Samuel Peter Orth

“ Property is wrong because it is the exploitation of the weak by the strong; communism is equally wrong because it is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. To this ingenious juggler of paradoxes this was by no means a dilemma. He resorted to a formula that was later amplified into the most potent argument of Socialism by Marx. Service pays service, one day's work balances another day's work, time-labor is the just measure of value. Hour for hour, day for day, this should be the universal medium of exchange. ”

“ The Social Democratic Party of Germany fights thus not for new class-privileges and exceptional rights, but for the abolition of class-domination and of the classes themselves, and for the equal rights and equal obligations of all, without distinction of sex and parentage. Setting out from these views, it combats in contemporary society not merely the exploitation and oppression of the wage-workers, but every kind of exploitation and oppression, whether directed against a class, a party, a sex, or a race. ”

“ The social struggle is political, the political struggle is social.
Socialism is not merely an economic movement. It seeks to-day, and always has sought, the power of the state. The government is the only available instrument for effecting the change—the revolution—the Socialists preach, the transfer of productive enterprise from private to public ownership. "Political power our means, social happiness our end," was a Chartist motto. That is the duality of Socialism to-day. ”

“ I am not unmindful that behind all this parliamentary activity there is the dim background of hope in the hearts of many Socialists that somehow the wage system will vanish, that competition will cease, that the primary activities of production and distribution will be assumed by society, and that economic extremes will become impossible. In a people of fitful temper and ebullient spirit the doctrine of overturning remains a constant menace. Socialism in Spain and Italy wears a scarlet coat, in Germany a drab, and in England a black. ”

“ Hand-in-hand with this monopolization of the means of production goes the displacement of the dispersed small industries by colossal great industries, the development of the tool into the machine, and a gigantic growth in the productivity of human labor. But all the advantages of this transformation are monopolized by capitalists and large landowners. For the proletariat and the declining intermediate classes—petty bourgoisie and peasants—it means a growing augmentation of the insecurity of their existence, of misery, oppression, enslavement, debasement, and exploitation. ”

“ The Socialist movement tends toward the latest phase of democracy, which is social democracy; the democracy that has ceased to toy with Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the other tinsel abstractions of the bourgeois revolutions; the democracy that sees poverty and suffering increase as wealth and ease increase. It is the democracy of the human heart, that cares for the babe in the slums, the lad in the factory, the mother at the cradle, and the father in his old age. Against all these helpless ones society has sinned. ”

“ It is the psychological effect of the capitalist system that is the real enginery of Socialism. It is the class feeling, the consciousness of the workingman that he is contributing muscle and blood and sweat to the perfection of an article whose possession he does not share. This feeling is aroused by the contrasts of life that the worker constantly sees around him. He feels that his own life energy has contributed to the magnificent equipages and the palatial luxuries of his employer. ”

“ He had been a furious Socialist, an anti-militarist, and defender of the general strike. In the Socialist congress at Paris, 1899, he said: "The general strike has the seductive advantage that it is nothing but the practice of an intangible right. It is a revolution which arises within the law. The workingman refuses to carry the yoke of misery any farther and begins the revolution in the field of his legal rights. The illegality must begin with the capitalist class, if it allows itself to be provoked into destroying a right which they themselves have professed to be holy." ”

“ It is folly for any class to magnify its needs above those of the rest of society. Civilization and culture embrace the artisan and the artist, the poor and the powerful. Any class interest that clashes with the welfare of society as a whole cannot survive. Socialism is abandoning the tyranny of class war, is being mellowed by class co-operation. Socialists are now claiming that their interests are the interests of society. The social complexion of the party in the countries of its greatest advancement is an indication of this. Many of the party leaders are of middle-class origin. ”

“ I have tried briefly to show that Socialism originated as a class movement, a proletarian movement; that the classes, wage-earner and capitalist, are the natural outcome of machine production; that Socialism is one of the natural products of the antagonistic relations that these two classes at present occupy; that Socialism intends to eliminate this antagonism by eliminating the private employer. I have tried to show also that Socialism is a criticism of the present social order placing the blame for the miseries of society upon the shoulders of private property and competition ”

“ The close understanding of the workers, of the proletarians of every country, is necessary as well to beat back the forces of aggression and war as to prepare by a concerted action the general triumph of Socialism. The international agreement of the militant proletarians of every country will prepare the triumph of a free humanity, where the differences of classes will have disappeared, and the difference of nations, instead of being a principle of strife and hatred, will be a principle of brotherly emulation in the universal progress of mankind. ”

