culture, as well as that of economics. It is 
 for them to decide the destiny of the arts and 
 sciences, as of governments and nations. 
 
 It is because the workers must be aware of 
 these facts, aware of their position as the de- 
 pendent class, aware that they are involved in 
 a class struggle and must strike for freedom as 
 a class, that so much emphasis is placed by 
 the Socialist upon class consciousness. This 
 does not mean that only those who are of the 
 working class can understand the toilers' posi-
 
 60 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 tion, their attitude and movement, nor, carry- 
 ing this idea further, that only the most de- 
 graded, most destitute and most enslaved sec- 
 tion of the working class can adequately ex- 
 press the ideals of the coming democracy. In 
 respect to the latter, quite the contrary is true. 
 Whatever shortcoming may mark the attempt 
 upon the part of those from the upper class to 
 view social relations from the standpoint of the 
 lower class, the cause of the toiler would in- 
 deed be hopeless if it depended upon the 
 lowest element, the dregs of the slums. But 
 it does mean that, allowing for all personal 
 equations, a certain tendency is crystallizing in 
 the working class, an attitude of dissatisfaction 
 with and opposition to present property re- 
 lations, that refuses to accept the ethical codes 
 of the ruling class and existing order, that 
 weighs civilization not by what is but by what 
 might be, that sounds the note not of content 
 but of discontent, that has as its aim the con- 
 trol of government and industry by the world's 
 workers. It is this tendency, this thought and 
 attitude, that we call the class-consciousness of 
 the working class. 
 
 In past times the working class did the 
 fighting for the other classes. Today in- 
 dividuals, who are not strictly speaking of the 
 working class, throw their fortune in with the 
 toilers. This is especially true of men engaged 
 in the professions, small business and agri- 
 culture, the so-called middle class. Farmers 
 join forces with the industrial workers, country 
 unites with city, against their common enemy,
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 61 
 
 the plutocracy. The nucleus of the army of 
 
 revolt consists of the workers of the highly 
 centralized industries, because the very nature 
 of their labor cultivates the spirit of solidarity. 
 Nor is the class struggle confined to one 
 country. In every land where capitalism lifts 
 its head, irrespective of the form of govern- 
 ment, creeds or races, there the modern class 
 war rages, there the crack of the militiaman's 
 rifle is heard, there the jail door swings open 
 for the worker, there the courts are invoked to 
 bind and gag the striker and there is a branch 
 of the international Socialist movement. Slowly ' 
 the giant Labor bestirs himself. He is no 
 longer blind. He has found his eyes. Over the 
 bosom of the earth sweeps the spirit of the 
 Social Revolution. Beneath the red flag, with 
 the feeling that when they free themselves they 
 free all humanity, rally the forces of the 
 coming democracy, hearkening to the clarion 
 call first sounded by Marx and Engels: 
 "Workers of all countries, unite. You have 
 nothing to lose but your chains: You have a 
 world to gain !"
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 
 
 Man is declared to be what heredity and en- 
 vironment make him. Of these two factors, 
 so far as the individual goes, heredity is con- 
 stant, environment varies. While no man 
 can alter his heredity, environment is ever 
 changing. Environment is, besides, the more 
 important factor and helps shape the heredity 
 of the future. This is admitted by people of 
 all schools of thought. Otherwise there would 
 be no reason in their practical proposals. We 
 must, then, ascertain what part of the environ- 
 ment exercises the greatest influence on the 
 individual and society, and what influences are 
 at work changing the environment. 
 
 "Self-preservation is the first law of nature," 
 say the scientists. To satisfy hunger, protect 
 the body and shelter it from the elements, to 
 obtain a livelihood that is the first considera- 
 tion in human society as in the animal king- 
 dom. However unromantic it may be, our 
 physical requirements must be attended to 
 first of all. The material comes before the 
 mental, the practical sways the theoretical. 
 
 In every period of history, therefore, the 
 means employed to secure a livelihood, and the 
 social relations which necessarily followed, 
 
 02
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 63 
 
 produced in great part, the ideas and tendencieb 
 of the time. As people altered the method 
 of winning their existence, so their relations 
 and theories changed. An examination of the 
 trend of institutions, whether political, philos- 
 ophical or social, shows that the changes they 
 have undergone can be accounted for only by 
 referring to the changes in material conditions. 
 This is historical materialism, or economic 
 determinism, as it is sometimes called, another 
 of the discoveries of Karl Marx. 
 
 Here is the oft-quoted statement of Marx: 
 "The mode of production in material life deter- 
 mines the general character of the social, 
 political and spiritual processes of life. It is 
 not the consciousness of men that deter- 
 mines their existence but, on the contrary, 
 their social existence determines their con- 
 sciousness. At a certain stage of their develop- 
 ment, the material forces of production in so- 
 ciety come in conflict with the existing re- 
 lations of production, or what is but a legal 
 expression of the same thing with the proper- 
 ty relations within which they had been at 
 work before. From forms of development of 
 the forces of production these relations turn 
 into their fetters. Then comes the period of 
 social revolution. With the change of the 
 economic foundation the entire immense super- 
 structure is more or less rapidly transformed." 
 
 We need hardly caution the reader against 
 the fallacy that an individual's notions are 
 determined by his own economic condition. 
 We are dealing with man collectively, in so-
 
 64 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 ciety, and society has laws peculiar to itself, 
 laws governing its motion which are affected 
 very little by the independent ideas and actions 
 of individuals. 
 
 Let us also hasten to say that the material 
 is not the only factor- It is the first factor and 
 the foremost one, but there are others. True 
 enough is it that all factors except the material, 
 taken together, cannot explain the evolution of 
 society, while material conditions alone can do 
 so, although very roughly. In practice, material 
 conditions exert the preponderating influence, 
 while the other factors serve largely to temper 
 or intensify that influence. 
 
 Historical materialism does not eliminate 
 these factors. It embraces them, although it 
 does discount the importance usually assigned 
 them by other tRinkers. The Socialist can say 
 with the poet: 
 
 "I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; 
 A stage where every man must play a part." 
 
 Generally speaking, we are concerned with 
 the part each man plays only insofar as his 
 part is a more or less common one. We are 
 interested, especially, in ideas and movements 
 of a general character, such as are a social 
 quantity, signifying that a social cause has 
 brought them into being. We do not deny 
 that there have been great men, "heroes," as 
 Carlyle calls them, men who seem to be in- 
 tellectual giants by comparison with their 
 fellow men. But even these "heroes" did not
 
 HISTORICAX, MATERIALISM 65 
 
 create themselves. They are not the result of 
 "spontaneous creation." Like everybody else, 
 they issue from the womb of time and are 
 under obligation to circumstances for pretty 
 much all they are. However encyclopedic their 
 minds, however colossal their genius, their 
 greatness comes out of the material at hand. 
 "One swallow does not make a summer," and 
 one great man does not, single handed, make 
 history. Napoleon said of himself: "I have 
 always marched with the opinions of great 
 
 masses and with events I am the creature 
 
 of circumstances." We all recognize the im- 
 portance of historical conditions when we say : 
 "This man was wise in his day and genera- 
 tion." Conditions make the man of the hour, 
 a great deal more so than the man of the hour 
 modifies conditions. 
 
 Nor need it be denied that much of history 
 may be regarded as a conflict between de- 
 mocracy and aristocracy. Yet probing a little 
 deeper will show that material conditions, 
 in the greatest measure, decfded whether that 
 conflict took a religious, political or economic 
 turn. 
 
 '.Historical materialism does not imply that 
 the institutions of every epoch are bound to 
 assume the same shape and pass through the 
 same process of development all over the 
 world. Progress may be retarded or ac- 
 celerated according to the peculiarities, 
 customs and traditions of a people. More than 
 that, to quote Kautsky : "Every method of pro-
 
 66 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 duction is connected not only with particular 
 tools and particular social relations, but also 
 with the particular content of knowledge, with 
 particular powers of intelligence, a particular 
 view of cause and effect, a particular logic, in 
 short, a particular form of thought." So, many 
 a workingman to-day imagines he is living in 
 the America of half a century ago, before the 
 rise of modern industry which accounts for 
 his voting the Republican or Democratic ticket 
 because his father or grandfather did. When 
 the ideas of the working class catch up with 
 existing conditions, there will probably be a 
 social revolution. 
 
 Again, as Labriola tells us, Italy for a time 
 fell out of the course of the nations. Japan, on 
 the other hand, profited by the experience of 
 other countries; it is possible, although not 
 altogether probable, that Russia will pass from 
 a state of feudalism into Socialism without 
 experiencing very much of capitalism. The 
 Socialist movements of different countries as- 
 sume different aspects, although they are 
 actuated by a common ideal. 
 
 Xor is historical materialism a new panthe- 
 ism, counting the hairs of one's head and 
 watching the fall of a sparrow. It is satisfied 
 with explaining the questions of greater mo- 
 ment, tracing the evolution of society from 
 savagery to civilization, explaining political 
 disturbances, waves of reform and religion, and 
 the rise and decline of philosophies and nations. 
 
 Historical materialism, in declaring that
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 37 
 
 ideas change with the change in material con- 
 ditions, runs counter to the theory that ideas 
 create themselves or are lassoed by the in- 
 dividual out of the sea of consciousness which 
 always was and will be. It also runs counter 
 to the theory that certain ideas and principles 
 are eternally true, irrespective of time and 
 place. As Marx says : "Thus these ideas, these 
 categories, are not more eternal than the rela- 
 tions which they express. They are historical 
 and transitor^ products." This is, of course, 
 a rude shock to the budding philosophers who, 
 every three or four years, rediscover the eternal 
 principles of social harmony. But that cannot 
 be helped. 
 
 It is by the test of history that the theory 
 of historical materialism must stand or fall. 
 History will tell us whether institutions are 
 transitory and in what degree they correspond 
 to the methods employed in securing a liveli- 
 hood. 
 
 For example, nowadays we are asked to re- 
 gard property of a certain kind as "private and 
 sacred." Yet this was not always so. Lafargue 
 tells us that "a citizen of 'Sparta was entitled 
 without permission to ride the horses, use the 
 dogs, and even dispose of the slaves of any 
 other Spartan." Imagine pursuing the chase 
 with the dogs, horses and servants of one of 
 our social bluebloods, without so much as "by 
 your leave!" As to the ephemeral nature of 
 property, Atkinson, the American economist, 
 goes so far as to say : "The only capital which
 
 68 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 is of permanent value is immaterial the ex- 
 perience of generations and the development 
 of science." Indeed not only is right in the 
 possession of things not eternal, but is de- 
 pendent upon man-made law. So Lafargue 
 quotes Locke, the English philosopher : "Where 
 there is no property there is no injustice." 
 Cooley, an American authority upon con- 
 stitutional law, declares : "That is property 
 which is recognized as such by law, and 
 nothing else is or can be. Property and law 
 are born and must die together. Before the 
 laws there was no property, take away the 
 laws, all property ceases." Private ownership, 
 therefore, is not something perpetual, but is a 
 temporary arrangement subject to social needs 
 'On this point Cooley says : "The courts. . . seem 
 to have laid down the broad doctrine that 
 where private property is devoted to a public 
 use it is subject to public regulation." Public 
 necessity has gone further than regulation. In 
 the coal strike of 1902 several mayors con- 
 fiscated carloads of coal with no pretense o\ 
 according the owners <r due process of law." 
 
 Speaking of the "sacredness" of private 
 property, the following utterance is interesting, 
 in that it concerns a notoriously lawless de- 
 struction of the property of certain eminently 
 respectable gentlemen. The reference is to the 
 Boston Tea Party. "This is the most magni- 
 ficent movement of all. There is a dignity, a 
 majesty, a sublimity in this last effort of the 
 patriots that I greatly admire This de-
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 69 
 
 struction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so 
 fixed, so intrepid, and inflexible, and it must 
 have so important consequences and so lasting, 
 that I cannot but consider it an epoch in 
 history." This attack upon the sacredness of 
 private property was not the deed of some 
 sacrilegious firebrand, but the cold, measured 
 syllables of that austere Puritan and prim 
 jurist, John Adams. Again, by the stroke of a 
 pen, Lincoln confiscated millions of dollars of 
 southern property. So much for the sacred- 
 ness of property. 
 
 Justice, ethics, equality, liberty all these 
 have significance only as regards specific 
 historical conditions. When severed from those 
 conditions they are either meaningless or, as 
 often as not, serve reactionary purposes. 
 Labriola sums it up when he says : "Ideas do 
 not fall from heaven; and, what is more, like 
 the other products of human activity, they are 
 formed in given circumstances, in the precise 
 fullness of time, through the action of definite 
 needs, thanks to the repeated attempts at their 
 satisfaction, and by the discovery of such and 
 such other means of proof which are, as it 
 were, the instruments of their production and 
 their elaboration." Thus our modern unctuous 
 moralists tell the workers: "Think more of 
 your duties and less of your rights." Which is 
 exquisite slave economy. Thus a professor of 
 political economy recently ventured the opinion 
 that the labor problem might be solved if 
 married women, together with their husbands,
 
 70 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 went to work. Which, under present con- 
 ditions, is either irony or impudence, and a 
 fair sample of non-Socialist economy. What 
 influence material conditions exert upon creeds 
 is witnessed in the decline in America of Ju- 
 daism, the faith of a people who have hereto- 
 fore preserved their race identity despite 
 centuries of persecution. 
 
 It is a commonplace that "when poverty 
 comes in at the door, love flies out the win- 
 dow." That marriage is not necessarily a moral 
 and spiritual union Professor Seligman shows, 
 when he says : "The earliest division of labor 
 rests on the principle that the female attends 
 to the vegetable sustenance, the man to the 
 animal diet, and on this fundamental distinc- 
 tion all the other social arrangements are built 
 up. Marriage, for a long time, is not an ethical 
 community of ideal interests, but very largely 
 an economic or labor relation." It has been 
 observed that the number of marriages fluctu- 
 ates with the price of food. The agitation 
 against race-suicide springs from an economic 
 motive. 
 
 Behind those companions in iniquity and 
 hypocrisy, "our manifest destiny" and "benev- 
 olent assimilation" at the point of the bayonet 
 lurk economic interests. Such men as Carl 
 Schurz and Wendell Phillips knew this. Schurz 
 saw that the Civil War was a conflict between 
 the industrial ambitions of the North and the 
 South, between cotton and iron. And Phillips 
 said : "It is not always, however, ideas or moral
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 71 
 
 principles that push the world forward. Selfish 
 interests play a large part in the work. Our 
 Revolution of 1776 succeeded because trade 
 and wealth joined hands with principle and 
 enthusiasm a union rare in the history of 
 revolutions. Northern merchants fretted at 
 England's refusal to allow them direct trade 
 with Holland and the West Indies. Virginia 
 planters, heavily mortgaged, welcomed any- 
 thing which would postpone payment of their 
 debts a motive that doubtless avails largely 
 among Secessionists now." Loria declares that 
 statistics prove 258 out of 286 wars to be 
 distinctly due to economic causes, while in the 
 remainder, apparently fought on religious 
 grounds, economic influences were at work but 
 obscured. And Professor Seth Low, among 
 others, at a congress of the American Academy 
 of Political and Social Science, in 1905, de- 
 clared that all wars are commercial in origin. 
 Every important change in the method of 
 securing a living is accompanied by a class 
 struggle in which a new class or a class former- 
 ly subordinate forces itself to the front. The 
 class character of society, indicated in all in- 
 stitutions, is especially evident in examining 
 legislation. When we declare that Pennsyl- 
 vania is the property of the railroad of that 
 name, we do not mean that most of its officials 
 are on the payroll of the corporation. Some 
 probably are, as recent disclosures show, just 
 as the Chicago University is coming to be con- 
 sidered a by-product of Standard Oil. We
 
 7J SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 mean that, wittingly or not, the interests of 
 that railroad are so well served by the legis- 
 lators of Pennsylvania as to make it appear 
 that this is their primary reason for holding 
 office. 
 
