Intro. II. Socialism in the United States

What I have set out in the preceding pages was certainly not meant to describe the American national economy (I hope to find occasion for that in later studies), still less to portray American culture; I did not even mean to draw the American national character with any completeness. For all that, much broader foundations would of course be needed. Rather, the sole purpose of those lines was to furnish the circumstantial proof of the existence of an extraordinarily highly developed capitalism in the United States. And this proof, I hope, may be regarded as successful, even if the “gentle reader” has not been willing to follow me down all the bypaths.

And this proof in turn is to serve only as the starting-point for some reflections that I wish to make on the American proletariat. Since we know that the situation of the wage-earning class is conditioned by the character of capitalist development, and since we have learned in particular that all “social movement” has its origin in the situation created by capitalism, that all “modern socialism” too is only a reflex of capitalism, it goes without saying that we start from a consideration of the economic situation when we want to inform ourselves about the mode of existence of the proletariat in a country. This procedure, however, proves especially fruitful for the United States. For in this way we come most quickly to a clear statement of the problem, and are so preserved from the danger of writing planlessly de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. That is to say, as follows:

If modern socialism really follows (as I have myself always assumed and often declared) as a necessary reaction from capitalism, then the country of the most highly developed capitalism — precisely the United States — would have to be at the same time the classic land of socialism, and its working class would have to be the bearer of the most radical socialist movement. Whereas one hears the opposite asserted — on this side and on that — in every key (lamenting, when put forward by socialists, exultant, when by opponents): that there is no “socialism” at all among the American working class, that what over there goes by the name of “socialists” is a couple of broken-down Germans without any following. Indeed an assertion that must call forth our liveliest interest. So at last a country without socialism despite the highest capitalist development! The doctrine of the inevitable socialist future refuted by the facts! There can be nothing more important, for the social theorist as for the social politician, than to get to the bottom of this phenomenon.

First we must ask: is that finding that there is “no socialism” in the United States, and in particular no “American” socialism, actually correct? Well — put so absolutely, it is undoubtedly false.

There are, first, one, or more exactly two, Social Democratic parties in the thoroughly continental European sense, which by no means rest only on Germans. At the unity congress of the Socialist Party at Indianapolis in 1901, of 124 delegates only 25, that is, about 20 per cent, were still foreign-born. This party brought it at the last presidential election to 403,338 votes, to which some 50,000 votes of the Socialist Labor Party are to be added, so that about as many Social Democratic votes were cast in the United States in 1904 as with us in 1878, or as at the last Reichstag election for the Freisinnige Vereinigung and the anti-Semites together. Without doubt, however, the figure of the socialist votes represents (for reasons that will be set out later) a minimum of the socialist-minded workers in America. Conversely to Germany, their number is considerably greater than that of the votes cast.

Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the assertion that the American working class stands far from socialism rests for the most part on truth.

In favour of this speak, in the first place, the figures of the electoral statistics just cited. For however considerable an addition one may make to arrive at the number of socialists, it will always be a vanishing minority. The votes cast for the socialist presidential candidates make up about 2½ per cent of the total number of votes. And that, too, is only the result of the very latest time. At the election of 1900 the S.P. brought it to only 98,417 votes. Moreover, these socialist votes are by no means secure ones. They fluctuate quite considerably from one year to another, as can be seen from the following examples. Votes were cast for the candidates of the socialist party:

For this quite remarkable phenomenon, too, of the leaping rise and fall of the figures of votes, I shall try to give the explanation later. For the present it was only to be stated, in order to show on what weak feet the socialist party in the United States still stands for the time being, even where it has already gained ground.