“ There is only one way of assuring the continued order and progress of production, the freedom of every individual, and the growing well-being of the workers; it is to transfer to the collectivity, to the social community, the ownership of the capitalistic means of production.
The proletariat, daily more numerous, ever better prepared for combined action by the great industry itself, understands that in collectiveness or communism lie the necessary means of salvation for it. ”

“ The government did everything in its power to suppress the movement. Every act of oppression popularized the Democracy among the proletarians. The blood of the martyrs bore the usual harvest.
The new empire had been launched amidst the greatest enthusiasm, shared by every one except the discontented workingmen who had so stoutly fought for entire political freedom. The new imperial parliament was thrown open to them because Bismarck had found it necessary to include universal suffrage in the constitution of the Reichstag. ”

“ He says: "The revolutionary general strike is itself the revolution. The reformist general strike, on the contrary, is the attempt of the proletariat to secure partial concessions from the government without questioning the existence of the government, and especially the administration that represents the government." To effect this, it is not essential that all the workmen go out, but only enough to interrupt "the normal course of business, even if the majority of the workers remain at work." ”

“ The panorama of Europe in these years of turmoil and blood thus exhibits every degree of revolt against governmental power, from the absolutism of Prussian Junkerdom and the oppression of the Hungarians by foreign tyranny, to the dominance of the aristocratic and middle-class alliance in Great Britain.
The bread-and-butter question was not wanting in any of these political uprisings. The unity of life makes their separation a myth. One is interwoven with the other. ”

“ But the more this social division widens, the stronger grows the revolt—more conscious abroad than here—of the proletariat against the capitalist system of society in which this division and all that accompanies it have originated, and find such fruitful soil. The capitalist mode of production, by massing the workers in large factories, and creating an interdependence, not only between various trades and branches of industries, but even national industries, prepares the ground and furnishes material for a universal class war. ”

“ Our machine industry has produced a civilization that is ugly. It is natural that the esthetic and philanthropic members of this society should raise their protest. Ruskin and Anatole France and Maeterlinck and Carlyle and Robert Morris and Emerson and Grierson are read with increasing satisfaction. It is natural that the participants in this death race should utter their cries of alternate despair and hope. Socialism is the cry of the toiler. ”

“ Whether this New City, with its streets paved with the gold of altruism and its gates garnished with the pearls of good will and benevolence, will be brought from the fleecy clouds of ecstatic imagination to our sordid earth remains a question of speculation to that vast body of sincere and practical citizens who have not scaled the heights of the Socialistic Patmos.
European Socialism has been transplanted to America. But its growth until quite recently has been very slow, and confined largely to immigrants. There is no political spur to hasten the movement. ”

“ In every stage of development it has been the constant aim of the capitalist to increase his profits and of the workingman to raise his standard of living.
Marx then declares that, in order to have a capitalist society, two classes are necessary: a capitalist and a non-capitalist class; a class that dominates, and one that succumbs. There have always been these two classes. Originally labor was slave, then it was serf, and now it is free. But free labor to-day differs from serf-labor and slave-labor only in that it has a legal right to contract. ”

“ There are some things which the state (society) can do better than the individual; like the marshaling of an army or conducting a post-office, and things that are done to counteract the selfishness of individuals, like factory inspection. But there are other things which society cannot do; things that depend on individual effort, like art, literature, and invention. The two fields of state and individual activity merge into each other. Each nation marks its own distinctions. But this is certain: in a democracy the state will do the things which the people want it to do. ”

“ Proudhon frees this man from his oppressor and his oppressiveness by creating a condition of equality through the destruction of property and of government. But in destroying property he retains possessions, and in establishing anarchy he maintains order. "Free association, liberty—whose sole function is to maintain equality—in the means of production, and equivalence in exchanges, is the only possible, the only just, the only true form of society." ”

“ Millions of formerly self-employing workers thus become the helpless wage slaves of the industrial masters.
As the economic power of the ruling class grows it becomes less useful in the life of the nation. All the useful work of the nation falls upon the shoulders of the class whose only property is its manual and mental labor power—the wage worker—or of the class who have but little land and little effective machinery outside of their labor power—the small traders and small farmers. The ruling minority is steadily becoming useless and parasitic. ”

“ The individuality that is denied him in industry he has sought and found among his own brethren. In the great factory he loses even his name and becomes number so-and-so. In his union and in his party he asserts his individuality with a grim and impressive stubbornness. The gravitation of common ideals and common protests draws these forgotten particles of industrialism into a massed consciousness that is to-day one of the world's great potencies. The very fact that we call this body of workers "the masses" is significant. ”

