The Boy and the Pig When the Kings Are Gone

I

AMONG those bitter, vigorous cartoons with which Raemaekers helped rouse the world against, the German threat, not many years ago, one of the most striking was an adaptation of a mediæval theme, the Adoration of the Magi. Against a background of knights and men-at-arms in fierce conflict, stands a rude hut which shelters the Holy Family. Before them kneel the Three Kings from the East, offering gifts to the affrighted Child — the Emperor of Germany with a shell, the Emperor of Austria with a howitzer, the Sultan of Turkey with a scimitar!

It was a bitter jest, and it recalls another of like sort. This same theme of the Three Kings was a favorite episode in the mediæval miracle-plays. Between their moral and religious scenes were often interposed comic interludes to relieve the feelings or sustain the interest of the audience. Among the stage directions for these, still preserved to us, is one which reads, ‘The Boy and the Pig when the Kings are gone.’ The kings are gone, and there appears upon the stage of politics — the Bolshevik!

He is, indeed, no comic interlude. He is the spirit of the grimmest tragedy, and we sec the world deeply moved by his activities, but not to laughter. For he represents more than himself, more than the Russia he has wrecked. He is the type and symbol of a great force among us; he is the living exponent, of the subversive element in every land; the symbol, if only by exaggeration, of world discontent — and he has many sympathizers in the audience. Nor is he to be driven from the stage by mere disapprobation, as we may have thought. He and the forces which he represents must be considered seriously and studied dispassionately, even scientifically, if we are to see where we stand in this crisis of the world drama.

And, in considering him, let us lay aside all the traditions of our race, all the commandments based on the sanctity of life and property — thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal. Let us admit that revolutions are not made with rose water, that omelets are not concocted without breaking eggs, that, what is one man’s loss is another’s gain, with all the other arguments for the use of force in politics. Let us omit the categorical moralities, the doctrines of Christianity, the principles of law and equity, the precepts of order and of peace, the standards of civilized society, and meet. Bolshevism on its chosen ground.

What are the facts? The first and most important, when he came on the stage, was disorder. And if the thing is good, we cannot complain of that. Democracy is the child of revolution; our own liberty was obtained by force; and we long ago agreed that, if men’s grievances seemed to them unendurable, they had the right to rise in arms — and die. We must not forget Cromwell, the Jacobins, and the Sons of Liberty. Nor must we forget, that the established order has the right, and the duty, to defend itself; that men cannot properly appeal for protection to laws which they repudiate, or hide behind a system which they would destroy.

Force, then, is not an argument. We must seek another test, to see whether this world discontent is merely that oldest, most dishonorable of political alliances, — the leadership of knaves, the following of fools, — or whether it has true political substance. Are these new foes of organized society, like Tartars or Huns, incapable of constructive statesmanship; or, as they claim, like Franks and Saxons, the heralds of a freer age? Let us forget the ruin they have wrought, and see what they propose.

For now that they have established themselves in power, it is fitting to recall their earlier promises and programme, since they committed themselves to a constitution. It began, not ‘We, the people,’ but ‘We, the proletariat’; it rested chiefly on economics, not. on politics, as that word was once understood. It based itself upon two fundamental elements, labor and land; and on one principle, that of equality of condition. There was to be but one class, the proletariat; there was to be neither wealth, nor poverty, nor idleness, for capital was to be distributed and profit forbidden, and everyone was to work. The state was to possess all natural resources, and provide pensions for incapacitated individuals, insurance against every accident of life, and education suited to a primitive society. In place of an army, all men were to have arms; for diplomatic service there would be no need when once the international brotherhood of workers was supreme. Finally, government was to be carried on by ‘Soviets,’ or councils of workingmen, soldiers, and peasants, with a Central Soviet; but until the triumph of the cause was assured, a ‘proletarian dictatorship’ was to be supreme.

Such was the Utopia of the boy and the pig when the kings were gone; such the new tablets of the law, handed down from the thunders of the Russian revolutionary Sinai to the Moses—and Aaron—of the newly chosen race. It has been easy for economists and political scientists to reveal its weaknesses; it has been easier still to point to its failure to meet its promises and to square with the terrible realities of a starving people. Yet it cannot be denied that Bolshevism represents, in whatever distorted fashion, a widespread sentiment, in modern life.