The conclusion that the figures of votes suggested is now confirmed in its correctness by a series of undoubted positive facts, so that the assertion from which we set out gains in credibility: the broad strata of the American proletariat, including, and indeed especially, the “class-conscious” among the wage-earners, and again in particular among the “skilled” workers, stand far from socialism, as do the most important leaders, among the “national” leaders of standing surely the great majority. Which, however, is again to be understood cum grano salis: “to stand far from socialism” is not to mean that they (like the old English pure trade unionists) are “Manchesterian” in outlook and abhor all state interference or “state-socialist” reforms. Rather the overwhelming majority of the organised workers and their leaders today advocate “political action”, that is, an independent labour policy. And among the demands that the American Federation of Labor (that is, the body representing the great mass of the American trade unions, which is led by the “conservative” Mr. Gompers and on whose executive nine-tenths anti-socialist trade-union leaders sit) makes on legislation are the following:

That already means, then, a dangerous shaking of the “foundations of our existing social order”. And the question arises in what sense I then agree with those who maintain that the American working class “stands far from socialism”. If I were not afraid of calling forth misunderstandings through the use of a word much used of late and, I admit, not wholly unambiguous, I should answer: the American worker stands far from the “spirit” of socialism (as we understand it now in continental Europe, that is, essentially socialism of the Marxist stamp). But I prefer to explain in detail what I mean:

1. The American worker (meant always in the sense just described: the American “normal” worker, whose views are the ruling ones in the mass of the working class and among the leaders) is (in feeling), with the present state of things on the whole not “dissatisfied”; on the contrary: he feels well, is cheerful and in good spirits — like all Americans. His outlook is the rosiest optimism — live and let live is his fundamental maxim. But with that the ground is taken away from all those feelings and moods on which a European worker builds his class consciousness: envy, embitterment, hatred of those who have more, who live in superfluity.

2. As in all Americans, the boundless optimism also shows itself in the worker precisely in his belief in the mission, in the greatness of his country, a belief that often enough takes on a religious colouring: the Americans are God’s chosen people, the famous “salt of the earth”. Bryce (2, 334) hits the nail on the head, as so often, when he says: “Pessimism is the luxury of a handful; optimism is the private delight as well as public profession of 999 out of every 1000, for nowhere does the individual associate himself more constantly and directly with the greatness of his country.” But that means: the American worker identifies himself with the present American state; he stands by the Star-Spangled Banner; he is “patriotic” in outlook (as it would have to be expressed in the German sense). Since the centrifugal force that leads to the separation of classes, to class antagonism, class hatred, class struggle (the “ill-humour” indicated above) is weaker, while the centripetal force, which drives towards the affirmation of the national and political commonwealth, of the state, towards “patriotism”, is stronger, the American worker lacks the “hostility to the state” peculiar to the socialism of continental Europe. I believe that John Mitchell, the well-known leader of the miners, expresses the view of the overwhelming majority of American workers today when he says (Organized Labor, 219): “The trade unions that oppose the military levy (the ‘militia’) forget that as organised workers they form a part of the state and have the right to help determine the policy of this state. The trade-union movement in this country can make progress only if it identifies itself with the state (can make progress only by identifying itself with the State).” That Mitchell, who surely represents best the “average worker”, that is, the type standing in the middle between the extremes, already sees himself obliged to make concessions to independent class consciousness and to the beginning class antagonism, and that for this reason he is already reproached by more conservative social politicians with preaching a “narrow and exclusive solidarity” among the workers, need not be emphasised here, where it is still not a matter of establishing the “tendencies of development” (which are rather to be the chief subject of discussion in later studies), but of obtaining a picture of the present state of things that reflects the momentary status quo as faithfully as possible.

3. The American worker is not hostile to the capitalist economic system as such: neither in his understanding nor in his feeling. Once again I should like to cite what Mitchell says on this point. The passages in his book in which he describes the standpoint of the trade unions towards capitalism as purely opportunist run as follows (Org. Lab., 414 f.):

“The trade-union movement is not irrevocably determined either to maintain the wage system or to abolish it. We demand a constant improvement (the constant improvement) of the condition of the workers: if possible, with the maintenance of the existing wage system; if not possible, with its abolition.” His personal conviction, however, is that it need not necessarily come to this “abolition”. For: “the history of the trade-union movement proves that with the help of the state and through the common exertion of the workers an important and general improvement of their condition can take place under the ruling wage system.” Other well-known labour leaders emphasise positively the community of interest of capital and labour. They are partners, they say, and should share the yield of industry in good understanding (they are partners and should divide the results of industry in good faith and in good feeling). If workers in their madness destroy capital (destroy the capital), that is the work of ignorance and evil passions (the work of ignorance and evil passions). The future will restore the full harmony between capital and labour that is now only temporarily disturbed.