 The attitude toward tariff legislation has 
 undergone an interesting transformation. In 
 the early days John C. Calhoun, of South Caro- 
 lina, voted for protection for the South. When 
 the manufacturing class of the North came 
 into control, they became the ardent advocates 
 of a high tariff. For years the policy of the 
 government was, practically, to "stand pat." 
 Now that capital is becoming international, 
 reciprocity and tariff revision are on the carpet. 
 The more capital extends its grip inter- 
 nationally the surer the tendency toward free 
 trade. In the same way public opinion in re- 
 gard to the trust has changed. In the days of 
 Mark Hanna, "there were no trusts." Later, 
 there were "good trusts and bad trusts." We 
 are already at the point when large invest- 
 ments are immune, when President Roosevelt 
 permitted the Steel Trust to assimilate the 
 Tennessee Coal and Iron Company and in- 
 formed the Senate that it was none of their 
 business. Competition is no longer the life of 
 trade. Trade is the death of competition. 
 
 Reform measures also depend upon circum- 
 stance. Very often the demand of a subjugated 
 class is conceded by the ruling class, because 
 the latter profits by the measure. For 
 example, rate legislation and federal licensing
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 73 
 
 of corporations. In the days of competition 
 which existed some generations ago, but not 
 since, uniform rate legislation might have se- 
 cured equity among common carriers and, by 
 preventing discrimination, might have inter- 
 fered with the tendency toward trustification. 
 But today, when the larger industries are 
 monopolistic and inter-related, a uniform rate, 
 especially if high enough, and federal com- 
 missions are advocates of higher rates would 
 complete the work of driving 1 men of small 
 means out of business, while changing only the 
 pocket into which the general profits would 
 flow for the trusts. So federal licensing of cor- 
 porations means that the federal government 
 lends its hand to large enterprise, because only 
 large enterprise does a national busines, thus 
 protecting it against the encroachment of such 
 state legislatures as happen to be in control of 
 its enemies. 
 
 The class character of society is more pro- 
 nounced as between the capitalist class and the 
 working class. Thus, to take something with- 
 out rendering an equivalent is purely a class 
 wrong. For a worker to snatch a loaf of bread 
 to appease his hunger is punishable and 
 punished by law ; for a capitalist to exploit the 
 same worker mercilessly is good business. Be- 
 cause the worker is a producer, dealing with 
 the realities of life, laboring with Mother Earth 
 to minister to the comfort of the race, his con- 
 ceptions are generally antagonistic to those of 
 the ruling class, who render no useful service 
 and whose privilege is based upon legal fiction.
 
 74 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 Here many able men who consider themselves 
 exponents of Marxian historical materialism, 
 Professor Seligman among them, fall short of 
 the mark. For historical materialism explains 
 how historical materialism came to be. 
 
 We need not pause to consider the school 
 book notion that history writing is an accurate 
 record of events. To be something more than 
 chronology, events must be interpreted, ar- 
 ranged as to cause and effect. And second 
 thought will convince even the school child 
 that the stirring times of 1776 have heretofore 
 made an entirely different impression upon 
 American as against English historians. In 
 the higher schools the unscientific method is 
 rapidly becoming obsolete. It is recognized 
 that the writing of history does depend upon 
 the standpoint of the historian. It was, there- 
 fore, no accidental coincidence, as Professor 
 Seligman thinks, that Marx, who stood political 
 economy right side up, should turn right side 
 up the philosophy of history and become a So- 
 cialist. That is why in Marx the theories of 
 surplus value, class struggle and historical 
 materialism are co-ordinated and united; that 
 is why historical materialism, in its fullest and 
 completest sense its only proper sense is the 
 method and the weapon of the working class, 
 coming only with the rise of the modern labor 
 movement. That is why Marx and Engels 
 were Socialists, instead of closet philosophers, 
 why they were the guiding spirits in the first 
 international organization of the working 
 class, why they were able to map out in the
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 75 
 
 rough the line of march the working class 
 movement has since taken and is taking. 
 
 But if the professor's tendency is to castrate 
 historical materialism, by depriving it of its 
 revolutionary character and its corollary, the 
 class struggle, in an attempt to make the 
 theory more "moderate," Loria goes him one 
 better as an "extremist" in the other direction. 
 So Loria says: "Capitalist property is not a 
 natural phenomenon but a violation of law, 
 both human and divine the impossible erected 
 into a system." With Loria, as with many 
 non-Socialists, the "unnatural" is here in full 
 bloom. Which is perfectly natural for Loria. 
 Well, as capitalist property is "unnatural" and 
 "a violation of law, both human and divine," 
 the sooner it goes the better, one would sup- 
 pose. But, naturally or otherwise, Loria 
 argues the contrary. "In the first place there is 
 abundant opportunity to ameliorate the 
 sanitary and economic condition of the poorer 
 classes without in the least interfering with 
 the rights of property, and measures of this 
 kind are in no way excluded by our theory." 
 For Loria, capitalist property, which came 
 into being by the violation of law and ethics, 
 is nevertheless sacred, and his plans for amel- 
 iorating the condition of the workers do not in 
 the least interfere with the "rights of proper- 
 ty." The only ray of hope he holds out is this : 
 "The bipartition of the revenues is the salva- 
 tion of the proletariat." The workers, conse- 
 quently, can find relief only in keeping the 
 landed aristocracy and the capitalist class at
 
 7ft SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 each other's throats. What the working class 
 are to do when landed aristocrats and capital- 
 ists together clutch the workers' throats, Loria 
 does not say. Nor does Loria consider that 
 the working class, who are the most numerous 
 class and socially the most necessary class, 
 might decide to rid themselves both of land- 
 lords and capitalists. Loria and Professor 
 Seligman occupy a position as regards 
 historical interpretation similar to that of 
 Feuerbach in philosophy. Backward they are 
 historical materialists; forward, ideologists. 
 
 Historical materialism not only accounts for 
 itself, as well as for the rise of contrary 
 theories, but foretells its own passing. For it 
 may be said with some assurance that with the 
 end of capitalism, the influence of material 
 conditions on society will be reduced to a mini- 
 mum. Marx's method, the examination of 
 events and ideas by the light of historical fact 
 instead of fancy, will likely endure much 
 longer. 
 
 Meanwhile the 'Socialist goes about his busi- 
 ness of studying the anatomy of present so- 
 ciety, interpreting history and organizing the 
 working class for the coming change. 
 
 For historical materialism is not a form of 
 fatalism. Not only does it recognize the in- 
 fluence of intellectual forces, but declares 
 that their importance grows with time. To be 
 aware of the direction and rate of the power 
 moving socety, to be conscious of the necessity 
 for class action, is the duty imposed upon the 
 workers. So it is that as the Socialist move-
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 77 
 
 ment grows and makes progress, more and 
 more does it display its class character. And 
 because of this fact can we say: Socialism is 
 inevitable ! 
 
 That, too, explains why historical material- 
 ism has come to be regarded as one of the most 
 formidable weapons in the arsenal of the So- 
 cialist. With its aid will the mission of the 
 workers to conquer the productive forces be 
 accomplished, so that thereafter intellect will 
 control destiny and society will consciously 
 mold its environment.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 
 
 Man is not the product of social conditions 
 alone. He is a human being, and traces of the 
 lower animals are still very decided in him. 
 As a human being, albeit endowed with con- 
 siderably more mentality than the other 
 animals, he has tried to explain the physical 
 universe about him with mingled fear, wonder 
 and perplexity. He has worshipped the sun, 
 moon, other animals, his own organs and idols. 
 He has imagined his gods to inhabit everything 
 that grows, the elements, and the vast firma- 
 ment that transcends his powers of conception. 
 He celebrates by fast or feast such perennial 
 phenomena as the coming of the seasons. He 
 greets sunrise and sunset with prayer and is in 
 the throes of the problem of immortality. And 
 these things exert no little influence in shaping 
 customs, traditions and traits of character; 
 they make no little impression upon social ar- 
 rangements. 
 
 Progress along this line is made by finding 
 a natural explanation for what was formerly 
 deemed supernatural. Science replaces faith. 
 Knowledge ousts superstition. 
 
 "Science," say the scientists, "is general 
 knowledge systematized." Science consists of 
 
 78
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 
 
 79 
 
 properly arranged facts and theories and laws 
 in regard to what passes about us. 
 
 The workingman does something like this 
 at his bench or machine. Thus, before weaving, 
 it is necessary to sort the cotton from the wool, 
 material of one texture from that of another, 
 that of one color from that of a different color, 
 and that of expensive dye from that of an in- 
 ferior grade. In like manner, science takes 
 facts that are generally known, or should be 
 generally known, and sorts them out according 
 to the points of resemblance and distinction. 
 
 Science regards nothing as stationary. 
 Everything is in a condition of flow ; in the 
 moment that it is one thing, it is becoming 
 something else. "The present is the child of 
 the past, but it is the parent of the future." As 
 so often has been said, the only thing constant 
 in nature is the law of perpetual change. 
 
 This law of perpetual change we see in 
 operation all about us. Mother Earth shrugs 
 her shoulders and mountain ranges rise or fall ; 
 she puckers up her lips, and ocean currents 
 swerve around the continents. When she is 
 cramped for room and stretches herself, there 
 is likely to be an earthquake and perhaps tens 
 of thousands of lives are lost and cities are 
 demolished in a twinkling. Volcanoes remain 
 to warn man of the restlessness of nature. 
 
 But while everything changes its form, 
 nothing is ever lost. Life and death are com- 
 panions throughout existence, the crest and 
 trough of the wave of time. One makes way 
 for the other. What perishes fertilizes what
 
 80 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 is about to be born; the dead, by giving life to 
 the living, becomes the substance of the living. 
 Shakespeare uses this idea in one of his plays : 
 
 "Hamlet. A man may fish with the worm 
 that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that 
 hath fed of that worm. 
 
 King. What dost thou mean by this? 
 
 Hamlet. Nothing but to show you how a 
 king may go a process through the guts of a 
 beggar." 
 
 In proof that we are related to all about us, 
 Moore declares that more than two-thirds of 
 the weight of the human body is made up of 
 oxygen, a gas which forms one-fifth of the 
 weight of the air, more than eight-ninths of 
 that of the sea, and forty-seven per cent, of 
 the superficial solids of the earth. 
 
 'Nothing is constant. Everything changes. 
 But that is all it does. Matter may be shifted 
 about, but it cannot be lost. And however 
 much force may be brought into play, only its 
 form is altered. It is not destroyed. So far 
 as we can see, the matter and force about us 
 have always been and will always be. There 
 was no beginning, and there will be no end. 
 They are everlasting. 
 
 This old earth of ours has been changing for 
 quite awhile. Boelsche thinks it is a million 
 years old. And there is no telling how many 
 millions of times the stuff of which our world 
 is made was the stuff of other worlds or stars. 
 We know ours was not the first or the last 
 created. Fitch declares that it is only a 
 millionth part in bulk of the solar system our
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE gl 
 
 sun, planets and their moons and we know 
 that the solar system is probably only a 
 millionth part of the dust of the heavens. So 
 that our ball of toil and trouble is only a 
 grain in the celestial sandstorm. And the earth 
 was here for the greater part of its million 
 years before the being we call man arrived. 
 Again quoting Moore : "Man is not the end, he 
 is but an incident, of the infinite elaborations 
 of Time and Space." 
 
 It may be accepted for a certainty that man 
 was not created as man. He is the outcome of 
 animals lower in the scale, which fact Darwin 
 first dwelt upon. Evidence is plentiful on this 
 score. Huxley, in "Man's Place in Nature," 
 tells of the ties between man and the manlike 
 apes, man's next of kin. Thus, there is greater 
 difference among men's brains than there is 
 between those of man and the gorilla. The 
 difference in skull and skeleton between man 
 and the gorilla are of smaller value than that 
 between the gorilla and some other apes. The 
 same is true of the dentition. Man in the 
 embryonical stage is nearer to the ape than the 
 ape is to the dog. Bebel declares that monkeys 
 are the only beings, besides man, in whom the 
 sexual impulse is not fixed to certain periods. 
 
 The process of the human embryo, from egg 
 to ego, has the appearance of a panorama of 
 the biological scale. Dr. Weisler, in his 
 work on "Embryology," tells us that at the 
 twenty-fifth day the embryo presents a well- 
 developed tail. While maternal influences 
 cease at the second week, up to the fourth
 
 82 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 week the heart of the human embryo is that 
 which is the permanent condition of fishes. 
 The nails begin in claw-like projections. In 
 the seventh month, the lanugo, or embryonal 
 down, makes its appearance, covers the surface 
 of practically the whole body, and disappears 
 in the eighth month. This is a relic of the 
 days when what is now man was a hair- 
 covered animal. Fitch gives a list of rudi- 
 mentary organs, which were once useful in the 
 animal ancestors of man, but are now rather 
 harmful. Such is the vermiform appendix. 
 Boelsche declares that the blood of the chim- 
 panzee may be mixed with that of man with- 
 out harm, which is the severest test, as bloods 
 of different species act as poisons toward each 
 other. Boelsche follows the clues from man, 
 step by step, down to the very beginning of 
 life, the primordial cell. 
 
 All of man's organs and their functions hark 
 back to the remote past. "Life was born blind, 
 just as many animals are to this day, but it 
 was gradually prepared for sight," says Dr. 
 Meyer. Scientists go even further. France 
 declares : "The plant possesses everything that 
 distinguishes a living creature movement, 
 sensation, the most violent reaction against 
 abuse, and most ardent gratitude for favors 
 if we will but take sufficient time to wait with 
 loving patience for its sweet and gentle 
 answers to our stormy questions." While 
 rooted to the ground it nevertheless has power, 
 in a measure, to adapt itself to external agen- 
 cies. It feels "light-hunger," not unlike the
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 83 
 
 light-hunger in man which Ibsen makes the 
 climax of his great morbid play "Ghosts." 
 Again, more than five hundejd varieties of 
 plants devour insects. Plants also have a re- 
 fined sense of smell, taste and location; there 
 is the beginning of a nervous system, and a 
 tendency toward division of labor, instinct, 
 perception and soul. So France concludes : 
 "Even if all our hopes are not realized, we 
 have brought away a mighty knowledge that 
 reaches down into the very depth of all being! 
 the certainty that the life of the plants is one 
 with that of animals, and with that of our- 
 selves." 
 
 It is difficult to draw a sharp line between 
 man and the other animals. Grant Allen, in 
 the "New Hedonism," thinks that what 
 elevates man above his fellow creatures 
 is ethics, intellect and the sense of beauty. Yet 
 it is quite certain that many birds find con- 
 siderable enjoyment in a harmonious color 
 scheme, while savages are not very far 
 superior to the ingenious animals, such as the 
 ant, in ethics and intellect. Franklin called 
 man the tool-using animal. And while Kautsky 
 declases that, "Neither as a thinking nor as a 
 moral being is man essentially different from 
 the animals," he goes on to say that "what, 
 however, alone distinguishes the former is the 
 production of tools, which serve for production, 
 
 for defence or attack With the production 
 
 of the means of production, the animal man 
 begins to become the human man; with that 
 he breaks away from the animal world to found
 
 84 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 his own empire, an empire with its own kind 
 of development, which is wholly unknown in 
 the rest of nature, and to which nothing similar 
 is to be found there." 
 