For, apart, from the activities of ‘ radical’ agitators; the ‘boring-in’ or ‘infiltration’ of such elements into our labor organizations; the increasing demands and decreasing output of labor; the insistence on government ownership and interference; and the often apparently senseless strikes, we have a whole series of programmes. There is the programme of the Communist International — to ‘conquer and destroy the bourgeois parliamentary state,’ by ‘workers’ revolution’ and by strikes, not to redress specific grievances, but as a political weapon. There is the programme of the Spanish and Italian syndicalists — to put the machinery of production in the hands of the workers, which has been and is being tried. There is the programme of the British Labor Party, which proposes to secure to everyone a ‘prescribed minimum of leisure, health, education, and subsistence’; a minimum wage; the obligation of the government to find or provide work for all, and to ensure against unemployment; the elimination of private ownership; the centralizing and control, even the rationing, of food and raw materials; the standardization of prices; the nationalization, in short, of all resources, and virtually of all human activities — a paternalism beyond all previous experience, stimulated, if not inspired, no doubt, by the example of government activities in the war.

In this country we have the ’Plumb plan’ for railway ownership and management — joint control by employees, public, and capital, the profits accruing to the employees, the financing to the government. We have the ‘North Dakota experiment’ — state banking, warehousing, financing, marketing, and insurance. We have heard from high places demands for ‘direct action,’ a plea for referendum and recall; and we have seen something of that policy in action. We experience day by day plans for state or municipal control, or ownership, or management, of enterprises of every conceivable character, and in every form, from city water-systems to city Christmas-trees.

And we have, finally, Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, whose preamble is the Socialist confession of faith, and whose articles embody machinery to put it into effect. And had some of the six million words wasted by the Senate of the United States on Article X, Part I, of that treaty, been devoted to this tremendous innovation in diplomacy, we might have been better informed on the chief feature of the world in which we live. For we are not dealing with remote, intangible ideals, nor with sporadic phenomena, but with world-wide, if not world-organized, sentiments and practices. We face one of those efforts, common in history, to shift the bases of politics and society; and we cannot dismiss it, as so many do, with the contemptuous epithet of ‘ Bolshevism.’

II

It is primarily the child of industry. A century and a half of power and machinery has revolutionized the material basis of human life. Like bacteria in a favorable medium, mankind has increased enormously in this industrial society; and, at the same time, improved communication and machinery of exchange have affected almost every field of human endeavor. The circle has grown from year to year, — more to produce, more to consume, more to produce again, — and some profess to find the remedy in increased production! And this increase of population and of wealth—and poverty — through industrialism has brought with it our great social problem. It has divided employer and employee by the ‘nexus’ of wages; it has brought into higher relief the contrast between wealth and poverty. It has above all, perhaps, produced a class with nothing but its muscles to sell; which has, and largely desires, nothing of land or of animals, relying wholly for existence on the ‘job,’ the fluctuating chances of daily labor, which, in turn, depends upon the skill of the employing ‘capitalist’ to meet the daily risks, the altering market, the ever-varying conditions which produce his ‘profit.’ In some measure this has affected the agriculturist as well; for improved communication and financial expedients bring him into the worldmarket, both for good and ill.

In consequence, life has become far less stable than it was, and far less secure. There is, in this industrial society, no longer even that slender assurance of food and shelter and clothing which the peasant had. Men are subject to the action of forces over which they have even less control than over the soil and elements. They turn, instinctively, to some power greater than themselves to stabilize their lives, to bring about something of that older assurance, to relieve their terrible uncertainty.

Thought followed this development. A group of theories—socialist, communist, anarchist, international — appeared, based on the assumption that the situation was the creation of an ‘exploiting’ class, to which the evils of society were due. They personified this situation with the epithet of ‘capital’; they identified this development with the ‘middle class’; they preached the doctrine of ‘class war,’ of the elimination or distribution of this ‘capital,’ and the extermination or reduction to a common level of its owners, the ‘bourgeoisie,’ and the dictatorship of the workers, or ‘ proletariat.’ Many have come to believe that Saint-Simon was right: that the chief business of society is to care for its weakest members. And for many more, not even the rapid, continuous, natural redistribution of wealth, nor the activities of political democracy, have gone fast enough to produce that equality of condition which these schools demand.