But I believe that the relations of the American worker to capitalism are still more intimate than comes to expression in these manifestations of friendship and esteem. I believe that he is in it with his heart: I believe that he loves it. At least he gives himself to it wholly, with body and soul. If anywhere in America the restless striving for gain, the complete absorption in the bustle of business, the passion for business are at home, then it is with the worker. He wants to earn — as unhindered as possible — as much as his strength permits. Hence we seldom hear complaints about defective protection against dangers at work (which he rather takes on himself gladly, if safety appliances, say, would diminish his earnings); hence we come upon ca’ canny tendencies (restriction of output), upon opposition to piece-work or to technical innovations, much more seldom than, for example, in England. That the American worker exerts himself much more, that he works more than the European, I shall show more exactly in another connection. But this greater intensity of his work is nothing other than the outflow of his at bottom genuinely capitalist cast of mind.

Surely it was spoken from the soul of the great majority of his fellows when the member of the executive of the “United Letter Carriers”, the youthful Edward J. Gainor, in a paper on “the Government as employer”, gave expression to his opposition in principle to the status of the workers as public officials, and adduced the following reasons against the position of an official:

That the view we meet in these and similar utterances is in fact that of the mass of the American working class, that it is the spirit of business that rules it, is best proved by the character of its organisation.

There exist today in the United States, as is surely generally known, four different groups or types of labour organisation. Of these, one — the Knights of Labor — has only a past. The heyday of this society, related more to a freemasons’ lodge than to a modern trade-union organisation, falls in the middle of the 1880s. For reasons that need not be gone into here, the membership of the Knights of Labor rose from 52,000 to 703,000 between 1883 and 1886, only to sink to almost half as early as 1888. The “Knights”, as has been said, were no trade-union organisation in the modern sense at all: they would have nothing to do with craft unions, abhorred the strike and so on. Today they are at their last gasp.

Another group of workers’ unions has (at best) only a future: the trade unions of the West of socialist leaning, united in the American Labor Union. The number of their members is still small; they represent an opposition minority and therefore do not come into consideration for us here.

A third group has neither a past nor a future, and means nothing in the present either: the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance (founded by De Leon in 1895/96 in opposition to the trade unions).

Finally, by far the most important, fourth group, the only one with a present, is formed by the trade unions united in the American Federation of Labor. The number of organised workers who find their centre in the A. F. of L. has risen enormously during the last ten years: it was 272,315 in 1896, 548,321 in 1900 and 1,676,200 in 1904, which is more than four-fifths of all the organised workers in America.

The character of the trade unions combined in so great a federation is naturally not uniform: since the socialist-minded workers belonging to the Socialist Party also belong with great zeal to the trade-union cause, and a large part of the unions ruled by them are likewise affiliated to the A. F. of L., purely Social Democratic voices find expression at the annual conventions as well as, on the other side, ultra-conservative ones. But I have already indicated that the leadership of the Federation is in non-socialist hands and that the great majority of the unions united in it (even if their strength probably does not correspond to the composition of the executive council) stands on the ground of the “American” view of the wage relation sketched above, so that precisely this specifically American spirit is reflected in their policy. Or should I perhaps say better: the specifically Anglo-Saxon spirit. For the mass of the American unions does not, so far as I can see, differ essentially in its conduct from that of the older English unions. They stand on the pure business standpoint, which leads them to look after the interests of the trades represented by them through exclusiveness and monopolistic endeavours, without regard to the class of the proletariat as a whole, still less to the stratum of the unskilled workers. They therefore have strong guild-like tendencies of seclusion, and thereby bring about an essentially vertical division of the proletariat, whose union into a single class acting as a closed body they naturally hold back. This business policy finds its purest expression in the union of the monopolistic trade union with a monopolistic association of employers in the so-called “alliances”, that is, organisations for the joint exploitation of the public by the united employers and workers of a branch of trade. One may call this kind of trade union capitalist, since it is after all cut from the same timber as capitalism itself, and is directed both in its tendencies and in its effects towards the maintenance and consolidation, not the overcoming, of the capitalist economic system; and one may set against it the socialist trade unions, which, though they too cut their policy to success in the present, do not thereby lose sight of the class movement of the proletariat directed against capitalism.