 Everything changes. Man has evolved out 
 of lower animals, and the plants are likely his 
 distant relatives. Arthur Morrow Lewis 
 sketches the modern theories of organic trans- 
 formation in this wise : "Lamarck was the first 
 to present the theory of evolution in a 
 thoroughly scientific manner. Then Darwin 
 discovered the great principle which rules the 
 evolution of organisms ; the principle of 
 'natural selection.' Then Weismann repudiated 
 current ideas as to how the fittest 'arrived,' or 
 'originated/ and presented in their place a 
 theory of his own, which is still under dis- 
 cussion. De Vries raised the question as to 
 whether new species 'arrive' by a gradual ac- 
 cumulation of tiny changes, or by sudden leaps 
 mutations and demonstrated the latter by 
 his experiments with the evening primrose." 
 
 Darwin's theory, regarded as epoch-making 
 in science, is : Natural selection by the survival 
 of the fittest in the struggle for existence. Or, 
 as it is commonly put, nature performs her 
 wonders through the desire for food and off- 
 spring, hunger and love. It is the special merit 
 of Darwin that his theory was the first satis- 
 factory attempt to interpret the activity of 
 organic beings, and to explain why they 
 change. And Lester F. Ward tells us : "Science 
 is mainly interpretation."
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 85 
 
 The question of interpretation is a very 
 broad one. It flows out of many things. Thus 
 Darwin acknowledges he was influenced by 
 the now discredited theory of Malthus that 
 more human beings are born than sustenance 
 can be provided for. Both Darwin and 
 Malthus, in turn, were influenced in their inter- 
 pretation by such circumstances as the con- 
 dition of England of their time. So that, to- 
 day, the Malthusian theory is practically 
 abandoned, while the Darwinian theory has 
 been amplified in many directions. Thus, 
 Kropotkin shows the importance of "mutual 
 aid" in the struggle for existence, repudiating 
 the notion that it is a struggle of each against 
 all. 
 
 Herbert Spencer first formulated a theory 
 of evolution that embraced the many fields 
 covered by science. He declares evolution to 
 consist of the "integration of matter and con- 
 comitant dissipation of motion; during which 
 the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent 
 homogeneity to a definite coherent hetero- 
 geneity ; and during which the retained motion 
 undergoes a parallel transformation." This is 
 all-inclusive, but gives no hint of the particular 
 laws of development governing one science as 
 against another, astronomy as against physics, 
 or biology as against sociology. And a very 
 serious mistake is made in imagining that 
 laws belonging to one science apply equally to 
 another. This is especially so of biology, 
 organic science, and sociology, social science.
 
 86 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 While man, as an individual, belongs with the 
 other forms of life ; man, the social being, has 
 made a departure from the other forms along 
 independent lines. In one case evolution is 
 a spiral that rises back of the lowly worm 
 and sweeps upward in ever widening curves 
 until it embraces the universe; in the other 
 case, it begins in savagery, moves upward 
 through barbarism and civilization to en^ 
 lightenment. 
 
 The names of Darwin and Spencer must be 
 bracketed with that of Marx. If science is 
 mainly interpretaton, let it be remembered 
 that the same year Darwin's "Origin of 
 Species'" appeared, 1859, Marx, in his "Contri- 
 bution to the Critique of Political Economy," 
 first fully formulated his theory of historical 
 materialism, and employed it to trace the de- 
 velopment of a number of economic theories. 
 And historical materialism not only interprets 
 the intricate phenomena of social evolution, 
 but also accounts for the intellectual super- 
 structure, explaining, for instance, the rise of 
 the Darwinian school. For this reason modern 
 Socialism is called scientific. It does not de- 
 tract from the glory of any of these three 
 giants of thought to group them together, as 
 Ferri has done. 
 
 Just as the biologist declares that nothing 
 happens by accident, that every phenomenon 
 answers to the test of cause and effect, that the 
 manifestation we call free will is dependent 
 upon everything else, so the Socialist declares
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 87 
 
 that nothing happens by chance in society, that 
 all is part of a more or less well ascertained 
 process making for better social order. Just 
 as the biologist refuses to ignore the struggle 
 for existence, but declares this to be a very 
 important fact in biology, so the Socialist re- 
 fuses to overlook the struggle of classes in 
 society, but declares this to be its most im- 
 portant fact. Just as the biologist traces the 
 descent of man, shows how intimately he is 
 related to his next of kin in the animal 
 province, and declares that man partakes of 
 what there is in his ancestors down to the 
 primordial cell, so the Socialist traces the evo- 
 lution of society, showing that institutions are 
 largely the reflex of material needs, and that 
 one social system makes way for another. 
 
 Science, like the Socialist movement, is in- 
 ternational. It is no respecter of person or 
 place. Under a certain atmospheric pressure 
 and temperature, vapor condenses into rain. 
 It does so in America ; it does so in China. To 
 exploit labor, the means of production must be 
 owned as private property. It is so in America ; 
 it is so in China. Because like causes produce 
 like results, when an industrial depression sets 
 in over the world, we know it is not due to the 
 perversity of a few Wall street bankers, but 
 to international unpaid labor. 
 
 So we know that some tremendous force 
 was at work when, for example, the generation 
 that saw the end of the 19th century witnessed 
 the inauguration of the factory system, political
 
 88 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 disturbances in America and France, new de- 
 partures in economics, medicine, treatment of 
 the insane, criminology, psychology, philosophy 
 and science. Historical materialism declares 
 that the primary cause was the clash between 
 the rising capitalists, whose right bower 
 science then was, and the feudal aristocracy. 
 Again, in the middle of the century, when the 
 revolutions of 1848 placed the capitalist class 
 completely on the throne, there was an impetus 
 given to science that brought forth the theory 
 of organic evolution, and that also brought 
 forth the scientists of the working class with 
 the theory of social evolution. And just as 
 Alfred Russell Wallace arrived at the theory 
 of natural selection independently of Darwin, 
 so Engels and, later, Morgan arrived at the 
 theory of historical materialism independently 
 of Marx- showing that both theories were the 
 ripe fruit of circumstance. 
 
 Science and Socialism belong together. For, 
 just as, in ancient times, potentates slew 
 bearers of evil tidings, so modern scientists 
 and Socialists have been execrated, upon the 
 supposition that there would be no evolution 
 if science did not say so, and there would be 
 no class struggle if Socialists did not direct 
 our attention to it! 
 
 The capitalist class, having reached the 
 zenith of their career, are opposed to further 
 progress, and leave science to shift for herself. 
 So one group of thinkers are losing them- 
 selves in the maze of "science for the sake
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 89 
 
 of science." Their work is sterile or, is apt 
 to be devoted to designing automatic 
 machinery and inventing labor-saving devices, 
 rather than health and life-saving appliances. 
 Their "expert" testimony depends upon how 
 much they receive an hour and who their 
 clients are. But another group acknowledge 
 the consequences of the modern theories and 
 subscribe to the program of Socialism. Theirs 
 is known as proletarian science. It is founded 
 upon a wider, fuller and completer materialism, 
 for "materialism is," as Untermann says, "the 
 handmaid of revolution, and without it no 
 proletarian movement complies with the 
 historical requirements of its evolution." It is 
 because the proletarians, propertyless workers, 
 "have nothing to lose but their chains," that 
 they take hold of the guidon of science and 
 carry it forward to fresh victories. 
 
 In proletarian science, evolution and revolu- 
 tion are twin forces. Every period of slow 
 development, evolution, is followed by a com- 
 plete change, a change of the fundamental 
 principle, or revolution. Revolution paves the 
 way for further evolution. To use a well- 
 known illustration : The embryo is part of the 
 mother, growing slowly through the placenta, 
 until the moment of birth, the revolution. The 
 child thenceforward is independent. It may 
 live, even though the mother perish in the act 
 of giving it birth. Applying this theory to 
 past and present society, the Socialist holds 
 that capitalism is evolving to the point where
 
 90 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 a social revolution will bring forth a new order, 
 Socialism. More than that, development along 
 the same line increases in velocity as it reaches 
 its culmination. Feudalism did not last nearly 
 so many centuries as primitive communism did 
 millenniums. Capitalism is not more than five 
 centuries old at most; full-grown, hardly a 
 century. Nowadays, new machinery is no 
 sooner installed than it is ready for scrapping. 
 The industrial revolution gave capitalism its 
 spade. It began digging its grave when it 
 annexed the Orient. 
 
 The theory of evolution by slow accumula- 
 tion is, for that matter, hardly less radical than 
 that of alternate evolution and revolution. 
 Nature fulfills her purpose of corroding 
 mountain ranges and augmenting the oceans 
 as well by the sputtering spring as by the gush- 
 ing geyser. To the lone traveler on the road 
 at midnight, when all is wrapped in slumber, 
 who stands, a mere speck, at the center of that 
 infinite sphere strewn with stars, nature is 
 just as majestic and terrible as when she drives 
 a tidal wave that engulfs a city. The un- 
 pretentious sailor who remains at his post of 
 duty, while the ship is sinking, and for thirty 
 hours flashes wireless signals of distress, so 
 saving hundreds of lives, is adding a little 
 to the comradeship of labor and love that is the 
 harbinger of the better time a-coming. 
 
 Objections raised in the name of science 
 against Socialism, Ferri readily disposes of. 
 Indeed, most of these overlook the fact that
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 91 
 
 Socialism is the only consistent explanation of 
 social evolution. On the other hand, Massart 
 and Vandervelde very satisfactorily compare 
 parasitism in the social world with that in the 
 organic. The slave master, the feudal lord, as 
 well as minor celebrities, such as the pirate 
 and brigand, belong to the past. In our own 
 day we note that the higher a class is, the 
 more useless is it. Financial capital domineers 
 over landed property, transportation exacts 
 tribute from manufacture and agriculture, 
 while the capitalist class, as a class, exploit the 
 workers. The capitalists perform little or no 
 necessary functions ; the purpose they serve is 
 largely ornamental. They are parasites, merely 
 devourers of the workers' substance, as La- 
 fargue wittily pictures in his "Sale of an 
 Appetite." 
 
 The word parasitism, by the way, was used 
 in sociology before it was in biology. Here 
 we may remark, philology, the science of 
 language, is of considerable aid in the study 
 of the origin of institutions. Lafargue, among 
 Socialists, has made the best contribution in 
 this respect. To cite a few instances : He tells 
 us that the term capital dates back only to the 
 18th century, and that it has no equivalent in 
 the Greek and Latin tongue, showing how ab- 
 surd it is to speak of the capital of the savage. 
 Likewise, a savage's notion of private property 
 is substantially different from that of a civilized 
 man's. The savage never reveals his name to 
 a stranger ; the civilized man has cards printed
 
 92 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 especially for purposes of introduction. And, 
 quoting the Jesuit Charlevoix : "The brotherly 
 sentiments of the redskins are doubtless in part 
 ascribable to the fact that the words 'mine' 
 and 'thine' are all unknown as yet to the 
 savages." 
 
 What science teaches us, therefore, is that 
 everything, organic and social, has passed and 
 is passing through a continuous evolution and 
 revolution up to higher forms. We are certain 
 that those who have gone before did not dis- 
 pose of the riddles of the universe, we are 
 reasonably sure that we know a little more 
 than they did. And we can be positive that 
 we who live today have not uttered the final 
 word, they who come after us will add some- 
 thing to the jot of knowledge we possess. 
 
 Nature's plea for democracy is exemplified 
 in the formula: "Science is general knowledge 
 systematized." Not what some individual 
 discovers and makes his secret, but what is 
 commonly known and is an influence in com- 
 mon life, is of scientific value. Further, evolu- 
 tion granted, capitalism will pass away as did 
 feudalism, chattel slavery and primitive com- 
 munism. And if Socialism is not to be the out- 
 come of the present drift toward industrial 
 collectivism, what social order will? 
 
 When the class-society of today has given 
 way to the fraternity of the world's workers, 
 it does not mean that progress will cease, and 
 that the human family will deteriorate into a 
 low level of equals. On the contrary, to be
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 03 
 
 economically free, to rest assured that our 
 material wants are disposed of for all time to 
 come, and so end the conflict for bread, means 
 that our energies and capabilities can then be 
 directed toward intellectual pursuits, and that, 
 consequently, man will begin a new course of 
 development : he will describe a new arc in the 
 spiral of intellectual splendor.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 
 
 Sociology treats of human society. It studies 
 man at his everyday affairs, aiming to tell how 
 present social relations came to be and what 
 direction they are taking. It is the youngest 
 of the sciences, the most complex and, con- 
 sequently, the least exact, so that its con- 
 clusions must be accepted only very tentatively. 
 But, while still fumbling about in its swaddling 
 clothes, it has come to be the most favored of 
 the family, and is developing rapidly. 
 
 One thing, however, we may say at the out- 
 set. Sociology, to be worth anything, must 
 be sociology a survey that takes into con- 
 sideration the play of social activities together. 
 The study of some particularly curious or in- 
 teresting phenomenon in society, by itself, is 
 not sociology, any more so than is the study 
 of one's ringer nails anatomy. Many so-called 
 sociologists do not accept this view. They 
 believe they can handle one matter, such as 
 child-labor, at a time, independently of the 
 general social questions. Such sociology is of 
 the stamp that imagines that our vagrancy 
 problem can be solved by compelling tramps 
 to move on as if there were an edge of the 
 
 94
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 95 
 
 earth somewhere, over which they can be 
 shoved. 
 
 Objection must also be made to the theory 
 that society is merely a collection of indi- 
 viduals, and that if we know the "human na- 
 ture" of one and multiply it by the whole 
 number, we can thereby tell what society is. 
 For every one is aware that we do things in 
 our relations with our fellowmen that we 
 would not dream of doing if we lived alone on 
 some desert isle. Governments, for instance, 
 are the consequence of certain social needs, 
 and are very little influenced by the fact that 
 here or there some person thinks they deprive 
 him of his personal liberty. In turn, what may 
 be to the individual's welfare or detriment, as 
 an individual, is not necessarily to the welfare 
 or detriment of society at large. Thus one 
 man's extravagance often stimulates industrial 
 activity; another one's thrift is often a menace 
 to the general welfare. What counts, there- 
 fore, is the sum total of our activities as mem- 
 bers of society. 
 
 Then what is society? Spencer called it an 
 organism. It has many of the attributes of an 
 organism. Yet it has not developed out of 
 any other organism, having been "artificially" 
 created and may be so destroyed. It is not a 
 true organism. Again, it has been called an 
 organization. This is less satisfactory. The 
 hold society has upon us is more binding, more 
 deeply seated, than that of an arbitrary asso- 
 ciation. It is part of our very makeup. Even
 
 96 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 hermits like to be within calling distance of 
 their fellow-men, and hermits are quite rare. 
 Society is more of an organism than an or- 
 ganization. 
 