Such views have so far failed to convince the great majority of men. They have, indeed, failed to crystallize into a system; much less, like democracy, to set up a new form of government. They are as yet but disembodied spirits, still at war with each other. We hear of ‘Communist-Anarchist’ parties, though their component elements are far as the poles apart in theory; and even of ‘Social-Democratic’ capitalists — and Marx must turn uneasily in his grave! But they are one in common opposition to society; and in a hundred ways they seek to overthrow the present system.

We hear especially that Labor, ‘ owing to its peculiar situation, must have rights beyond those of other classes.’ It is a logical development. There was a time when men spoke of the rank or state to which ‘God had called’ this man or that. There was once a doctrine of the divine right of kings. More recently a ‘captain of industry’ infuriated his fellow countrymen by declaring that ‘Providence entrusted’ him and his kind with wealth. And it is evident that the oracle is to be worked again, since Labor puts forth its claims to rights denied to other men. If we admit those earlier rights, we must admit this one. But who admitted them? They are among the wrecks of history.

Yet this demand has more behind it than mere rhetoric. It assumes that men are wholly dependent on machinery, and live by sufferance of those who handle it; that it is possible to control government through industry, since other classes are too few, too feeble, and too ignorant, to dispense with these new masters of society. This ‘syndicalism,’ says a recent philosopher, ‘is the voice of the failure of something.’ To him, it is the voice of the failure of Socialism to gain political power. To others, it is the voice of the failure of the forces of order to keep peace; or of classes or individuals to attain wealth or power under the present system, and their consequent appeal to force; or the failure of government to meet the needs of an altering society; or the failure of society itself. But, whatever the fact, it is apparent that we have to do, not merely with force and anarchy, but with an effort to shift the mastery of society, and the alteration, if not of the form, at least of the function of government.

Such a programme is due in some measure to the present mechanistic philosophy of the world, and its impersonality. We have to do with corporations, huge, superhuman, often immortal creatures; and, on the other hand, with masses, whose simple and monotonous occupation makes machines of men who tend machines. Thus men conceive of government, or society, as a huge corporation or machine, which functions of itself; and they imagine that mere change of mastery would effect the purification of society. They fall into the error of confusing the ‘middle class’ with its product, capital, as men once confused money with wealth.

Most of these programmes of reform, like all their predecessors, advocate simplicity. But we cannot all join communistic agricultural societies, however Arcadian, without destroying civilization as we know it. We cannot divide our goods after the manner of a peasants’ revolt — so much land, so many catt le, so many instruments of husbandry, to each family. There is no remedy for us in the boy and the pig, though the kings are gone. We have to deal not with simplicities but with complexities. Nor does a dictatorship, even of the proletariat, nor that class government we fought to eliminate from politics, meet the case; for, whatever the future may bring forth, proletarianism has been invariably associated with anarchy and despotism in the past.

And against this there has come the protest of the great majority, which has not accepted the boy and the pig as the answer to the problem. In Germany, the Einwohnerwehr against the Spartacans; in Italy, the Fascisti against the Communists; in France and Belgium, the bourgeois governments and people against the proletarians; in England, the ‘public’ against the general strike, have revealed determination and intelligence and fighting qualities quite unsuspected by the subversives. They seem to prefer the evils of Capitalism, which they know, to the blessings of Communism, which they do not want. They have entered their caveat against the contention that society is at the mercy of Labor; and have declared for equality of opportunity as against equality of condition.

Yet here, again, force is no argument. There still remains the problem of discontent; the inequality of rewards and the projection of that inequality into succeeding generations; the administration of the sources of industrial wealth; the question of the public weal; and the future of politics. We have to do with the intangibles,—sentiments and emotions, as well as reason and power, — with psychology no less than economics. For who among us has precisely what he thinks is his just reward? ‘To each according to his needs and his abilities,’ said Louis Blanc. But how about his just deserts as he conceives them, and his desires; and who shall be the judge? Are the rewards of life the price of its necessities, or its comforts, or its luxuries — or are they tangible at all? We can calculate the costs of labor and of living, profits, loss, production, distribution, price, and wage. But who can calculate or administer content, or happiness, judgment, risk, ambition; who can gauge the pleasure of the game, of voice in one’s own destinies? Who can reckon the ‘human element,’ its hopes and fears, its knowledge and its ignorance, its likes and its dislikes, its weakness and its strength, its greed and its selfsacrifice, its faiths and its suspicions? It is to these conflicting qualities we must appeal.