Enough — the core of the American trade-union movement bears that capitalist character: “Trade Unionism is the business method of effecting the betterment of the wage-earner under the highly organized conditions of the modern industrial world.” “The collective bargaining is a business matter”: in such utterances of the best judges of the American trade-union movement its spirit comes unmistakably to expression.

That the leading trade-union men do indeed mean to wage a hard fight “for the betterment of the wage earner”, but have no intention of leaving the ground of the capitalist economic system, is shown finally by their attitude to the endeavours of bourgeois social reformers, as these have come to light in the United States for some years. Here the thoroughly different spirit of the American working class shows itself, if we compare it with the European, or at least the continental European. It does feel itself in opposition to the employers in so far as the fixing of the conditions of labour is concerned, but it is ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with every bourgeois who will support it in this struggle. Its representatives also dine gladly and often with such employers as are willing to come to an understanding with the working class on the basis of “equal rights”. What is lacking is just that specifically proletarian-socialist consciousness of antagonism which characterises our workers in their great majority. The relation, say, of Germany to America is therefore this: with us it is the minority, and certainly not the élite of the working class, that seeks contact with bourgeois social reformers — say, in the “Gesellschaft für Soziale Reform” — while the great majority of the organised workers persists in harsh class antagonism to all bourgeois “friends”; in America it is the other way round: the leading trade-union leaders (and behind them, without doubt, stands the élite of the organised working class) go together with “non-partisan” social reformers and employers — in the National Civic Federation, which corresponds roughly to our G. f. S. R. — and only a small fraction stands (as with us the mass) sulkily aside.

In this sense, then, it is justified to say: there is no socialism in America.

The problem, equally interesting in theory and in practice, that arises from this finding is now to be formulated thus: the United States is the land of the highest capitalist development; its economic organisation thus represents our future. What Marx rightly said of England in 1867 we may now apply to America: de te fabula narratur, Europa, when we report on American conditions. At least as far as capitalist development is concerned. This country of our future now has a working class that is at its core unsocialist: is this phenomenon, then, also something that lies in our future? Were we wrong in regarding the rise of socialism as a necessary consequence of capitalism? The answer to these questions requires an investigation of the reasons that have led to the peculiar way of thinking of the American worker. That we cannot content ourselves here with pointing to a specific “American spirit” follows from the view we have of the nature of scientific method. Rather, we shall try to trace the reasons by first concerning ourselves with establishing the conditions of existence peculiar to the American proletariat — historical, political, economic, social in general. When we have recognised these and have succeeded in explaining the cast of mind of the American working class from them, then the further question rises before us: on what foundations do these conditions of existence rest? Are these foundations to be regarded as permanently secured, and will they bear the building that rises on them today in all the future too, or do they threaten to start tottering, and the superstructure with them? To speak without images: are the conditions of existence of the American worker bound to premises that will remain the same permanently — specifically American, or lying generally in the direction of capitalist development — or to premises that are subject to change? If the latter is the case: will the change be such that the conditions of existence take a shape like or similar to those of Europe (which have produced socialism), so that in America too the ground would be prepared for socialism? Put more generally: is there a tendency to unity in the modern social movement, or have we to do with movements shaped differently according to nation? If there is a tendency to unity: is it moving in the direction of socialism or turning away from it? Will the social future of Europe and America take a different shape or the same? If the same: is America or Europe the “land of the future”?

It is the purpose of a series of studies, which I intend to publish in the following numbers of this journal, to contribute some material towards answering the questions raised.