 Human society differs from other organ- 
 isms because of the influence of the mind of 
 man. By the exercise of this faculty, man has 
 scaled heights of achievement far beyond any- 
 thing attained in the animal kingdom, and has 
 acquired the pursuit of happiness as an end in 
 itself. It is the use of mechanical tools and the 
 desire for pleasure, either independently of or 
 in conjunction with the will to live that, ac- 
 cording to Lester F. Ward, distinguishes man 
 from the other animals and raises human so- 
 ciety above animal gregariousness. It may be 
 observed that Ward probably unconsciously 
 borrows the thought of pursuit of happiness 
 from the Declaration of Independence, a docu- 
 ment that the invention of superior mechanical 
 tools was not a little responsible for. Ward 
 takes up the influence of mind especially in his 
 "Psychic Factors of Civilization." "The en- 
 vironment transforms the animal, while man 
 transforms the environment," he says. "The 
 fundamental principle of biology is natural se- 
 lection, that of sociology is artificial selection." 
 And of the struggle for existence in society, he 
 declares : "In no proper sense is it true that the 
 fittest survive." In his "Applied 'Sociology" 
 he goes even further. Here he says: "The in- 
 tellectual factor completely reverses the 
 biologic law. The whole effort of Jntelligence
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 97 
 
 has been to do away with the struggle for 
 existence. . . The law of nature has been neu- 
 tralized in the physical world and civilization 
 is the result. It is still in force in the social 
 and especially in the economic world, but this 
 is because the method of mind has not been 
 applied to these departments of nature." The 
 mind is such an important factor that modern 
 sociology flows out of psychology, which, in 
 turn, rests upon biology. For this reason, too, 
 the social environment is spoken of as "arti- 
 ficial" (for want of a better word), to distin- 
 guish it from the purely organic and physical 
 environment. 
 
 How did society come to be? For informa- 
 tion on this point we turn to Lewis Morgan, 
 whose great work, "Ancient Society," is a 
 storehouse of data describing what has gone 
 before. Just as the human embryo, in its de- 
 velopment, epitomizes organic evolution, so 
 Morgan found, largely through his investiga- 
 tions among the Iroquois nation of American 
 Indians, in studying their institutions, customs 
 and traditions, that civilized man is a resume 
 of social evolution. 
 
 Morgan divides savagery and barbarism into 
 three periods each. Supposing man, as such, 
 to have existed now a hundred thousand years 
 upon earth, Morgan thinks it fair to say that 
 sixty thousand years were spent in savagery, 
 twenty thousand in older barbarism, fifteen 
 thousand in its two later periods, leaving 
 about five thousand for civilization. If any-
 
 98 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 thing, Morgan underestimates the time society 
 has existed. In making these divisions, Mor- 
 gan says: "It is probable that the successive 
 arts of subsistence which arose at long inter- 
 vals will ultimately, from the great influence 
 they must have exercised upon the condition 
 of mankind, afford the most satisfactory bases 
 for these divisions." 
 
 The earliest form of social arrangement 
 known is that of communism, when the land 
 and almost everything else was held in com- 
 mon. And it is speaking of this time that 
 Morgan says: "The principal institutions of 
 mankind originated in savagery, were de- 
 veloped in barbarism, and are maturing in 
 civilization." The author mentions among these 
 institutions, "the rudiments of language, of 
 government, of the family, of religion, of house 
 architecture and of property, together with the 
 principal germs of the arts of life." 
 
 The first division of labor was between man 
 and woman. While man was the hunter and 
 warrior, woman both delved and spun, despite 
 the old saying. The many accomplishments of 
 prehistoric woman, O. T. Mason has recounted 
 for us in his "Woman's Share in Primitive 
 Culture." Particularly should be noted the 
 making of pottery, which introduced village 
 life and marked the transition from savagery 
 to barbarism; also the domestication of 
 animals, the last step but one before civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 The first organization of society was upon
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 95 
 
 the basis of sex. Husband and wife belonged 
 to different gentes. Morgan defines a gens as 
 a group, "descended from the same common 
 ancestor, distinguished by a gentile name, and 
 bound together by affinities of blood." From 
 the same root we derive the words generate 
 and generation. Several gentes made a tribe 
 through the medium of phratries, and several 
 tribes made a confederacy and nation, each 
 fulfilling certain purposes and exercising cer- 
 tain administrative rights, although of a' 
 different nature from those of political govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Political government, founded upon property 
 and division of territory, with its economic 
 classes, tax gatherers and police powers, was 
 an innovation that disrupted tribal society. It 
 is not yet two and a half thousand years old, 
 and, so Morgan says, "although apparently a 
 simple idea, it required centuries of time and a 
 complete revolution of pre-existing conceptions 
 of government to accomplish the result." Mor* 
 gan declares private property to be the prin- 
 cipal cause of the change. Thus he says, in 
 regard to Athens: "The useful arts had at- 
 tained a very considerable development; com- 
 merce on the sea had become a national in- 
 terest ; agriculture and manufactures were well 
 advanced; and written composition in verse 
 had commenced. They were in fact a civilized 
 people, and had been for two centuries." Says 
 Engels, in his "Origin of the Family," which 
 follows "Ancient Society:" "Liberty, equality
 
 100 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 and fraternity, though never formulated, were 
 cardinal principles of the gens." For a long 
 while the wife perforce was the head of the 
 family. "In all societies in which the ma- 
 triarchal form of the family has maintained 
 itself," Lafargue tells us, "we find landed 
 
 property held by the woman So long as 
 
 property was a cause of subjection, it was 
 abandoned to the woman; but no sooner had 
 it become a means of emancipation and su- 
 premacy in the family and society than man 
 tore it from her." 
 
 The family has undergone several changes. 
 Morgan acquaints us with five forms, each 
 representing a different period: The consan- 
 guine, the intermarriage of brothers and sisters 
 in a group, giving the Malayan system of re- 
 lationship ; the punaluan, the inter-marriage of 
 several brothers to each other's wives in a 
 group, and several sisters to each other's hus- 
 bands in a group, creating the Turanian sys- 
 tem of relationships; the syndyasmian family, 
 the pairing of one male with one female, with 
 no exclusive habitation and with separation at 
 the option of either; the patriachal family, 
 the marriage of one man to several wives ; the 
 monogamian family, consisting of one man and 
 one woman, creating the monogamian system 
 of relationships. Evidence of the first two 
 forms still remains, although they belong to 
 savagery and precede the institution of the 
 gens. The third form is still extant among 
 barbarians ; Engels tells us it existed among
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 1 1 
 
 the Irish and Welsh as recently as the 
 eleventh century. The patriarchal form is 
 that of pastoral tribes, notably the Hebrews 
 of biblical times. It exists among the Mormons 
 today. The last form is peculiar to private 
 property and civilization. Here again, as 
 Morgan says : "Property becomes sufficiently 
 powerful in its influence to touch the organic 
 structure of society." 
 
 The immorality of our day is, to a great 
 extent, a reversion to what was formerly 
 normal. Immorality is atavistic. Bigamy, the 
 double code of sexual morals and one-sided 
 secret arrangements especially prevalent among 
 the upper class, are of this character. As a 
 general rule, frequency of relapse to a former 
 sexual relation depends upon how nearly it ap- 
 proaches the present one. By what we can 
 gather from evolution, the family of the future 
 is likely to be one of pure monogamy. 
 
 It has been well said that the freedom of 
 any society may be measured by the freedom 
 of its women. "Woman was the first human 
 being to come into bondage; she was a slave 
 before the male slave existed," says Bebel. Let 
 us remember that as late as the sixteenth 
 century after Sappho had twanged her lyre 
 and when Shakespeare was about to im- 
 mortalize Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia 
 and Portia serious men were still in doubt as 
 to whether or not woman has a soul, whereas 
 Havelock Ellis tells us: "It can scarcely be 
 said that the study of the brain from the
 
 102 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 present point of view leads to the revelation of 
 any important sexual distinctions." More than 
 a century woman has been struggling for the 
 right of suffrage, a right she enjoyed during 
 barbarism. Step by step she has fought her 
 way up, bearing alone the sacred burden of 
 motherhood and yet deemed unworthy to share 
 the liberties of her offspring. At the present 
 time over five million women in America, a 
 large proportion of whom are married, crowd 
 the labor market. Like man they are com- 
 pelled to pervert mind and muscle for bread, 
 while about half a million are thrust in 
 the mire even more deeply than man. The 
 woman problem is most decidedly part of the 
 social problem, although women are hindered 
 in assisting at its solution. 
 
 Differences there are between the sexes, 
 differences that reach down into our very 
 being. Havelock Ellis, after considering the 
 matter, sums it up in this fashion: "All the 
 evidence brought together points, with varying 
 degrees of certainty, to the same conclusion 
 the greater physical fraility of men, the greater 
 tenacity of life in women." "From an organic 
 standpoint, therefore, women represent the 
 more stable and conservative element in evolu- 
 tion." "In each sex there are undeveloped 
 organs and functions which in the other sex 
 are developed." Ward has this to say: "The 
 dominant characteristic of the male faculty is 
 courage, that of the female, prudence." And, 
 "In the realm of the intellect, where he would
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 103 
 
 fain reign supreme, she has proved herself 
 fully his equal and is entitled to her share of 
 whatever credit attaches to human progress 
 thereby achieved." Edward Carpenter, in 
 "Love's Coming of Age," pays this tribute: 
 "Since she keeps to the great lines of evolution 
 and is less biased and influenced by the mo- 
 mentary currents of the day; since her life is 
 bound up with the life of the child ; since in a 
 way she is nearer the child herself, and nearer 
 to the savage ; it is to her that Man, after his 
 excursions and wanderings, mental and phy- 
 sical, continually tends to return as to his 
 primitive home and resting place, to restore his 
 balance, to find his centre of life and to draw 
 stores of energy and inspiration for fresh con- 
 quests of the outer world." It is the male who 
 searches for new worlds to win, while the 
 female conserves what has been gained. 
 Organic inequalities tend to make the sexes 
 complement each other and so works for the 
 betterment of man and woman. Each is 
 realized only through a happy union with the 
 other. There is no room for social distinctions. 
 
 As deplorable as the condition of woman is 
 today, that of the child is still worse. Two 
 millions of youngsters are turning their 
 frail bodies into profit in America; thousands 
 of them die before arriving at maturity. Says 
 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in her work, "Con- 
 cerning Children :" "As members of society, we 
 find they have received almost no attention. 
 They are treated as members of the family by
 
 104 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 the family, but not even recognized as be- 
 longing to society. . . . Except for these rare 
 cases of special playgrounds, except for the 
 quite generous array of school houses and a 
 few orphan asylums and kindred institutions, 
 there are no indications in city or country that 
 there are such people as children." And here 
 it may be inserted that, whatever element of 
 truth there may be in the witticism that 
 Bernard Shaw writes plays for the op- 
 portunity it affords him of penning prefaces, 
 true enough is it that many such a sociological 
 contribution as Spencer's "Education" is badly 
 in need of a long preliminary chapter, setting 
 forth the fact that for the great mass of the 
 people the treatise is largely inapplicable. Mrs. 
 Oilman, for her part, knows that the welfare of 
 the little ones is bound up in the general con- 
 cern. "Our children suffer individually from 
 bad social conditions," she says, "but cannot 
 be saved individually." 
 
 Man's relations in society are the outcome of 
 what has gone before, the fruit of historical 
 conditions. Only by bearing this in mind can 
 we understand existing institutions, learn how 
 codes of morality came to be formulated and 
 determine, what course of action makes for the 
 common good. This method is that of historical 
 materialism, the Socialist interpretation of 
 history. That the method is a rational one is 
 shown by the fact that the establishment of 
 international commercial connections is fol- 
 lowed by the holding of international con-
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 105 
 
 ferences on matters of a diplomatic, philosoph- 
 ical, scientific and sociological nature, although 
 some of these gatherings are international in 
 little else but name. It is shown in the fact 
 that the so-called individualistic school of 
 sociology, represented by Spencer, which was 
 a reflex of capitalism in its younger days, is 
 being replaced by the modern social school, in- 
 dicating that our social fabric has become more 
 complex. 
 
 It is in the domain of criminal sociology, of 
 the special fields, that possibly the most satis- 
 factory work has been done thus far. For this 
 we are indebted particularly to Enrico Ferri, 
 of the positive school of criminology of 
 Lombroso. 
 
 Distinguishing three causes of crime 
 heredity, physical and social environments, 
 Ferri divides criminals into five groups: 
 criminal madmen, born criminals, criminals by 
 contracted habits, occasional criminals and 
 criminals of passion, and declares that mad 
 criminals and criminals of passion are 5 to 10 
 per cent of the total ; born and habitual crim- 
 inals 40 to 50 per cent, and occasional crim- 
 inals, 40 to 50 per cent. While laying due stress 
 upon this, Ferri goes on to say: "It is to 
 the social factors that we must chiefly attribute 
 the periodic variations of criminality." Again, 
 "The truth is that the balance of crime is 
 determined by the physical and social environ- 
 ment. But by changing the condition of the 
 social environment, which is most easily
 
 106 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 modified, the legislator may alter the influence 
 of the telluric environment and the organic 
 and psychic conditions of the population, con- 
 trol the greater portion of crimes and reduce 
 them considerably." His studies lead him to 
 formulate a "law of criminal saturation," which 
 he explains as follows : "Just as in a given 
 volume of water, at a given temperature, we 
 find a solution of a fixed quantity of any chem- 
 ical substance, not an atom more or less, so in 
 a given social environment, in certain defined 
 physical conditions of the individual, we find 
 the commission of a fixed number of crimes." 
 It is in obeyance to this law that at one time 
 men try to break out of jail, while at another 
 time they try to break into it. 
 
 The positive school, therefore, considers the 
 criminal a victim rather than a free will agent. 
 It proceeds upon the theory that, as the say- 
 ing goes, "an ounce of prevention is worth a 
 pound of cure," and, in its program, offers 
 "penal substitutes," whereby criminal pro- 
 clivities may be diverted into non-criminal and 
 useful channels. It may be said, however, that 
 the carrying out of this program is largely 
 dependent upon the progress of the workers 
 in the birth of a social consciousness. In the 
 minor courts today, to the greatest degree, and 
 to some extent in the superior courts, judges 
 are chosen, not so much for being learned in 
 the law as for their wealth, social station or 
 service to the political machine. It goes with- 
 out saying that this is equally true of legis-
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 107 
 
 lators and prison officials. Further, the "law 
 of criminal saturation" is quite acceptable to 
 one who regards society from the standpoint 
 of historical materialism. The theory of 
 saturation may be applied to other social ills; 
 it is but another way of saying the human race 
 tolerates one social order until it is ready for 
 another. 
 
 In some respects the most courageous work 
 done in sociology is that of the school of 
 Ratzenhofer, represented by Professor Albion 
 W. Small. Says the latter, in his work on 
 "General Sociology:" "In the beginning were 
 interests. . . . The primary interests of every 
 man, as of every animal, is in sheer keeping 
 alive. . . . The conspicuous element in the 
 history of the race, so far as it has been re- 
 corded, is universal conflict of interests." The 
 last sentiment is readily identified as the open- 
 ing thought of the "Communist Manifesto," 
 Engel's footnote included. Small lays stress 
 upon class interests, dividing society into 
 "three chief groups ; the privileged ; the middle 
 class; those without property, rights, or in- 
 fluence." 
 
