Читать книгу Socialism As It Is - William English Walling - Страница 20

If then "State Socialism," like the benevolent despotisms and oligarchies of history, sometimes offers the purely material benefits which it brings in some measure to all classes, as a substitute for democratic government, it also favors democracy in those places where the small capitalists and related classes form a majority of the community. The purpose of the democratic policy, where it is adopted, is to stimulate new political interest in the "State Socialistic" program, and by increasing cautiously the political weight of the non-capitalists—without going far enough to give them any real or independent power—to check the reactionary element among the capitalists that tries to hold back the industrial and governmental organization the progressives have in view. It was in order to shift the political balance of power that the reactionary Bismarck introduced universal suffrage in Germany, and the same motive is leading Premier Asquith, who is not radical, to add considerably to the political weight of the working classes in England, i.e. not to the point where they have any power whatever for their own purposes, but only to that point where their weight, added to that of the Liberals, counterbalances the Tories, and so automatically aids the former party.

The Liberals are giving Labor this almost valueless installment of democracy, just as they had previously granted instead such immediate and material benefits as we see in the recent British budgets, as if they were concessions, only hiding the fact that they would soon have conferred these benefits on the workers through their own self-interest, whether the workers had given them their political support or not.

Mr. Lloyd George has said:—

"The workingman is no fool. He knows that a great party like ours can, with his help, do things for him he could not hope to accomplish for himself without its aid. It brings to his assistance the potent influences drawn from the great middle classes of this country, which would be frightened into positive hostility by a purely class organization to which they do not belong. No party could ever hope for success in this country which does not win the confidence of a large portion of this middle class. …

"You are not going to make Socialists in a hurry out of farmers and traders and professional men of this country, but you may scare them into reaction. … They are helping us now to secure advanced Labor legislation; they will help us later to secure land reform and other measures for all classes of wealth producers, and we need all the help they give us. But if they are threatened with a class war, then they will surely sulk and harden into downright Toryism. What gain will that be for Labor?" (My italics.)[44]

The Chancellor of the Exchequer here bids for Labor's political support on the plea that what he was doing for Labor meant an expense and not a profit to the middle class, and that these reforms would only be assented to by that class as the necessary price of the Labor vote. I have shown grounds for believing that the chief motives of the new reforms have nothing to do with the Labor vote. However much Mr. Lloyd George, as a political manager, may desire to control that vote, he knows he can do without it, as long as it is cast against the Tories. The Liberals will hold the balance of power, and their small capitalist followers will continue to carry out their capitalistic progressive and collectivist program—even without a Labor alliance. Nor does he fear that even the most radical of reforms, whether economic or political, will enable Labor to seize a larger share of the national income or of political power. On the contrary, he predicted in 1906 that it would be a generation before Labor could even hope to be sufficiently united to take the first step in Socialism. "Does any one believe," he asked, "that within a generation, to put it at the very lowest, we are likely to see in power a party pledged forcibly to nationalize land, railways, mines, quarries, factories, workshops, warehouses, shops, and all and every agency for the production and distribution of wealth? I say again, within a generation? He who entertains such hopes must indeed be a sanguine and simple-minded Socialist."[45]

Mr. Lloyd George sought the support of Labor then, not because it was all-powerful, but because, for a generation at least, it seemed doomed to impotence—except as an aid to the Liberals. The logic of his position was really not that Labor ought to get a price for its political support, but that having no immediate alternative, being unable to form a majority either alone or with any other element than the Liberals, they should accept gladly anything that was offered, for example, a material reform like his Insurance bill—even though this measure is at bottom and in the long run purely capitalistic in its tendency.

And this is practically what Labor in Great Britain has done. It has supported a government all of whose acts strengthen capitalism in its new collectivist form, both economically and politically. And even if some day an isolated measure should be found to prove an exception, it would still remain true that the present policies considered as a whole are carrying the country rapidly and uninterruptedly in the direction of State Capitalism. And this is equally true of every other country, whether France, Germany, Australia, or the United States, where the new reform program is being put into execution.

Many "Socialistic" capitalists, however, are looking forward to a time when through complete political democracy they can secure a permanent popular majority of small capitalists and other more or less privileged classes, and so build their new society on a more solid basis. Let us assume that the railways, mines, and the leading "trusts" are nationalized, public utilities municipalized, and the national and local governments busily engaged on canals, roads, forests, deserts, and swamps. Here are occupations employing, let us say, a fourth or a fifth of the working population; and solvent landowning farmers, their numbers kept up by land reforms and scientific farming encouraged by government, may continue as now to constitute another fifth. We can estimate that these classes together with those among the shopkeepers, professional elements, etc., who are directly dependent on them will compose 40 to 50 per cent of the population, while the other capitalists and their direct dependents account for another 10 per cent or more. Here we have the possibility of a privileged majority, the logical goal of "State Socialism," and the nightmare of every democrat for whom democracy is anything more than an empty political reform. With government employees and capitalists (large and small)—and their direct dependents, forming 50 per cent or more of the population, and supported by a considerable part of the skilled manual workers, there is a possibility of the establishment of an iron-bound caste society solidly intrenched in majority rule.

There are strong reasons, which I shall give in later chapters, for thinking that some great changes may take place before this day can arrive.