And in the various programmes of the saviors of society we find some answer to ‘what, the workers want.’ One thing is common to them all. It is security — insurance or, better still, if you like, assurance. Whether in Russia or England or North Dakota, essentially what all men desire is some guaranty against the ills and accidents of life — sickness, or injury, or unemployment, or the weather. The second is a no less common desire; it is a greater voice in our own economic destinies. Expressed in so-called Guild Socialism, shop-stewards, share in management, industrial democracy, soviets, it is essentially the same. There is, third, the feeling that the rewards of industry are improperly distributed; that social and political development have, in this respect, fallen behind the progress of commerce and industry; that the concurrent increase of wealth and poverty is inconsistent and unjust; that by some fraud the work of the world is done by one class and the profits reaped by another; and, as a corollary, that intellectual pursuits are not laborious or ‘productive.’ There is a common protest against the ‘parasites’ of society. Finally, there is widespread desire for that oldest blessing of mankind, — peace with plenty,—and a powerful sentiment in favor of some form of world association to effect it. And most of these reflect the principle of coöperation, as against that of unrestricted competition.

We have, in consequence, three elements arrayed against the present organization of society — the heritage of hate and the dream of a great revenge, of the Anarchist; the ideal of life with little work or none, of inefficient labor; and the vision of the Socialist. And if, as we are told, Capitalism proposes nothing but the continuance of things; if it has no programme but bread and circuses, no remedy but work and charity; if it regards resistance as a policy, it is doomed. Fiercer elements will enlist followers in a campaign of destruction; and moderate men will all turn Socialist, since they will prefer change to stagnation, an advancing standard to a coward’s castle.

There is something to be said for the opponents of the present system, and their denunciation of the ‘idle rich,’ of ‘predatory wealth,’ of ‘swollen fortunes.’ We have seen too much of ‘the lilies of the field — which are not even beautiful’; of those ‘stall-fed cattle of society — not even good for meat.’ We have too many among us who do nothing to deserve even the futile lives they lead: too many gamblers; too many profiteers; too much of that insolence of wealth which is the chief recruiting agent of the Bolsheviki; perhaps even too many agencies which connect — or separate — producer and consumer. And these, we all agree, should be curbed or eliminated in so far as possible. They obscure the real contribution to society of capital and its owners, and identify wealth with oppression. Are men, inquires the Socialist, to be allowed unlimited opportunity to amass riches by whatever means, and pass them on to burden the future with an increasing element of intrenched and unproductive wealth? Not if we can prevent it by an inheritance tax!

Yet, on the other hand, it is observed that proletarian dominance is not wholly devoted to sweetness and tight; that even under Bolshevism millionaires are bred; and that an aristocracy, with all its faults, is not inferior to a plutocracy, with all its virtues. There is danger that the tendency to ‘collect taxes and pay out doles’ may pauperize, that the unlimited protection of the weakest will mean the ultimate preponderance of the incapables. If by taxation the fountain of capital is dried up at the source; if the ‘energizing’ element of society is destroyed by legislation; if we have revolution not by force of arms but by taxation; if everyone is taxed to subsidize everyone — what then?

Such is the issue of the great argument. We all admit the evils of unrestricted Capitalism, and seek to stamp it out. But, apart from the idealizing view of human nature of the Socialist, there seem to be two fallacies in the discussion. The one is the identification of the middle class with capital, which is the product, not the creator, of the bourgeoisie. Destroy or redivide this store of wealth, and the same class which has it will get it again. For Capitalism, like its opponents, is a spirit, not a thing. And the second fallacy derives from the first. There are no longer ‘classes’ in the older sense, the sense in which Marx wrote. Of all the instabilities of life, wealth is the least stable, and the class possessing it is, of all elements in society, that which changes the most rapidly and continuously. In their arguments the controversialists seem to have forgotten the first element of business — that of risk.

