Proletarian and Petit-Bourgeois/Section 2
II.
We now shift our enquiry to the realm of the working class.
In Marx's "Capital" we find "Productive activity, if we take out of sight its special form, viz., the useful character of the labor, is nothing but the expenditure of human labor power . . . it is the expenditure of simple labor-power, i. e., of the labor power, which on an average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. Skilled labor-power counts only as simple labor-power intensified, or rather as multiplied simple labor, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labor. Experience shows that this reduction is being constantly made." (Vol. I. P. 51 Kerr's Edition.)
The differentiation between skilled and unskilled labor is therefore, according to Marx, merely quantitative. The proprietors of skilled labor have, however, persisted in regarding it as qualitative and have considered the possession of this particular species of property, i. e., a skilled trade, as marking them off from the unskilled mass.
The trade unions were formed really in defense of the property of the particular craft in which the associated members claimed special skill. The protection is two-fold. First, against the employer, and seeks to regulate the wages and hours in the special craft, to make special arrangements with respect to the conduct of business, sanitary conditions, lighting, method of collecting wages and a host of other matters which necessarily arise in the course of the production of commodities. Second, against the unskilled mass on the outside, by the regulation of apprenticeships, both as to number and duration, the imposition of a high initiation fee, and the payment of a comparatively large sum as dues. Besides in some of the more highly specialized organizations there has always been a marked tendency to crowd out competitors even in the ranks of the unions themselves, so as to give the remainder a better hold on the jobs—in other words, greater security of property.
Protection at the hands of the employers has been sought by entering into contracts for the security of the union position during an agreed period of time, and, in the case of the more highly specialized unions, frequent conferences and gentlemen's agreements have taken place in order to prevent the outbreak of hostilities and the declaration of strikes and lockouts.
In all this it will be noted there is no approach to that revolutionary attitude on the part of the proletariat predicted by Marx; on the contrary, there is no sign of proletarianism here at all. The laborer comes on the scene, not as a proletarian, but as the possessor of a specific property, to-wit: specialized skill. This property he has more or less protected by cornering the market, and he offers this property for hire or sale just as the employer offers his property. In fact, there is a labor market and there can be no labor market without the existence of objects of exchange, that is property on both sides.
The very phrases which have accompanied the labor movement show this to be the case. "A fair day's work for a fair day's wage" is nothing but a demand that the laborer should have the price on the market for which he is willing to part with his property. "Labor has rights as well as capital"—what is this but a recognition of the property in labor power? Under circumstances in which the capitalistic control of the government has become so apparent that the unions have considered it to be essential that they should make an effort to retrieve their position by the acquisition of political power, or where the unions have grown to such an extent that their economic power naturally seeks its political expression we get political platforms which express the views of these unions. An examination of these views will show that they do not differ essentially from those of the petite-bourgeoisie but are directed to the protection of themselves in terms of the existing system and do not offer any real revolutionary tendency.
The San Francisco Labor Party platform is one in point. In it the rights of capital are fully recognized and the claim is made that under the banner of trade union political victory all classes of the community will flourish, a statement which could be made equally well by any political party. In fact, the sole attack on the union labor administration by its enemies is that it is a political effort to protect the job, to-wit, the property of the union men, to the detriment of the property of other proprietors, the merchant, the manufacturer and the small capitalist. In England, where the unionists went into politics on their own account under the name of the Independent Labor Party, the essential unity of the union man with the petite-bourgeoisie has been shown in the fact that the Independent Labor Party has become little more than an appendage of the Liberal Party. Even the German Social Democratic Party cannot be shown to be other than of the same stripe, and its success in point of numbers has lain in the political sagacity of its leaders, which has effected the assembly of liberal elements on a large scale under the apparently revolutionary banner of socialism. Australia and other places furnish the same spectacle, and what is called the Socialist victory in Milwaukee is nothing but the triumph of the trade union property notion, as an examination of its platform will conclusively show.
So far then the unions have not made any revolutionary attack upon the existing system and the proletarianism which is to destroy it obviously does not proceed from them. Their political and even their economic action is vitiated by the recognition of their craft as a property. They make their fight against the capitalist enemy in terms of that property, and thus in terms of the present system. As if it were possible to upset a system in terms of the legal and political notions on which that system actually itself depends.