 This is a very good working foundation. 
 Furthermore, if sociology is, as its exponents 
 affirm, the science of sciences, a bouquet of the 
 others, it must take a stand in this great con- 
 flict of contending interests. Sociology that 
 exists for its own sake is sterile. There is no 
 sociology for the sake of sociology, as Ferri 
 well puts it. It must exist for the sake of so-
 
 108 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 ciety. Just as there is a positive school of 
 criminal sociology, so there must be a positive 
 program for general sociology. Small per- 
 ceives this. So he declares: "From the human 
 standpoint no science is an end in itself. The 
 proximate end of all science is organization 
 into action." And again, "The sociologists 
 believe that the most worthy work of men is 
 effort to improve human conditions." Follow- 
 ing this theme, Small talks in the language of 
 the Socialist: "Civilization involves approach 
 to a situation in which each person shall be a 
 person, not a commodity for other persons ; 
 in which also each person shall be equally free 
 with every other person to develop the type 
 of personality latent in his natural endowment, 
 not the sort of personality to which he would 
 be limited by arbitrary division of opportunity." 
 
 Small accepts Socialist economics: "In the 
 first place, capital itself produces nothing. It 
 earns nothing. This is contrary to general 
 economic presumption." And as a sequel: "If 
 we are justified in drawing any general con- 
 clusions whatever from human experience thus 
 far, it is safe to say that the social process 
 tends to put an increasing proportion of in- 
 dividuals in possession of all the goods which 
 have been discovered by the experience of hu- 
 manity as a whole, and that all social programs 
 should be thought out with a view to pro- 
 motion of this tendency." 
 
 How near Small comes to the Socialist po- 
 sition may be gathered from this thought,
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 109 
 
 which is repeated throughout his work: "The 
 great value of sociology to most people will be 
 an indirect consequence of its furnishing a point 
 of view, a perspective, an atmosphere, which 
 will help to place all the problems of life with 
 which each has to deal ; or, to use a different 
 figure, it will serve as a pass-key to all the 
 theoretical difficulties about society that each 
 of us may encounter." What is the nature of 
 thas pass key? "Indeed, we have come to 
 realize that politics at bottom is very largely 
 a maneuvering to control the means of con- 
 trolling wealth." Here Small uses historical 
 materialism as his pass-key. 
 
 But, likely because Small does not subscribe 
 in full to the Socialist philosophy, his work has 
 no positive program. And such a program it 
 must have, to be worth anything. For, in his 
 own words, "If our sociology turns out to be 
 real knowledge, not the temporary aberration 
 of a few pedants, it must have a message that 
 can be translated from technical academic 
 phraseology into the thought and words of 
 common life." Small could not strike off better 
 the charge of the Socialist ; he could not better 
 acknowledge the challenge of the workers that 
 the fulfilling of this purpose is the express 
 mission of the Socialist movement. 
 
 It is just the theory of historical materialism 
 that is the vitalizing current in sociology. If 
 "history is sociology in the yoke," as Small 
 contends, and if sociology is largely a matter 
 of interpretation, as he believes, he must ac-
 
 HO SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 cept historical materialism or offer a sub- 
 stitute. "History is just becoming rational, 
 just beginning to ascertain its function and to 
 comprehend its rightful domain. History 
 not that fragment we now call history, but the 
 record and contemplation of the evolution of 
 things the history of social conditions and 
 tendencies, of theories and experiments, of 
 laws and institutions, in times gone by that 
 wider history which narrates events antedating 
 human memory and consciousness the history 
 of the long processes in the evolution of life 
 on the planet history which tells of the 
 mighty, unseen cataclysms which took place 
 in the fiery eons of the earth's babyhood the 
 biography of planets and systems and of the 
 peoples and institutions that have evolved 
 upon them this is history in its future, 
 rational and universal sense." Such is the 
 utterance of J. Howard Moore, in his "Better 
 World Philosophy." Is it a mere accident that 
 this new outlook toward history comes after 
 Marx formulated the theory of historical 
 materialism, showing that the rise of the labor 
 movement would necessitate just such an 
 attitude? 
 
 And is it an accident that the end of 
 sociology is said to be the socialization of 
 achievement, just at the time when the work- 
 ers declare their program to be the socialization 
 of industry? That it is no accident, we may 
 gather from the fact that Ward accepts the 
 Socialist position on this matter, as well as
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY HI 
 
 embracing historical materialism, even though 
 he calls himself a "sociocrat" instead of So- 
 cialist. 
 
 Let us put together what Ward tells us. 
 "National freedom and political freedom have 
 been achieved. Social freedom remains to be 
 achieved." "The movement that is now 
 agitating society is different from any of the 
 previous movements, but it differs from them 
 only as they differ from one another. It is 
 nothing less than the coming to consciousness 
 of the proletariat." "For the first time in the 
 history of political parties there has been 
 formed a distinctively industrial party, which 
 possesses all the elements of permanence and 
 may soon be a controlling factor in American 
 politics. Though this may not as yet presage 
 a great social revolution, still it is precisely 
 the way in which a reform in the direction 
 indicated should be expected to originate." 
 "There is only one live problem, the maximum 
 equalization of intelligence." "The union, as- 
 sociation and complete fusion of all races into 
 one great homogeneous race the race of man 
 is the final step in social evolution." "Man- 
 kind wants no eleemosynary schemes, no 
 private nor public benefactions, no fatherly 
 oversight of the privileged classes, nor any 
 other form of patronizing hyprocrisy. They 
 only want power the power which is their 
 right and which lies within their grasp. They 
 have only to reach out and take it. The 
 victims of privative ethics are in the immense
 
 112 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 majority. They constitute society. They are 
 the heirs of all the ages. They have only to 
 rouse and enter upon their patrimony that the 
 genius of all lands and of all time has 
 generously bequeathed to them." 
 
 And Morgan, too, accepts the Socialist po- 
 sition in saying: "When the intelligence 
 of mankind rises to the height of the great 
 question of the abstract rights of property, 
 including the relations of property to the state, 
 as well as the rights of persons to property, 
 a modification of the present order of things 
 may be expected. The nature of the coming 
 changes it may be impossible to conceive ; but 
 it seems probable that democracy, once uni- 
 versal in a rudimentary form and repressed in 
 many civilized states, is destined to become 
 again universal and supreme." 
 
 The sociology that responds to every test, 
 therefore, is Socialist sociology. It furnishes 
 the pass-key to understand the society of the 
 past and to explain its present trend. It 
 rests upon the theory that material interests 
 are of fundamental importance and that they 
 must be satisfactorily adjusted before there 
 can be peace among mankind. It realises that 
 so long as one man anywhere is a thrall, the 
 human race is enslaved. It points to the war 
 of the classes and declares that the future gf 
 the working class is the future of society. It 
 brings sociology down to earth and the com- 
 mon man. Its program is the life-giving force 
 to sociology: to socialize achievement by con-
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY H3 
 
 verting the means of production into collective 
 property, thereby making the fullest and freest 
 development of the individual accord with the 
 welfare and progress of society, and replacing 
 the existing chaos and conflict by harmony and 
 happiness.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY 
 
 From the earliest times what man lacked in 
 knowledge he made up in imagination. And 
 the less he was informed as regards what 
 occurred about him, the more extravagant 
 were the speculations he indulged in. Con- 
 'sequently his intellectual growth consists, in 
 some measure at least, in a process of disillu- 
 sionment. 
 
 By degrees man has extended the realm of 
 the known and limited that of the unknown. 
 At first the universe appeared as chaos. Then 
 it was seen that everything exists in motion 
 through time and space. Then the distinction 
 became clear between the organic and the in- 
 organic, between the animate and the inanimate, 
 between the lower animals and man. Then 
 came the classification of phenomena: the 
 study of the heavenly bodies, of the activity of 
 matter, of its composition, of organic life, of 
 consciousness, and of society. Having classified 
 the data gathered, man formulates theories, 
 learns the purpose of everything and offers his 
 explanation of what we are, how we came to 
 be and whither we are going. 
 
 Philosophizing about things is the highest 
 function of the mind. For in a proper sense 
 philosophy is something more than science ; it 
 
 114
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY U5 
 
 is like standing upon one's tiptoes above what 
 we know to take a peep into what is just 
 beyond and what some day we may under- 
 stand. It should be stated at once, however, 
 that there is more poetry than truth in the 
 verse : "We are such stuff as dreams are made 
 of." Sentiments of that kind belong- to the 
 earlier ages, when men were engaged in 
 speculating as to the number of spirits that can 
 dance on the point of a needle. Philosophy 
 deals with the realities of life, no less so than 
 does science. We spin our philosophies only 
 as we human beings must, because of what we 
 and the universe are. Science commences 
 where metaphysics ends. Science does not 
 lose itself in metaphysics. Metaphysics finds 
 itself in science. 
 
 Ideas originate in our brains, not outside of 
 us. What we call the mind of man, like every- 
 thing else, began in simpler forms. Fitch and 
 Jacques Loeb even trace it back to inanimate 
 nature. The impulse out of which intellect 
 has sprung is intuition, which is developed 
 further in many animals than in man. Thus 
 animals scent danger more quickly than man 
 and are superior weather prophets. Because 
 intuition appears to be more deeply seated in 
 the female of the race, enabling her to 
 peremptorily pass judgments that the male 
 arrives at only after laborious thought, intuition 
 is often spoken of as a feminine attribute. 
 
 Man thinks what he cannot help thinking. 
 Professor William James, in his work on 
 "Psychology," states his fundamental propo-
 
 116 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 sition in this wise: "The first and foremost 
 concrete fact which everyone will affirm to be- 
 long to his inner experience is the fact that 
 consciousness of some sort goes on. 'States of 
 mind' succeed each other in him. If we could 
 say in English 'it thinks,' as we say 'it rains' or 
 'it blows/ we should be stating the fact most 
 simply and with the minimum of assumption. 
 As we cannot we must simply say that thought 
 goes on." This observation every one verifies 
 when he speaks of a thought coming to him 
 "as quick as a flash." 
 
 Just as we cannot conceive of any other color 
 except those we know or a combination of 
 them, so we entertain only such ideas as are 
 the result of the experience of what is in us. 
 "Imagination cannot transcend experience," 
 Lester F. Ward puts it. When philosophy 
 tried to do so, he says "it floated in the air and 
 fought the battle of the shades." "The history 
 of successive meanings of words solves the 
 first difficulty; it shows the concrete meaning 
 always preceeding the abstract meaning," re- 
 marks Lafargue. Among many instances of 
 like nature, he calls our attention to the 
 legends surrounding certain numbers, showing 
 what a hard time the savage had in training 
 himself to count beyond two. And Professor 
 Seligman says: "Everywhere the physical, 
 material substratum was recognized long be- 
 fore the ethical connotation was reached." 
 
 Ideas are of value only as they respond to 
 material, historical fact. Detached from the 
 conditions to which they rightfully belong, their
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY U7 
 
 significance is warped. The problems con- 
 fronting society are not hypothetical. Thus 
 secession should hardly have shocked the 
 North, since abolitionists and New Englanders 
 had advocated such a policy long before the 
 South carried it into execution. 
 
 Dualism separation of ideas from things 
 appears in many shapes. It is one of the most 
 striking features of some outworn philosophies. 
 Thus Kautsky says of Kant: "Through him 
 did philosophy first become the science of 
 science, whose duty it is not to teach a distinct 
 philosophy, but how to philosophize." Yet 
 Kant believed there to be in everything "the 
 thing in itself," as apart from the combination 
 of its qualities. Instead of examining the ; 
 merits and demerits of men and institutions, 
 this process of reasoning would make us hold 
 to "the divine right of kings," "the sacredness 
 of contract" and the infallibility of courts. 
 
 The consequence of dualism is, as in Spen- 
 cer's case, the contemplation of an unknowable, 
 separate and distinct from the knowable, for- 
 ever closed to the human mind. Regarding 
 which it might well be observed : If there is, 
 we do not know of it. Much is indeed un- 
 known. But some of what was formerly un- 
 known is no longer so. While we do not rush 
 to the other extreme ultimately everything 
 will be known we can say that considerable 
 of it will some day be understood. 
 
 Again, in Hegel's N case, there is dualism 
 based upon the idea as the primary. Engels 
 describes the Hegelian philosophy in these
 
 118 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 words : "In this system and herein is its great 
 merit for the first time the whole world, 
 natural, historical, intellectual, is represented 
 as a process, i. e., as in constant motion, 
 change, transformation, development, and the 
 attempt is made to trace out the internal con- 
 nection that makes a continuous whole of all 
 this movement and development. . . . From this 
 point of view the history of mankind no longer 
 appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of 
 violence all equally condemnable at the judg- 
 ment seat of mature philosophic reason, and 
 which are best forgotten as quickly as possible ; 
 but as the process of evolution of man him- 
 self." Hegel sought in the evolution of ideas 
 for a philosophy of history, rather than in the 
 development of institutions out of and into 
 social orders. As a consequence Hegel lost 
 himself in the pursuit of the absolute. His 
 method is satisfactory; the content of that 
 method, the system, is insufficient. 
 
 It is hardly accidental that Spencer and 
 Hegel are found defending the existing order, 
 disciples of so-called individualism. For a 
 philosophy seeking the absolute is likely to be 
 nothing more than a mirage of class dominion. 
 The absolute in philosophy accompanies the 
 absolute in economics, politics and social 
 relations, accompanies the concentration of 
 property, power and position into the hands 
 of the monopolist. 
 
 Breaking away from the Hegelian school, 
 and marking another step forward, stands 
 Feuerbach. Feuerbach declared his position
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY H9 
 
 to be: "Backwards I am in accord with the 
 materialists, but not forwards." This attitude, 
 Engels, in his work on "Feuerbach," has very 
 well hit off. "The under half of him was 
 materialist, the upper half idealist." Feuer- 
 bach is intermediary, the connecting link. The 
 next school is that of Marx, the materialistic 
 conception of history. Marx's method differs 
 little from the Hegelian. But in the gathering 
 of data, material conditions and social relations 
 play a more important part than speculations. 
 The Hegelian system is turned right side up. 
 
 Caution must be exercised in employing the 
 Marxian method. Ideas are not ignored. They 
 are included. They are accepted as part of the 
 historical data. But they do not exist alone. 
 And the actual conditons that brought them 
 into being are generally first considered. Marx 
 emphasizes this point when he says in 
 criticism of Feuerbach: "The materialistic 
 doctrine that men are the products of con- 
 ditions and education, different men therefore 
 the products of other conditions and changed 
 education, forgets that circumstances may be 
 altered by men and that the educator has him- 
 self to be educated. It necessarily happens, 
 therefore, that society is divided into two 
 parts, of which one is elevated above society. 
 (Robert Owen, for example)." 
 
 In Socialist philosophy there is no pursuit 
 of the absolute, other than lies in recognizing 
 the universe as the only absolute. Says 
 Dietzgen, in his "Philosophical Essays:" "The 
 absolute and the relative are not separated
 
 180 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 transcendentally, they are connected with each 
 other so that the unlimited is made up of an 
 infinite number of finite limitations and each 
 limited phenomenon possesses the nature of 
 the infinite." Entertaining any other absolute 
 is but a way of acknowledging the capitalist 
 order to be absolute and final. The Socialist, 
 for his part, regards the ending of the career 
 of our ruling class as the beginning of the 
 career of the working class, as making way 
 for grander intellectual achievement. 
 
 With the 'Socialist, therefore, everything is 
 relative. Everything exists by contrast. All 
 things considered, what is here is superior to 
 what has been, but inferior to what will be. 
 In the words of Emerson : "The reputations of 
 the nineteenth century will one day be quoted 
 to prove its barbarism." 
 