III

What, then, is the programme of this middle class? In one sense — that of a dogmatic, authoritative formula — it has no programme; for class and programme are alike shifting quantities. Moreover, the Industrial Age is still too young to generalize about it, much less to find a panacea for its ills. We are still in the midst of it; we cannot see the end, nor even what it means, as yet. We can, at best, strive blindly for what seems the better part, from day to day. And yet, confused, illogical, unrelated in its parts, as it must be, we still perceive the gradual emergence of a bourgeois programme.

It has, primarily, three elements — industrial, humanitarian, legislative; and each of these we see in active operation every day. For what are these experiments in profit-sharing, share in management, stock distribution, widespread ownership, but ‘industrial democracy’? What are group insurance, workmen’s compensation, and the like, but efforts to meet that demand for protection which the bourgeois provide for themselves as individuals? What are the protective agencies of society sanitation, nurses, hospitals, medical attention; public schools and universities, public libraries, classes, lectures; savings banks, thrift stamps, self-help societies, building and loan associations, Morris plan banks; churches and missions, Y.M.C.A., boys’ clubs, settlement work, so-called ‘Americanization’ in its many forms — what are these but the effort, to help men to help themselves, after the fundamental fashion of the middle class? Often misguided, sometimes absurd, they are in the aggregate an imposing and effective force. Directed to what end? To that of raising the proletariat, to the rank and standards of the bourgeoisie, in opposition to a programme of sinking all men into a proletariat.

And what of legislation in this scheme? In the ‘breakdown of parliamentary government the Socialist perceives the downfall of this middle-class society. It is a real danger. The qualities and activities which bring men into representative assemblies are not those which necessarily fit them for intelligent settlement of social and industrial problems, or the scarcely less technical questions of foreign relationships. There is the desire for popularity, which breeds cowardice; the pressure of party; the concession to mere numbers or, worse still, to active, organized minorities; there are the demagogues. These are real evils, as we know too well.

Yet men are slow to reject an instrument they know for one wholly untried and inexperienced. They prefer to supplement and reinforce, or modify, existing agencies. Thus they have created commissions of experts, to prepare laws for ratification by political representatives. They have created unofficial conferences of those immediately concerned with the affairs in hand. Chambers of commerce — city, state, and national; meetings of all sorts of bodies, sometimes by industries or vocations, sometimes by representatives of all interests concerned, — and labor not the least, — have brought into existence ’economic legislatures,’ bureaus, and conferences, to supplement and direct the activities of legislative bodies. For men do not yet believe that the soviet principle of representation by occupation solves the problem of government.

We seem, in fact, to be coming to differentiation of function between two organs of society. This divorces polilics from life, and makes the parliamentary system unreal and impotent. It presages the ultimate extinction of this creation of democracy, for mere registering bodies atrophy in time. It may be so, but it seems neither imminent nor inevitable, since change of function need not mean extinction. The choice of rulers is the fundamental problem of all forms of government; for better results we must have better men. But it is far from clear that an assembly of representatives of classes or interests, as such, would be better; much less that the boy and the pig, who seize the stage, offer a fairer prospect than we have.

What, then, is the issue between the bourgeoisie and the proletarians, contending for support, from that indeterminate middle of the great majority whose adhesion will decide the case? Both sides admit the great desirability, even the necessity, of altering the present system. But one would end it and begin again; the other seeks, not a panacea, but remedies for specific grievances. One desires, the other denies, the substitution of equality of condition for equality of opportunity. One seeks unity in uniformity, the other unity in diversity. One looks to dictatorship, whether of class or ‘state’; the other holds to democratic liberty. Each proposes greater scope for Labor’s share in industry, and greater security; but one would accomplish this by public, the other by non-public agencies. Each admits the evils of unrestricted and irresponsible Capitalism; but one would mend, the other end, the capitalistic system. Finally, each desires some guaranties for peace and world association. One clings to a world-league, of workers in particular; the other seeks disarmament, and specific agreements among governments to that end.