“ Any power that divests an individual of the right to dispose of his time or substance by contract virtually deprives him of the right of ownership.
The limits to the possibilities of Social Democracy are the limits of private ownership. This brings us at once to the verge of the eternal question of government—the finding of a just ratio between individual and collective responsibility: a ratio that varies with varying nationalities, and that will vary with the passing years. ”

“ The Socialist Party is a class party which has for its aim the socialization of the means of production and exchange, that is to say, to transform the present capitalistic society into a collective or communistic society by means of the political and economic organization of the proletariat. By its aims, by its ideals, by the power which it employs, the Socialist Party, always seeking to realize the immediate reforms demanded by the working class, is not a party of reforms, but a party of class war and revolution. ”

“ Everything is discussed by everybody; the speeches made by the members in the Reichstag, the opinions of the party editors in their daily editorials, the party finances, everything is freely criticised. The most insignificant member has the same privilege of criticism as the party czars; and the criticism often becomes naïvely personal. No doubt the party patriotism is largely fed by this frank, fearless, aboveboard airing of grievances, this freedom from "boss rule." Every one has his opportunity, and this robs the plotter and backbiter of his venom. ”

“ But the Guesdists were not satisfied. "Who would benefit by cheap municipal gas?" cried a delegate from the rear of the hall. "The rich man, for he needs a great deal of gas to light up his big house. But what laboring man needs gas? When has he time to read? In the evening he is too tired, and he gives no receptions." Guesde maintained with great vehemence that municipal ownership and state ownership are not Socialism; they may be a step toward Socialism, but often result in substituting the tyranny of the state for the tyranny of the private employer. ”

“ To unite the workers of the nation and their allies and sympathizers of all other classes to this end, is the mission of the Socialist Party. In this battle for freedom the Socialist Party does not strive to substitute working class rule for capitalist class rule, but by working class victory, to free all humanity from class rule and to realize the international brotherhood of man. ”

“ Anti-militarism does not mean merely opposition to standing armies. All Socialists are opposed to the maintenance of armaments. Anti-militarism is opposition to all force used by the state to assert its sovereignty. This includes the police and constabulary as well as the army, and courts and parliaments as well as the navy. Since soldiers and policemen are servants of the state, and since the state is the expression of nationalism, the anti-militarist concludes that his supreme enemy is the nation, the master of the soldier. Anti-militarism is the forerunner of anti-patriotism. ”

“ These factories, where labor is herded, spring up willy-nilly wherever there is a capitalist who desires to enter business. They flood the markets, not by mutual consent or regulation, but by individual ambitions. Each capitalist is ruled by self-interest; and self-interest impels him to make as many goods as he can and sell them at as big a profit as he can. Result, economic anarchy, called "over-production" or "under-consumption" by the economists. ”

“ Whoever has control of land and machinery controls human labor, and with it human life and liberty.
To-day the machinery and the land used for industrial purposes are owned by a rapidly decreasing minority. So long as machinery is simple and easily handled by one man, its owner cannot dominate the sources of life of others. But when machinery becomes more complex and expensive, and requires for its effective operation the organized effort of many workers, its influence reaches over wide circles of life. The owners of such machinery become the dominant class. ”

“ Not that the Frenchman does not take Socialism seriously. He takes it as seriously as he takes monarchism or republicanism, and much more seriously than he takes religion. There is only one thing he takes more seriously—his property.
That is why the Socialists number among their adherents all classes and all conditions of men, from Anatole France, most fastidious of literary aristocrats, to gaunt and hungry proletarians who infest the cellars and garrets of ancient Paris. ”

“ Some of its prophets are still glibly proclaiming a new order,—as if society were artificial, like a house, and could be torn down piecemeal or by dynamite, and then rebuilt to suit the vagaries of a new owner.
On the other hand, a portion of the Socialists are learning that society is a living thing that can be shaped only by training, like the mind of a child. Socialism, as a whole, is metamorphosing. ”

“ Democracy, under the impetus given it by organized labor, is evolving irresistibly toward Socialism, and Socialism toward a form of property which will deliver man from his exploitation by man, and bring to an end the régime of class government. The Radicals flatter themselves that they can put a stop to this movement by promising the working classes some reforms, and by proclaiming themselves the guardians of private property. ”

“ This was to be accomplished by class war and social revolution. Marx imparts the zeal of fatalism to his Socialism when he links it to the necessities of nature. By natural law a bourgeoisie developed; by natural law it oppresses the proletarian; by natural law, by the compulsion of inexorable processes, the proletarians alone can attain their freedom. Capitalism becomes its own grave-digger. ”