 Again, society is not a general mass of use- 
 ful members, some of whom happen to be 
 more intelligent, industrious and thrifty than 
 others. Society is split up into two distinct 
 classes, those who produce most and possess 
 least, and those who produce least and possess 
 most. This deep-rooted contradiction is at the 
 bottom of many others. It accounts to a great 
 extent for the double code of ethics, the con- 
 trast between precept and practice, between 
 the real and the ideal a contrast so glaring 
 that Ibsen makes one of his characters say: 
 "Don't use that foreign word: Ideals. We've 
 got the excellent native word : lies." 
 
 Wages and profits, poverty and plenty, 
 slavery and mastery, go together, Truth is
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY 131 
 
 relative, not absolute. There are no absolute 
 standards of right and wrong. Everything is 
 right or wrong only in relation to every- 
 thing else. Estimates are of importance only 
 as they conform to historical needs. There is 
 no valid comparison, for instance, between 
 the conditon of the workers today and that ol 
 the workers of decades ago. A comparison of 
 moment is that which shows whether they 
 own a larger or smaller share of the national 
 wealth, and whether they are masters of their 
 lives to a greater extent than formerly. 
 
 As between right and wrong, wrong is the 
 outgrown. As between true and false, false 
 is the surpassed. Truth and right are all there 
 is to false and wrong, with something in ad- 
 dition. To do right one must comprehend up 
 to and beyond wrong. Just as the higher 
 animals have grown out of others lower in the 
 scale, and civilization out of barbarism and 
 savagery, so what is morally right has grown 
 out of what has become wrong. Right is 
 superior to wrong by contrast. 
 
 Socialism is capitalism, and all that has gone 
 before, with something in addition collectiv- 
 ism in the means of material existence. So- 
 cialism has, from being Utopian, become 
 scientific, and is developing from theory to 
 practice. Socialist theories are by contrast 
 more satisfactory than others, but ready to be 
 abandoned should a better explanation of 
 social change be advanced. And they are not 
 sufficient unto themselves. They are broaden- 
 ing in the light of fresher knowledge. "Nor
 
 122 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 do the Socialists consider Marx infallible," 
 comments Hillquit. "Marxism is a living, 
 progressive theory of a live, growing and con- 
 crete social movement, not an ossified dogma 
 nor a final revelation. And the disciples of 
 Karl Marx have always shown a true apprecia- 
 tion of the spirit of their master by developing, 
 extending and, when necessary in the light of 
 newer developments, even modifying his 
 teachings." Furthermore, just as there were 
 other playwrights, precursors and contempo- 
 raries of Shakespeare, who helped create the 
 Elizabethan drama, so were there other think- 
 ers, precursors and contemporaries of Marx 
 and Engels, who helped describe the scientific 
 foundations of modern Socialism. 
 
 Historical materialism operates in the do- 
 main of sociology. Now, sociologists admit 
 that social conditions are not the result of 
 one specific, pre-arranged, carried-out plan, but 
 exist as the sum total of conflicting currents. 
 What is necessary, therefore, is a clear under- 
 standing of the operation of the law of cause 
 and effect, so that, for the future, the con- 
 sequence of every act may be anticipated. 
 
 The analysis of the process of reasoning is 
 the special task of philosophy. Philosophy 
 takes up the thread where historical material- 
 ism drops it. This is made clear by Dietzgen 
 when he says: "The positive outcome of 
 philosophy concerns itself with specifying the 
 nature of the human mind. It shows that this 
 special nature of mind does not occupy an 
 exceptional position, but belongs with the
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY 133 
 
 whole of nature in the same organization." 
 Historical materialism is supplemented by 
 materialistic monism. Monism is the So- 
 calist's method of reasoning, his dialectic. 
 "The dialectic is," so Engels says, "as a matter 
 of fact, nothing but the science of the universal 
 laws of motion, and evolution in nature, 
 human society and thought." And again, 
 "Nature is the proof of dialectics," just as 
 history is the proof of historical materialism. 
 
 The dialectic may be resolved into thesis, 
 antithesis and synthesis. Against the thesis 
 that the idea is foremost comes the antithesis 
 that the material is foremost, following from 
 which the synthesis accepts the idea through 
 the thing. Against the thesis of hero worship 
 comes the antithesis of historical conditions, 
 following from which is the synthesis that, to 
 a great extent, the individual is the instrument 
 through which the general feeling finds ex- 
 pression. The Socialist position is neither at 
 one extreme nor the other, neither idealism 
 nor the old materialism, just as leading a 
 normal life is to be neither a profligate nor a 
 miser. 
 
 Let us now consider the non-Socialist. 
 Possibly he is given to ancestor worship, hold- 
 ing that the proper course lies in a "return to 
 the faith of our fathers." He fails to see that, 
 to be consistent in this, civilization would 
 have to be deprived of the institutions 
 it has acquired since their time. Our fore- 
 fathers, who were used to the ray of the 
 candle, might be blinded by an arc light.
 
 124 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 Moreover, what of value there was in their 
 faith persists in our day. For the good, no 
 less than the evil, liveth after them. Indeed 
 we go so far as to say, in view of our ad- 
 ditional wisdom and broader mental horizon, 
 however lofty were the principles and ideals 
 actuating them, the principles and ideals of 
 our generation are loftier and grander. 
 
 Or, again, the philosophy of the non-So- 
 cialist is based upon notions that have been 
 abstracted from actual conditions abstract 
 principles of right, justice, equality and the 
 like. It is a philosophy of ideas and dangles 
 in the air. Its meaning is lost, buried in the 
 grave of antiquities. It boasts of no body, no 
 substance. It is a philosophy that looks upon 
 society as a conflict, not of men and economic 
 interests, but of ideas of justice. 
 
 An example of a philosophy of abstract 
 principles is anarchism, in many respects the 
 antithesis of Socialism. Plechanoff correctly 
 calls the anarchist a Utopian, defining the 
 Utopian as "one who, starting from an abstract 
 principle, seeks for a perfect social organiza- 
 tion." The anarchist forgets, it is not prin- 
 ciples men profess which we must consider, 
 but what they perform. Not creeds, but deeds. 
 Jefferson, who is often quoted as having given 
 expression to the sentiment: "That govern- 
 ment is best which governs least," stretched 
 the authority vested in him as president to 
 acquire the Louisiana territory. A philosophy 
 is known by its fruit. So Plechanoff quotes 
 Proudhon, acclaimed the father of anarchism,
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY 125 
 
 offering this moth-worn homily as a solution 
 of the labor question : "Workers, hold out your 
 hands to your employers ; and you, employers, 
 do not deliberately repulse the advances of 
 those who were your wage-earners." 
 
 Proudhon proved himself a Utopian when he 
 devised a banking system for the exchange of 
 labor products years after Robert Owen's. As 
 in the case of the pursuit of the absolute, the 
 philosophy of abstract principles paints a 
 capitalist Utopia. So Kautsky says: "Anarch- 
 ism arose from the reaction of the petty bour- 
 geoisie against capitalism, which threatens 
 and oppresses it." 
 
 Anarchists join with votaries of capitalism 
 in decrying the tendency to rely on "paternal- 
 ism ;" in their looking upon Socialist control 
 as a despotic bureaucracy that would stifle 
 "individual incentive" and "personal liberty," 
 and in warning us that Socialism is the 
 "coming slavery." Keeping pace with capi- 
 talistic thought, moreover, anarchists advise 
 the workers to refrain from voting just when 
 the ruling class is exerting itself to dis- 
 franchise them. 
 
 A philosophy laying stress upon the aris- 
 tocracy of ideas is one way or another a phil- 
 osophy of the aristocratic class in society. The 
 philosophy of the common people is carried 
 upon the broad, democratic back of the real- 
 ities of life. 
 
 It is because necessity is the mother of in- 
 vention especially material necessity that 
 there are simultaneous inventions in mechani-
 
 126 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 cal appliances and simultaneous spinning of 
 like philosophies. So it happens that, while 
 every philosopher imagines his system to be 
 right, his truths to be "natural" or "eternal," 
 and his social scheme to be perfect, they are, 
 none the less, the outcome of conditions at a 
 certain time and place, and serviceable, if at 
 all, only in their proper relation. What was 
 once the faith of the cottage has often become 
 the creed of the castle. So Nietzsche says, in 
 his "Human, All Too Human," which may be 
 taken as a refutation of the extreme philos- 
 ophy that goes by his name: "Yet everything 
 uttered by the philosopher on the subject of 
 man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a 
 piece of testimony concerning man during a 
 very limited period of time," In so far as they 
 did not echo former philosophers, the "natural 
 rights of man" of the French Revolution and 
 the "unalienable rights" of the American 
 Revolution are the rights of the rising French 
 and American bourgeoisie, contingent upon 
 the advent of modern industry. 
 
 It is the important fact of modern industry, 
 too, the handling of enormous instruments of 
 production, requiring the co-operative labor of 
 millions of workers, which shows that the 
 problem confronting us is social, not personal. 
 For as one question after another assumes the 
 proportions of a social quantity indicating that 
 a social cause has brought it into being and 
 that it must have a social solution, it goes 
 without saying that its solution is not to be 
 found in so-called individualism, but in grow-
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY 137 
 
 ing solidarity; not in the independence of the 
 ego, but in the interdependence of humanity. 
 
 At the same time the psychological element 
 growing out of the fact of the class struggle, 
 class consciousness, is also of great import- 
 ance. It is not enough that economic con- 
 ditions should be deplorable and that there 
 should be pity for the distress of the poor. The 
 point must be reached when the workers 
 realize that their salvation is to be found only 
 in their own action as a class. 
 
 But even in the field of psychology, material- 
 ism has come to be considered of prime im- 
 portance. "At present psychology is on the 
 materialistic tack," declares Professor James, 
 "and ought in the interest of ultimate success 
 to be allowed full headway even by those who 
 are certain she will never fetch the port with- 
 out putting down the helm once more." And 
 then comes Professor Elmer Gates, who, in 
 his work on "The Mind and Brain," declares 
 his experiments show that training the mental 
 faculties increases the number of brain cells of 
 the localities brought into play, that cells are 
 multiplied by agreeable sensations and dimin- 
 ished by disagreeable emotion, that mind is a 
 purely physiological function and that mind 
 building is just as reasonable an aim as body 
 building. But, more than that, historical 
 materialism explains why psychology busies 
 itself with the crowd and mass movements, 
 rather than with isolated persons, why it has 
 developed from individualistic to social. 
 
 The Socialist philosophy, like all others, is
 
 128 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 partisan, with this reservation : It is the view 
 point of the most numerous class, the class 
 most necessary to the existence of society, and, 
 as such, it comes nearest to being the view- 
 point of society as a whole, out of which will 
 grow the monistic philosophy of the future. 
 
 At the same time the Socialist subscribes to 
 the sentiment expressed by Engels, shortly 
 before his death, to Labriola: "We are as yet 
 at the very beginning of things." For society 
 is not of one piece. It is the sum total of 
 many divergent interests and tendencies, to- 
 gether with numerous relics in institutions and 
 thought from former ages. No philosophy can 
 exhaust society. And for us, just as Marxian 
 economic theories cover only capitalist pro- 
 duction, just as the theory of the class struggle 
 does not explain all conflict but only that due 
 to the division of society into classes, just as 
 historical materialism does not account for 
 all social relations but rather offers a method 
 for finding the connection between them, so 
 does the Socialist philosophy as a whole not 
 aim to interpret everything about us but only 
 those more important activities that go far 
 toward determining the general welfare. 
 
 The Socialist, to make use of a common ex- 
 pression, "takes things philosophically." He 
 knows that the great reform waves that sweep 
 over the country, and the confusion of issues 
 in campaign times are not agencies of reaction 
 so much as they are symptoms of public dis- 
 satisfaction. He knows that, beneath the 
 smoke, the fires of social change are blazing
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOStTPHY 129 
 
 ever more brightly. He knows that theories, 
 doctrines, philosophies and movements must 
 pass through the crucible of experience. The 
 Socialist takes things philosophically for his 
 cause is reared upon the solid foundation of 
 historical conditions. 
 
 While the Marxian theories are indispen- 
 sable for a clear understanding of the structure 
 and trend of society, they must be taken only 
 as theories. It is only as they are continually 
 examined in the light of experience that they 
 do not ossify into cold formulae but remain a 
 live philosophy and a philosophy of life. 
 
 It is because these theories are in harmony 
 with everyday affairs, that Socialism is already 
 the North Star for tens of millions of people 
 of all countries. The Socialist philosophy is 
 in the safe keeping of the Socialist movement. 
 It is as broad as the movement itself, as vast 
 and as grand in its aspirations and ideals. That 
 is why it has come to be the most precious 
 stone in the sling of the modern David, Labor, 
 with which to strike down the Goliath of class 
 rule.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 
 
 The fundamental aim of the Socialist move- 
 ment is to make the principal means of wealth 
 production, such as the lands, mines, mills and 
 railroads, the collective property of the whole 
 people. There necessarily follows democratic 
 administration, the obligation of all able- 
 bodied persons to perform useful service and 
 the blending of freedom and labor so as to 
 secure the maximum of individuality and 
 social efficiency. 
 
 To effect the contemplated change of owner- 
 ship from private to public, the workers, as a 
 class, must control the government. It is the 
 winning of complete political power, and the 
 subsequent transfer of ownership, that con- 
 stitutes the social revolution. 
 
 The revolution is the change, not the man- 
 ner of the change. The social revolution may 
 come peacefully, without anything approach- 
 ing civil war. On the other hand, plenty of 
 blood may be shed without there following any 
 material improvement in the situation of the 
 workers. So Hillquit, one of America's fore- 
 most 'Socialists, declares in his work on "So- 
 cialism in Theory and Practice:" "Violence is 
 but an accident of the social revolution; it is 
 by no means its necessary accompaniment, and 
 
 130
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 131 
 
 it has no place in the Socialist program." And 
 Kautsky, acknowledged to be possibly the 
 foremost exponent of modern Socialism, says 
 in "The Social Revolution:" "Everyone is a 
 revolutionary whose aim is that a hitherto op- 
 pressed class should conquer the power of the 
 state." And, further on, "Even if a revolution 
 were not a means to an end, but an ultimate 
 end in itself which could not be bought at 
 too dear a price, be it ever so much blood, one 
 could not desire war as a means to let loose 
 the revolution. For it is the most irrational 
 means to this end." That explains why such 
 Socialists as Hyndman and Bax, in England, 
 speak of the question of violence as being 
 incidental. The revolution is, therefore, an 
 end, not the means to that end. 
 
 Socialists agree with Liebknecht in ridiculing 
 the notion that "tomorrow it starts." For as 
 Engels, in the introduction to the "Communist 
 Manifesto," written as late as 1888, said in 
 substantiation of Marx's position: "One thing 
 especially was proved by the commune, viz., 
 that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold 
 of the ready-made state machinery, and wield 
 it for its own purposes.' " Hypothetically, the 
 social revolution may come at one sweep. But 
 in the discussion of tactics, the possibility ot 
 such a cataclysm must be held in abeyance. 
 
 Especially true is it for Socialism that 
 history often does not repeat itself. For the 
 coming reconstitution of society is unlike 
 former ones. These were in the interest of 
 minorities ; they left society divided into
 
 132 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 classes and altered only the form of the ex- 
 ploitation of labor. The coming change has 
 in view the ending of exploitation and the 
 abolition of class distinctions. It is for the 
 benefit of the vast majority, even, broadly 
 speaking, of society as a whole. The tactics 
 of the Socialist movement are, perforce, es- 
 sentially different from those of other move- 
 ments. 
 