Meanwhile the Bolsheviki approach Thermidor; and, whether by coup d’état or by peaceful substitution of more moderate elements, the boy and the pig will disappear, or be transformed before our eyes. Meanwhile, we see in the land where industrialism took its rise another phase of that great movement, the threat of Labor dominance, which may determine its future, — or its fate, — and provide an objectlesson in Capitalism versus Communism even beyond that of Russia. We see conservat ive reaction everywhere as the natural, if temporary, result of radical activities. Each is a passing phase. The great controversy will go on, for it is rooted deep in human nature — as deep as hope and fear. There will always be two elements, one believing, the other disbelieving that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, that masses will rise to greater heights than individuals, that the ‘state’ should be paternal, and that it is possible to substitute for private interest a sense of public service as a motive of action.

And yet, in so far as the bourgeois programme is pragmatic and not dogmatic; experimental, not dictatorial; fluid, not fixed; evolutionary, not revolutionary; regarding society as an organism, not a machine; bound to no infallible remedy or sacred shibboleth or rigid formula; in so far, it seems more in accord with human nature and likely to prevail. But that involves two things: first, that it will, in accordance with its character, be modified; and second, that, as in our own country, the proletariat be not continually reinforced by lower and still lower elements, which make the task of raising the standards of life impossible. ‘The abolition of property is demanded,’ wrote Mazzini many years ago; ‘ but you need no confutation of the error of those who in the name of liberty wish to found anarchy and abolish society. . . . It is a wicked dream. You can find no remedy in any arbitrary general organization which contradicts the universally adopted basis of civil existence. . . . You will not have things better unless you are better yourselves.’ Such is the bourgeois faith, distrustful of mass miracles.

It seems, in brief, that some sort of a compromise between the Individualists and the Socialists is inevitable. The controversy seems likely to result, if not in a draw, at least in a moral victory for each side. We have admitted in practice, if not in theory, that there are some things which can be done better by an autocracy than by a democracy. No army which resolves itself into a debating society is likely to prevail over one directed by a leader of even the slightest competence. Yet this does not mean that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall perish from the earth.

So here; for, on the one hand, it is tolerably apparent that even the most pronounced Individualist would admit that some things, like the postal system, for instance, can be better done by cooperation than by competition; that we are not likely to revert to that stage of civilization in which each individual attended to the delivery of his own letters by his own messengers. It seems no less apparent that even the most advanced Socialist would not long remain a spectator at, let us say, — if such a thing were possible, — a cooperative baseball game, or take pleasure in a portrait painted by a community.

That, does not mean the contest between Socialism and Individualism, between competition and coöperation, will not go on; but that the ground of the argument will be narrowed. Men will continue to contend in what fields and to what an extent their respective ideals should prevail. It seems probable that, as Emerson once observed in a very different connection, we shall descend to meet: that the most common routine or, if you like, the lower forms of production may fall to Socialism; the higher, more specialized, the more ‘ artistic’ or 4 energizing,’to Individualism; and some will be divided between the two.

We have already seen something of this. Laying aside the various experiments in municipal ownership and government control, wit ness the persistence of the 4specialty shop’ in the very shadow of the great department store; the individual mechanic prospering just outside the gates of the great factories; the 4independent’ competing with the trust; the tailors unterrified by the clothing manufacturers. And, in a different plane, we have the chain stores’ combining quantity merchandising with individual store-managers having a stake in the business; while the growing dispersal of stockholding in corporations, and the consequent increasing publicity of the details of their management — so-called 4 community ownership’ — seem to indicate another and no less fruitful development in the great Individualist-Socialist controversy.

The way will, no doubt, be long and hard; and each step contested. But we are still young in industrialism. It seems apparent that the development which began with state or guild control, turned to laissez faire, and proceeded to factory acts and government supervision, or even management, need not prove inevitable either that complete individualism for which some contend, nor yet that complete socialization which others demand. Differentiation, compromise, combination between the two seems far more probable.

Always assuming that we do not first fall into the power of Marx’s dogma; and ‘the proletariat use its political supremacy to wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state — that is, of the proletariat organized as a ruling class. In that event we shall only have new masters, not a solution of the great problem.