The truth of the above contention is apparent from an examination of the platform of the Socialist Party in so far as it contains the actual and practical proposals of that party apart from merely rhetorical flourishes.
It will be found to embrace demands which may be conveniently classified under the heads of collectivism; attacks upon the greater capitalism, fulfilling the aspirations of the petite bourgeoisie; and the recognition of certain legislative measures which would tend to make the path of the organized unions more easy, or at least to partially block the attack which the greater capitalism is making by judicial decisions upon the organizations.
The National platform adopted at the last National convention, and particularly the State platform of Wisconsin and also of the State of California, on which the last political contests were waged, are directly in point. You may study them carefully and fail to find anything of a revolutionary nature in them, if the high-sounding platitudes of the preambles are excepted.
We are forced then to the conclusion that so far the organized working class has not shown any marked tendency to the revolutionary attitude of the Marxian prediction.
Are we then to abandon the Marxian revolution notion as false to historic fact and therefore untenable?
By no means, the results so far merely show that the proletarian has not yet begun to operate either in the economic or the political field. But he is here and has to be reckoned with and will in the future begin more and more completely to prove the truth of the Marxian prediction.
For, what is a proletarian? He is one who has nothing but his labor power to sell, and in addition one whose labor power is incapable of being turned into property. In that respect he is differentiated from the skilled laborer who by association has to a certain extent been able to make his craft a property peculiar to the members of that craft, and to that extent interfere with free exchange in the market in terms of his particular commodity or property. The proletarian can only profit in terms of the profit of the whole class to which he belongs.
In the statement of Marx quoted above it is said that all labor is economically reducible to unskilled labor and may be expressed quantitatively in terms of ordinary unskilled labor.
But the truth is even stronger and broader than that statement. Skilled labor is being qualitatively reduced to terms of unskilled labor. The crafts are tottering and the future of the proletariat is no longer in the hands of the aristocracy of labor but is being transformed at an ever increasing speed into those of the common labor masses.
This comes about by the natural process of the economic system and the development of industrialism itself. The element of individual skill, which is the fundamental underlying base of the craft and upon which the craftsman relies for his superiority over unskilled labor, is being rapidly obliterated. Standardization and the control of technical processes which become more and more perfect with the increasing knowledge of scientific laws and mechanics fling the craftsman in ever increasing numbers upon the scrap heap and confiscate his precious possession, his particular little piece of property.
The present system which is the great confiscator of property and which in the name of preserving property rights destroys all inferior property rights, has him in its clutch and he has to go the way of the small bourgeois. He cannot save himself.
Every strike proves his position to be more and more precarious. The scab becomes more and more of a terror to the skilled laborer, even to the highly skilled laborer, for the scab can so much the more readily now take his place. It is not difficult to learn to operate the mechanism of modern production, and a few weeks of employment of men who began in total ignorance of an industry are sufficient to make those men competent to run an industry effectively enough, at least, to destroy any chance of the success of the strike.
The scab is for the most part an unskilled laborer. Against him the craftsman contends in vain and he has no real ground of appeal to him. For has not the craftsman looked down upon him hitherto as a person possessing no specialized trade and therefore no property and has he not also on these grounds forbidden him the advantages of unionism?
The unskilled man takes the place of the skilled one. If he does so in the iron trade today he will do so in the building trade tomorrow. In fact he will invade any trade where men are required and he stands a chance of making even an uncertain living.
A force even more powerful in the break up of the crafts than the progress of mechanism is the other factor on which Marx counted, the process of capitalist development itself.
The formation of the great concerns has broken down the dividing lines of the crafts and has transcended the old form of organization of industry in accordance with which the craft organization was formed. The small competing capitalist engaged in a specific and narrow part of the process of industry has been displaced by the combination of crafts which go to make up an industry.