 At the same time, the Socialist move- 
 ment is the reflex of actual conditions. At 
 best its program is a more or less accurate 
 analysis of the tendency of social progress. 
 It takes the part of the workers in the struggle 
 of the classes. It keeps pace with the 
 awakened intelligence of the workers, securing 
 for them what relief it can while holding fast 
 to its ultimate ideal. 
 
 Nor is the Socialist movement the only 
 agency working for a better social order. 
 There are several others. The attitude of So- 
 cialists toward these other movements is very 
 well presented by Kautsky: "I must not be 
 misunderstood in the sense. . . . that I think 
 co-operative societies, trades unions, the entry 
 of the Socialist party into municipalities and 
 parliaments, or the securing of individual re- 
 forms, to be worthless. Nothing could be 
 further from my intention than that. On the 
 contrary, that is all of great service to the 
 proletariat; it only becomes of no importance 
 as a means of staving off the revolution in 
 other words, the capture of political power by 
 the proletariat."
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 133 
 
 Hillquit is one with Kautsky: "The So- 
 cialists do not foster the illusion," he says, 
 "that voluntary co-operative societies of labor, 
 either for production or for consumption, could 
 gradually and by the strength of their own 
 development, supersede the prevalent capital- 
 ist methods of production and distribution." 
 And speaking of England, in which country 
 co-operation has flourished for three-quarters 
 of a century, Sidney Webb, in "Socialism in 
 England," says: "Less than one four-hundredth 
 part of the industry of the country is yet car- 
 ried on by co-operation. The whole range of 
 industrial development seems against it, and 
 no ground for hope in co-operation as an 
 answer to the social problem can be gained 
 from economic history." In Belgium, where 
 co-operative societies have attained the 
 greatest measure of success, they were started 
 before production on a large scale had become 
 established. 
 
 Of trades unions, Kautsky says : "I regard 
 the trades unions as an equally indispensable 
 weapon in the proletarian class war as a So- 
 cialist party, and both are intimately de- 
 pendent on one another." Hillquit estimates 
 the membership of trades unions throughout 
 the world to be 11,000,000, or a million more 
 than the estimated Socialist vote. The efficacy 
 of trades unionism depends, of course, upon 
 conditions peculiar to each country. While 
 in many countries trades unionism is a very 
 powerful weapon, Bebel is of the opinion that 
 it is, for the future, of little avail in America
 
 184 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 because of the strength of concentrated capital. 
 This by no means reflects against "mass" 
 strikes for better conditions of labor or political 
 rights. But mass strikes are not generally con- 
 sidered dependable means for accomplishing 
 the social revolution. 
 
 The nature of the weapons used in the class 
 war from time to time depends upon circum- 
 stances that are forever changing. That ex- 
 plains why Socialists do not underestimate the 
 good work done by organized labor, co- 
 operative associations, workers' insurance so- 
 cieties and farmers' alliances, in their own 
 field of endeavor. But as the relation between 
 the two classes, notwithstanding, continues to 
 intensify, Socialists come to lay more and more 
 stress upon the winning of political power. 
 
 In entering politics Socialists act in- 
 dependently of other parties. The Socialist 
 party does not compromise. It declines to 
 support candidates of other parties, or to ac- 
 cept , endorsements from them. "For our 
 party and for our party tactics," says Lieb- 
 knecht, in "No Compromise," "there is but one 
 valid basis : the basis of the class struggle, out 
 of which the Socialist party has sprung up, and 
 out of which alone it can draw the necessary 
 strength to bid defiance to every storm and to 
 all its enemies." Hillquit emphasizes this 
 point. "Experience has abundantly demon- 
 strated," he says, "that whenever a party of 
 the propertied classes has invited the political 
 co-operation of the working class, the latter 
 has, with few exceptions, been used by it as a
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 135 
 
 cat's paw for the furtherance of its own class 
 interests." And while, in practical work, con- 
 cessions have to be made in going from 
 principles to tactics, which Liebknecht was one 
 of the first to see, he warns us that "questions 
 of tactics very easily shift into questions of 
 principle." So, again, Hillquit says: "The So- 
 cialist platform is the only political platform 
 which is practically identical in its main 
 features and important details in all civilized 
 
 countries We observe that while the 
 
 details of Socialist policy and tactics vary in 
 every country, and are modified with every 
 economic and political change, its most salient 
 features are identical everywhere, and have 
 undergone but little change since the days 
 when the Socialist party first established itself 
 in practical politics." 
 
 The Socialists of each country can face their 
 problems only in their own way. So Herron 
 says, in "The Day of Judgment :" "The might- 
 iest voice lifted in the German Reichstag is 
 that of Bebel ; and there is nothing concerning 
 the German people that Bebel does not have 
 his say about. . . . The development of Italian 
 Socialism has been through the distinctly 
 Italian appeal made by Ferri and by those who 
 work with him." 
 
 A few general points in Socialist tactics 
 may be established at the outset. Convinced 
 that the institutions of a period are largely the 
 reflex of material conditions, and, in so far as 
 they are to be altered, will be altered largely 
 through the change of those conditions, the
 
 186 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 Socialist party does not concern itself, for in- 
 stance, with religious matters or the form of 
 the family. Belief in a supreme being cannot 
 be eliminated by decree, as the French 
 Revolutionists imagined, nor re-establishd by 
 proclamation, as the reaction thought. So- 
 cialists therefore do not permit their move- 
 ment to be divided by sex, creed, race, 
 nationality or other distinctions. In this re- 
 spect, as in many others, the Socialist move- 
 ment is inclusive rather than exclusive. 
 
 Again, as an innocent speculation sometimes 
 indulged in, under Socialism the state will lose 
 such coercive functions as spring from class 
 rule, and its police powers, under the superior 
 environment, may "die out" altogether. But 
 while, for many, this is a "consummation de- 
 voutly to be wished," like all consummations 
 it cannot be reached by wishing, or by ar- 
 bitrarily demanding it. It is one of the se- 
 crets of the future, and concerns Socialists at 
 present very little. 
 
 In our own country we are confronted by 
 conditions peculiar to ourselves. This nation 
 is an amalgam of troops of immigrants from all 
 lands, with different traditions, creeds, and 
 ideals, which have been more or less as- 
 similated in what we term the American spirit. 
 Apart from the important cleavage into classes, 
 the various sections of the country have their 
 own economic interests. The result of such a 
 clash of divergent issues can only with 
 difficulty be refined down to something in the 
 shape of a broad national policy. This may
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 137 
 
 be noted in the fact that from the very first 
 our government has sought to solve all 
 questions by compromise, in which the aroma 
 of the fleshpot was, in no little degree, the 
 guiding motive, compromise that too often 
 only procrastinated the day of settlement 
 that jeopardized the very existence of the 
 nation. 
 
 One thing, however, is quite positive. Con- 
 sidering the pains taken by the framers of the 
 constitution to thwart the will of the people at 
 every turn, permitting the bill of rights to 
 slip in as amendments, in order to silence 
 criticism, which Professor J. Allen Smith well 
 shows in his work on "The Spirit of American 
 Government," it is doubtful if a greater myth 
 has ever been invented that that of American 
 liberty. Of no country is it truer than of 
 America, that the government is merely "a 
 committee for managing the common affairs 
 of the whole bourgeoisie." 
 
 America is a country of two parties. Not 
 that the distinction between parties has always 
 been easy to define. In point of fact parties 
 have not hesitated to change front in inter- 
 preting the constitution "strictly" or "loosely" 
 as it suited them. But every minor party has 
 either quickly become a major party or its 
 demands have been absorbed, if not emas- 
 culated, by one of the larger parties. When 
 this has not happened, the minor party soon 
 sunk into insignificance. 
 
 Regarding the questions which presumably 
 separate Republicans and Democrats, James
 
 138 SOCFALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 Bryce, in his "American Commonwealth," 
 written in 1896, says, after enumerating several 
 national matters: "Neither party has anything 
 definite to say upon these issues; neither party 
 
 has any principles, any distinctive tenets 
 
 All has been lost except office or the hope of 
 it." In municipal elections, as is well known, 
 the deliberate attempt is being made to wipe 
 out party lines. It is recognized that the two 
 old parties are the obverse and reverse sides of 
 the same shield. "Each equally leans upon 
 the respectable and wealthy classes," continues 
 Bryce, "the Republicans more particularly on 
 these classes in the North, the Democrats on 
 the same classes in the South." Since 1872 
 both parties have, in their platforms, mentioned 
 the struggle between capital and labor to be an 
 issue. But they did little more than mention 
 it. Still, if the Republican party, which has 
 been in control practically ever since the civil 
 war, has demonstrated its incapacity to cope 
 with the labor question, there is no hope that 
 the Democratic party will ever be given the 
 opportunity to try its hand, for there are many 
 signs of a coming disintegration of the 
 Democracy. The Republican party, moreover, 
 undoubtedly has the confidence of the larger 
 capitalists, so that there is every reason foi 
 believing that the future contest will be be- 
 tween Republicans and Socialists. 
 
 This brings us to the problem of the So- 
 cialist party's platform. In that platform, the 
 amount of importance placed in the working 
 program of industrial, political and social
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 139 
 
 measures comprising its more immediate de- 
 mands, depends entirely upon general cir- 
 cumstances. If it is true, for example, that the 
 trades unions in America are no longer able to 
 cope with organized capital, it will, of neces- 
 sity, result in the 'Socialist party's in- 
 corporating their demands in its program. 
 This, indeed, is already happening. And 
 trades unions, for their part, are coming more 
 and more to make the securing of political 
 power part of their aim. For Socialists do 
 not accept the theory that the misery of the 
 workers should be permitted to increase. 
 Moreover, what melioration the Socialist party 
 is able to work does not bear the taint of pau- 
 perism. It is received as part payment of 
 labor's rightful heritage. Nor is that 
 melioration desired simply as palliative. It is 
 accepted as being in line with the progress of 
 the workng class. 
 
 Immediate measures are not sufficient unto 
 themselves. Thus even Jaures, who represents 
 the more moderate wing of the Socialist party, 
 says in his "Studies in 'Socialism:" "So long 
 as a class does not own and govern the whole 
 social machine, it can seize a few factories and 
 yards if it wants to, but it really possesses 
 nothing. To hold in one's hands a few pebbles 
 of a deserted road is not to be the master of 
 transportation." For this reason the working 
 program must be considered as an organic 
 whole, which, while it serves the more proxim- 
 ate needs of the wealth producers, is neverthe-
 
 140 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 less animated by the ideal of complete emanci- 
 pation from the dominion of capital. 
 
 Since Socialism is not a ready-made system, 
 but an organic growth, in parliamentary activ- 
 ity Socialists must work with the material at 
 hand, even to completing the work begun, or 
 imperfectly done, by their predecessors of an- 
 other political faith. In fact, Socialists can 
 support many measures advanced by their op- 
 ponents. Thus Marx designated as a revolu 
 tion the ten-hour factory law secured in Eng- 
 land through the conflict between capitalists 
 and landlords, because it involved the new 
 principle of state aid for the workers. And so 
 Bebel supported Bismarck's working people's 
 insurance law, although it was one of the 
 measures with which Bismarck hoped to stamp 
 out the growing Socialist sentiment. 
 
 Because victories come first in municipal- 
 ities, it is here principally that Socialists have, 
 thus far, been able to shape legislation and 
 administration to their liking. Furthermore, 
 because it has its finger upon the seat of 
 government, and can, guided by a real social 
 conscience, keep that "eternal vigilance" which 
 Wendell Phillips held to be "the price of 
 liberty," the municipality is apt to be entrusted 
 with the greatest measure of power by So- 
 cialists. So Hillquit says: "While the state 
 as such will probably retain certain general 
 functions, it will no doubt be found more 
 convenient to vest the more vital and direct 
 functions in political organizations embracing 
 smaller territories. The 'Socialists regard the
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 141 
 
 present city or township as the nucleus of such 
 a political unit." 
 
 In such municipalities as the Socialists con- 
 trol, school children are fed and clothed, 
 municipal enterprises extended, ampler pro- 
 vision made for public institutions, legal ad- 
 vice furnished gratuitously, and steps taken to 
 improve the condition of the workers in many 
 other directions. In his pamphlet entitled 
 "What Socialists would do if they Won in 
 this City," A. M. Simons shows how the ex- 
 perience of Socialists in foreign countries 
 could be utilized in America. 
 
 Municipal ownership is not considered of 
 nearly so much importance as the measures 
 just cited. Not that municipal control might 
 not be of considerable service under favorable 
 circumstances. Among the suggestions for 
 such ownership the Socialist party advisory 
 program of 1904 mentions the following: All 
 industries dependent on franchises, street cars, 
 electric and gas lighting, telephones, ice 
 houses, coal and wood yards. It may be re- 
 marked, in passing, that in this country in 1899 
 already more than half of the waterworks were 
 owned and operated by the municipalities, and 
 about one-seventh of the electric light plants. 
 What hampers the efforts of Socialists in 
 municipalities is the fact that, to use Professor 
 Smith's words: "Local self-government is 
 recognized neither in theory nor in practice 
 under our political scheme." The rights of 
 our cities are stipulated in their charters, 
 granted by the state legislatures. What we call
 
 142 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 municipal government exists only by suffer- 
 ance and is restricted in every direction. Trie 
 autonomy of the city, as regards all matters 
 in which it alone is concerned, is one of the 
 first demands of Socialist legislators. 
 
 Municipal activity is only a beginning to- 
 ward Socalism. In his analysis of this question 
 Kautsky says: "Municipal Socialism finds its 
 limitations in the existing order of state and 
 society, even where universal suffrage pre- 
 vails in the communes. The commune is al- 
 ways tied down to the general economic and 
 political conditions, and cannot extricate itself 
 from them singly." 
 
 In this connection it may also be observed 
 that, while every political victory is of some 
 benefit to the workers, it may happen when 
 they secure control of one department of the 
 government, such as the legislative, the 
 functions of some other department, either 
 judicial or executive, will be extended so as to 
 destroy the workers' power. So Hillquit says : 
 "The work of systematically rebuilding the 
 economic and political structure of modern so- 
 ciety on the lines of Socialism, can begin only 
 when the Socialists have the control of the 
 entire political machinery of the state, i. e., 
 of all the legislative, executive and judicial 
 organs of the government." Each victory is, 
 consequently, but an incident making for the 
 social revolution. 
 
 In state and national parliamentary bodies 
 more important steps can be taken. It is here 
 that work is provided for the unemployed,
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 143 
 
 whose number constantly increases with the 
 perfection of machinery, the elimination of the 
 waste of competition and the commercializa- 
 tion of backward countries. Here, too, the 
 fight is made for universal suffrage, the ex- 
 tension of political liberty and the strengthen- 
 ing of the economic and social position of the 
 workers. Larger problems are considered. 
 