The result upon unionism is not difficult to see. The striking craftsman finds himself confronted not by competing craft employers but by an entire industrial capitalistic organization in which the enormous resources of the combined industry are pitted against the feeble efforts of the craft. It is impossible except in very unusual circumstances for the craft to be able to meet the situation. It opposes to the united strength of the employers only such resources as it can bring to its aid under the circumstances of the particular case, and the result has been, in the majority of recent cases, crushing defeat. Then the craft organization, seeing that its property is gone, and desperate at the loss of that which it has relied upon as the only means of saving it from the pit, becomes angry, and the violence which is inseparable from strikes of this character supervenes.
It is obvious that the craft union is an individualistic manifestation. Now, physical violence is, as it always has been, the last resource of baffled individualism. To the absolutism of the trust the craftsman replies, as does the thwarted Russian revolutionist to the absolutism of the Czar, and the results are very much the same. Now and again the world is shocked by happenings in the trade union world, but the absolutism persists, just as in Russia, because there is no effective social attack upon it and because ineffectual acts of violence have precisely the same effect in trade disputes as in Russian politics of alienating public sympathy from the rebel, and strengthening the public belief that after all absolutism is the only protection from anarchy.
The craft unions are thereupon compelled to look in another direction and to turn their eyes towards industrial unionism as a remedy. Louder and louder the demand arises that the only way in which the working class can expect to achieve progress in face of the odds which confront it is by organization in terms of the capitalist industry, and that means the practical elimination of the crafts, as protectors of special property interests.
That this question is becoming one of first class importance even in the Socialist Party is to be seen from the following extract from a recent article by Eugene V. Debs. The tone of impatience with the present attitude of the Socialist Party will be readily noted:
"Voting for Socialism is not Socialism any more than a menu is a meal.
"Socialism must be organized, drilled, equipped, and the place to begin is in the industries where the workers are employed. Their economic power has got to be developed through efficient organization, or their political power, even if it could be developed, would but react upon them, thwart their plans, and all but destroy them.
"Such organization to be effective must be expressed in terms of industrial unionism. Each industry must be organized in its entirety, embracing all the workers, and all working together in the interest of all, in the true spirit of solidarity, thus laying the foundation and developing the superstructure of the new system within the old, from which it is evolving, and systematically fitting the workers, step by step, to assume entire control of the productive forces when the hour strikes for the impending organic change.
"Without such economic organization and the economic power with which it is clothed, and without the industrial co-operation, training, discipline and efficiency, which are its corollaries, the fruit of any political victories the workers may achieve will turn to ashes on their lips."—International Socialist Review, January, 1910.
That the period when trade unionism, by which of course is meant craft unionism, could be considered a menace to the existing capitalist institution is past may be gathered from the following statement from a speech delivered before the Quill Club of New York by Mr. Paul Morton, President of the Equitable Life Insurance Company:
"The real object of a labor union should be the true and ultimate welfare of labor, of the employer, and of the country in which it does business. I am a great believer in organized labor, but it is a big mistake to misdirect itself by attempting to bring a good man down to the level of a poor man. Its aim should be to encourage the man who wants to work and who is efficient, and to undertake to educate the inferior man to become as good as the best and thereby increase the production of its organization as a whole. Personally, I think it should stand for and not discourage piecework. Organized labor and organized capital should both stand for efficiency and do everything possible to create wealth. I am sure there is no sensible man who will not entirely approve of a labor organization which has efficiency as one of its chief reasons for existing. Without co-operation between labor and capital we cannot meet the competition of the world."—Outlook, January 7th, 1911.
As a commentary on the above the following extract from the speech of Warren S. Stone, Grand Chief of the International Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, is interesting. The speech was made at the last meeting of the Civic Federation on January 12th, 1911:
"Let me warn those who are attacking labor unions that they are attacking the greatest bulwark standing today between property rights and a wave of anarchy like that of the bloody commune which will sweep over the land if the radical spirits get control of American labor."—New York Call, January 13, 1911.
When the greater capitalist finds approval for the craft union it is obvious that the latter can no longer be regarded as a very serious protagonist of labor.
It has ceased to have fighting capacity because that for which it seeks to fight is already doomed.
A new form of organization is taking its place. This new form, called Industrial Unionism, implies more than the possession of a more effective weapon by the working class.
In fact the advent of industrial unionism brings us back to the fundamental Marxian thesis which was the starting point of our discussion.