 Whether government ownership is of 
 benefit to the mass of the people depends upon 
 the influence they exercise over the govern- 
 ment. It is not of itself necessarily a step in 
 advance. The best that can be said for it 
 theoretically is contained in this utterance of 
 Engels: "State ownership of the productive 
 forces is not the solution of the conflict (be- 
 tween workers and capitalists), but concealed 
 within it are the technical conditions that 
 form the elements of that solution." Covering 
 its practical operations, at the annual con- 
 vention of the German Socialist party in 1892, 
 the following resolution was passed : "State 
 Socialism so-called inasmuch as it aims at state 
 ownership for fiscal purposes, seeks to sub- 
 stitute the state for the private capitalist, and 
 to confer on it the power to subject the people 
 to the double yoke of economic exploitation 
 and political slavery." 
 
 In the broader field of national activity, the 
 Socialist party has to deal with the relation of 
 the various elements among the wealth pro- 
 ducers. The proper attitude to be maintained 
 toward agricultural holdings is one of the most 
 intricate and difficult of questions. Simons,
 
 144 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 in his "American Farmer," the only serious 
 attempt made by an American Socialist to 
 handle the agrarian problem, says : "One trade 
 after another has left the farm and farming 
 itself has been transformed until the farmer 
 has become a specialist working within one 
 little narrow field and as absolutely dependent 
 upon outside social forces as the artisan at his 
 bench." Simons deems the average farmer 
 little more than an employing agent and resi- 
 dent supervisor for the exploiting class, whose 
 wage does not rise far above the subsistence 
 level. Because he declares the small farmer to 
 be the "essential economic factor in agriculture 
 in exactly the same way that the wage-worker 
 is the essential economic factor in gen- 
 eral capitalistic production," Simons accepts 
 Kautsky's definition: "The proletarian of the 
 country is the farmer." 
 
 In discussing this question, Kautsky says 
 that, "where small agricultural holdings pre- 
 vail, there the organs of social or Socialist 
 production in agriculture have first to be 
 created, and that can only be the result of a 
 slow development." Continuing, he says : "No 
 Socialist of any weight or standing has ever as 
 yet demanded that the peasants should be ex- 
 propriated or their lands confiscated." Yet 
 Kautsky looks forward to the time when "the 
 peasants will amalgamate their holdings and 
 work them in common." 
 
 In answer to the argument that under com- 
 munal ownership the farmer will not have the 
 interest in the land he has when it is his own
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 145 
 
 property, Ferri says: "We see, for example, 
 that, even in our present individualist world, 
 those survivals of collective property in land 
 to which Laveleye has so strikingly called the 
 attention of sociologists continue to be culti- 
 vated and yield a return which is not lower 
 than that yielded by lands held in private 
 ownership, although these communist or col- 
 lectivist farmers have only the right of use 
 and enjoyment, and not the absolute title." 
 
 Small trade, sometimes regarded as of mo- 
 ment to the middle class, Vandervelde declares 
 to be "the special refuge of the cripples of 
 capitalism," who often have "only a phantom 
 of independence, and are really in the hands of 
 a few great money lenders, manufacturers or 
 merchants." Where this is not true, it is 
 doubtful if they would be disturbed to any 
 extent. For Socialism is not of one piece and 
 pattern, but, rather, the outgrowth of the 
 multiform relations prevailing under capital- 
 ism. So Kautsky tells us: "The most varied 
 kinds of property in the means of production, 
 state, municipal, co-operative (distributive), 
 co-operative (productive), private could exist 
 side by side in a Socialist society. . . . The 
 same variety of the economic machinery as 
 exists to-day would be quite possible in a 
 Socialist society. Only the hurry and the 
 bustle, the fighting and the struggling, the 
 extermination and the ruin of the present day 
 struggle for life will be eliminated, just as the 
 antagonism between the exploiter and the ex- 
 ploited will disappear."
 
 14<J SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 Socialists, as is well known, are opposed to 
 militarism. Says Kampffmeyer, in his little 
 work on German Socialist tactics: "Since the 
 first days of its vigorously joyful existence, 
 until its fully endowed maturity, there sounds 
 through all its party declarations the rough 
 and revolutionary word : 'For this military 
 system, not a man and not a penny.' " 
 
 There is reason enough for this stand merely 
 on the score of the millions wasted in metal, 
 powder and rations, let alone the toll of life 
 and suffering paid by the workers. To form 
 some idea of what this price is, Karl Lieb- 
 knecht estimates the present military expendi- 
 tures of Europe as reaching $3,250,000,000 an- 
 nually. 
 
 The growing sentiment of international 
 solidarity is, by all odds, the most important 
 step in the direction of universal peace. 
 Socialists are justly proud of having, within 
 recent years, done much toward preventing 
 wars between Austria and Italy, France and 
 Germany, and Norway and Sweden. Amity 
 among nations, cementing the ties of fraternity 
 to the end of making the earth the common 
 possession of all, is the goal of the international 
 Socialist movement. The vari-colored flags of 
 different countries serve only to lift one man's 
 arm against his brother ; the crimson standard 
 of Socialism is breaking down the barriers that 
 stand in the way of universal peace and good 
 will. 
 
 "The growth of the democratic spirit is one 
 of the most important facts in the political
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 147 
 
 life of the nineteenth century," Professor 
 Smith observes. "From present indications, 
 we are at the threshold of a new social order 
 under which the few will no longer rule the 
 many." And Spargo, in his "Socialism," has 
 splendidly developed this thought of the "Com- 
 munist Manifesto:" "In place of the old bour- 
 geois society, with its classes and class antag- 
 onisms, we shall have an association in which 
 the free development of each is the condition 
 for the free development of all." 
 
 The task it is the historic mission of the 
 Socialist movement of the world to achieve is 
 as magnificent in its proportions as it is in 
 its ideals. The tremendous nature of that task 
 cannot be overestimated. Kautsky well re- 
 minds us, in one of the concluding passages of 
 his great work on the social revolution: "The 
 proletariat will require high intelligence, strong 
 discipline, perfect organization of its great 
 masses ; and these must, at the same time, have 
 become most indispensable in economic life if 
 it is to attain the strength sufficient to over- 
 come so formidable an opponent. We may 
 expect that it will only succeed in the latter 
 when it will have developed these qualities in 
 the highest degree, and that, therefore, the 
 domination of the proletariat, and with it the 
 social revolution, will not take place until not 
 only the economic, but also the psychological 
 conditions of a Socialist society are sufficiently 
 ripened." 
 
 The Socialist looks forward to the future 
 with the enthusiasm of certain victory. For
 
 148 SOCIALISM FOR STUDENTS 
 
 the stream of the new world thought and 
 movement is flowing on. Little more than 
 half a century ago its headwaters gathered in 
 the work of Marx and Engels, gathered from 
 the rockribbed mountains of philosophy, 
 economics, politics and history. Here a brook 
 empties its crystal clear waters of learning 
 into it; there a sister current greets it. Further 
 along is its confluence with science; art and 
 literature light its way. The stream rushes 
 on. It is now international in character. It 
 ever broadens, reaches into new lands, gains 
 in prestige. It commands the voice of govern- 
 ments; it swerves the destiny of nations. As 
 its powers grows, kingdoms tremble, thrones 
 totter, tyrannies fall. The social revolution is 
 fought and won. The old epoch the epoch 
 of class strife and subjection of the toilers is 
 ended. The new era the era of the com- 
 radeship and freedom of labor is begun.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The following course of reading is suggested to 
 the student. It covers the subjects touched upon in 
 the foregoing pages, and is arranged in the order 
 the works should be read. 
 
 For any one who cannot see his way clear to 
 do such extensive reading, a short cut may be made 
 by taking the works under the captions "Introduc- 
 tion" and "Socialist Statesmanship," after which 
 that phase of the question particularly appealing 
 to the reader may be studied. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 What's So and What Isn't. By John M. Work. 
 
 The Socialists. By John Spargo. 
 
 The Common Sense of Socialism. By John Spargo. 
 
 The Socialist Program. By Karl Kautsky. 
 
 Modern Socialism. By Charles H. Vail. 
 
 Principles of Scientific Socialism. By Charles H. 
 Vail. 
 
 Communist Manifesto. By Karl Marx and F. 
 Engels. 
 
 Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. By F. Engels. 
 
 Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome. By William 
 Morris and Belfort Bax. 
 
 History of Socialism in the United States. By 
 M. Hillquit. Funk and Wagnalls Co., New York. 
 
 Recent Progress of the Socialist Movement in 
 America. By M. Hillquit. 
 
 THE SOCIALIST INDICTMENT 
 
 Capital, Vol. I, part 8. By Karl Marx. 
 Condition of the Working Class in England. 65 
 F. Engels. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London. 
 
 149
 
 150 APPENDIX 
 
 People of the Abyss. By Jack London. The 
 Macmillan Co., New York. 
 
 History of Great American Fortunes. By Gus- 
 tavus Myers. 
 
 American Pauperism. By I. Ladoff. 
 
 Poverty. By Robert Hunter. The Macmillan Co., 
 New York. 
 
 Packingtown. By A. M. Simons. 
 
 Bitter Cry of the Children. By John Spargo. 
 The Macmillan Co., New York. 
 
 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor. May, 1904. 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 SOCIALIST ECONOMICS 
 
 What is Capital? By F. Lassalle. 
 
 Wage-Labor and Capital. By Karl Marx. 
 
 Value, Price and Profit. By Karl Marx. 
 
 Collectivism. By Emile Vandervelde. 
 
 Evolution of Modern Capitalism. By John A. 
 Hobson. Scribners, New York. 
 
 Commercial Crises of the 19th Century. By H. 
 M. Hyndman. Swan Spnnenschein & Co., London. 
 
 Economics of Socialism. By H. M. Hyndman. 
 Twentieth Century Press, London. 
 
 Marxian Economics. By Ernest Untermann. 
 
 Poverty of Philosophy. By Karl Marx. 
 
 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 
 By Karl Marx. International Library Publishing 
 Co., New York. 
 
 Capital. By Karl Marx. 
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 
 
 War of the Classes. By Jack London. The Mac- 
 millan Co., New York. 
 
 Mass and Class. By W. J. Ghent. The Mac- 
 millan Co., New York. 
 
 The World's Revolutions. By Ernest Untermann. 
 
 Story of the French Revolution. By E. Belfort 
 Bax. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London.
 
 APPENDIX 151 
 
 History of the Paris Commune. By E. Belfort 
 Bax. Twentieth Century Press, London. 
 
 From Revolution to Revolution. By George D. 
 Herron. 
 
 Class Struggles in America. By A. M. Simons. 
 
 Rise of the American Proletarian. By Austin 
 Lewis. 
 
 The Pullman Strike. By W. H. Carwardine. 
 
 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 
 
 Socialism, Positive and Negative. By Robert 
 Rives LaMonte. 
 
 Evolution of Property. By Paul Lafargue. 
 
 Essays on the Materialistic Conception of His- 
 tory. By A. Labriola. 
 
 Socialism and Philosophy. By A. Labriola. 
 
 Economic Interpretation of History. By E. R. 
 A. Seligman. University of Columbia Press, New 
 York. 
 
 Economic Foundations of Society. By A. Loria. 
 
 Ethics and the Materialistic Conception. By Karl 
 Kautsky. 
 
 The Theoretical System of Karl Marx. By Louis 
 Boudin. 
 
 Revolution and Counter Revolution. By Karl 
 Marx. 
 
 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. By 
 Karl Marx. 
 
 Eastern Question. By Karl Marx. 
 
 SOCIALISM AND SCIENCE 
 
 The Triumph of Life. By Wilhelm Boelsche. 
 The End of the World. By Wilhelm Meyer. 
 The Making of the World. By Wilhelm Meyer. 
 Life and Death. By E. Teichmann. 
 The Evolution of Man. By Wilhelm Boelsche. 
 Germs of Mind in Plants. By R. H. France. 
 The Universal Kinship. By J. Howard Moore.^ 
 Evolution, Social and Organic. By A. M. Lewis. 
 Parasitism, Organic and Social. By Jean Massart
 
 153 APPENDIX 
 
 and Emile Vandervelde. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 
 London. 
 
 Socialism and Modern Science. By E. Ferri. 
 
 Science and Revolution. By Ernest Untermann. 
 
 SOCIALIST SOCIOLOGY 
 
 Ancient Society. By Lewis Morgan. 
 
 Origin of the Family, Private Property and the 
 State. By F. Engels. 
 
 Woman under Socialism. By August Bebel. 
 New York Labor News Co., New York. 
 
 Man and Woman. By Havelock Ellis. Scribners, 
 New York. 
 
 Criminal Sociology. By E. Ferri. D. Appleton 
 & Co., New York. 
 
 Positive School of Criminology. By E. Ferri. 
 
 Better World Philosophy. By J. Howard Moore. 
 
 General Sociology. By Albion W. Small. U. of 
 Chicago Press, Chicago. 
 
 Psychic Factors of Civilization. By Lester F. 
 Ward. Ginn & Co., Boston. 
 
 Applied Sociology. By Lester F. Ward. Ginn 
 & Co., Boston. 
 
 SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Physical Basis of Mind and Morals. By M. H. 
 Fitch. 
 
 Feuerbach. By F. Engels. 
 
 Landmarks of Scientific Socialism. By F. Engels. 
 
 Anarchism and Socialism. By George Plechanoff. 
 
 Mr. Mallock's Ability. By M. Hillquit. Socialist 
 Literature Co., New York. 
 
 Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind. By Arthur M. 
 Lewis. 
 
 Human, All Too Human. By F. Nietzsche. 
 
 Social and Philosophical Studies. By Paul La- 
 fargue. 
 
 Philosophical Essays. By Joseph Dietzgen. 
 
 Positive Outcome of Philosophy. By Joseph 
 Dietzgen.
 
 APPENDIX 158 
 
 SOCIALIST STATESMANSHIP 
 
 The Social Revolution. By Karl Kautsky. 
 
 Socialism in Theory and Practice. By M. Hill- 
 quit. The Macmillan Co., New York. 
 
 No Compromise. By Wilhelm Liebknecht. 
 
 Changes in the Theory and Tactics of the German 
 Social-Democracy. By Paul Kampffmeyer. 
 
 The Day of Judgment. By George D. Herron. 
 
 American Farmer. By A. M. Simons. 
 
 What the Socialists would do if they Won in 
 this City. By A. M. Simons. 
 
 Socialism. By John Spargo. The Macmillan Co., 
 New York. 
 
 The Road to Power. By Karl Kautsky. Daily 
 Socialist, Chicago. 
 
 Unless otherwise indicated, works mentioned 
 above are published by Charles H. Kerr & Co., 
 Chicago. A descriptive catalogue will be mailed to 
 any one requesting it.
 
 Books by Karl Marx 
 
 Marx is the greatest of Socialist writers ; 
 study him for yourself if you want to 
 understand the principles of Socialism 
 and qualify yourself to explain them to 
 others. His most important books may 
 now be had in English at the following 
 prices, postage included: 
 
 Capital, Volume I. The Process of 
 Capitalist Production. Cloth, $2.00. 
 
 Capital, Volume II. The Process of 
 Circulation of Capital. Cloth, $2.00. 
 
 Capital, Volume III. The Process of 
 Capitalist Production as a Whole. Cloth, 
 $2.00. 
 
 The Poverty of Philosophy, a reply to 
 Proudhon. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 Revolution and Counter-Revolution, or 
 Germany in 1848. Cloth, 50c. 
 
 Value, Price and Profit. Cloth, 50c.; 
 paper, lOc. 
 
 The Communist Manifesto, by Marx 
 and Engels. Cloth, 50c.; paper, lOc. 
 
 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis 
 Bonaparte. Paper, 25c. 
 
 Wage-Labor and Capital. Paper, 5c. 
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