The Social Revolution/Part 2/Chapter 1
prognostication must remain silent whenever this subject is under discussion and simply declare: "Whoever lives will know how it will come out and what is undeniably the proper road."
Only such problems of the social revolution are capable of discussion as can be determined in this manner. Concerning all others no judgment can be made either in this or in any other direction.
THE EXPROPRIATION OF THE EXPROPRIATORS.
Let us imagine then that this fine day has already come, in which at one stroke all power is thrown into the lap of the proletariat. How would it begin? Not how would it begin upon the grounds of this or that theory, or opinion, but must begin, driven thereto by its class interests and the compulsion of economic necessity.
In the first place it is self-evident that it would recover what the bourgeoisie has lost. It would sweep all remnants of feudalism away and realize that democratic programme for which the bourgeoisie once stood. As the lowest of all classes it is also the most democratic of all classes. It would extend universal suffrage to every individual and establish complete freedom of press and assemblage. It would make the State completely independent of the church and abolish all rights of inheritance. It would establish complete autonomy in all individual communities and abolish militarism. This last could be brought about in two ways: through the introduction of universal armament and the dissolution of the army. Universal armament is a political measure and dissolution of the army a financial one. The former can under certain conditions cost as much as a standing army. But it is essential to the security of democracy, in order to take away from, the government its most powerful means of opposing the people. Dissolution again aims mainly at a diminution of the military budget.
It can, however, be carried through in such a manner as to strengthen still further the power of the government, if in place of an army built on universal compulsory military service an army of characterless slum proletariat is substituted which will lend itself to anything for money. A proletarian regime would necessarily find a way to unite both methods so as to arm the people and to simultaneously make an end of the disturbance brought about by the installation of new weapons, cannons, warships and fortresses.
Undoubtedly the victorious proletariat would also make fundamental reforms in taxation. It would endeavor to abolish all the taxes that to-day rest upon the laboring population—first of all the indirect ones that increase the cost of living, and would draw the sums necessary to the covering of governmental expenses from the great properties by means of a progressive income tax supplemented by a property tax. I shall return to this point later. This must suffice for the present suggestion.
A particularly important field for us is that of education. Popular schools have always occupied the attention of proletarian parties and they even played a great role in the old communistic sects of the Middle Ages. It must always be one of the aims of the thinking proletariat to deprive the possessing classes of the monopoly of culture. It is self-evident that the new regime would increase and improve the schools and pay their teachers better. But we would go still further. To be sure the victorious proletariat, no matter how radically minded it may be, cannot at a single stroke abolish class differences, for these have risen from many centuries of development and these causes and their results are not swept away as easily as a chalk mark is wiped from a slate with a sponge. But the school can prepare the road in this direction and contribute very essentially to the abolition of class differences in that all children will be equally well nourished and clothed, and instructed in the same manner while at the same time the possibility of a diverse development of their intellectual and bodily activities is retained.
We must not overvalue the influence of the school. Life is mightier than it and where it comes in opposition to actuality it will certainly be forced to give way. When, for example, the effort is made to-day to abolish class difference through the schools not much progress can be made. But the school can, when it works in the direction of the existing social development, powerfully assist this movement. Where these social conditions are also operating in the direction of class interests the school can co-operate and, at least within a limited sphere, realize for the generation which is growing up in this period what the whole society of this generation is simultaneously growing toward.
All these are means that bourgeois radicalism has already placed before itself, but a certain power, and a disregard of capital of which no bourgeois class is capable are essential to such an attainment. Such a school as is here outlined would, in Germany, for example, according to the reckoning which I have made in my Agrarfrage demand one and a half or two million marks yearly. Almost double the present military budget! Such a sum for school purposes can only be obtained by a proletarian ruled community that does not maintain a respectful attitude towards great incomes.
But the revolution would naturally not stop at these transformations. It would not be simply a bourgeois democratic, but a proletarian revolution. We shall not, as we have already stated, investigate what the proletariat would do upon the basis of this or that theory, for we do not know what theories may appear or under what circumstances the next revolution will be carried through. We will only investigate what a victorious proletariat, if it is to advance purposefully, will be compelled to do by the pressure of economic conditions.
There is one problem above all others with which the proletarian regime must primarily occupy itself. It will in all cases be compelled to solve the question of the relief of the unemployed. Enforced idleness is the greatest curse of the laborer. For him it signifies misery, humiliation, crime. The laborer lives only from the sale of his labor power and when he can find no purchaser for this he is delivered up to hunger. And even when the laborer has found his labor the unemployed still torture him, for he is never secure from the loss of his labor and consequent misery. A proletarian regime would in every case make an end to this condition even if the proletarians were not Socialists but simply Liberals as in England. In just what manner the problem of the unemployed would be solved we shall not here attempt to investigate. There are many different methods, and many plans to this end have been made by sociologists. For example it has been sought from the bourgeois point of view to insure against the necessity of unemployment by taxation, and in part this has been done. But a bourgeois society can only create the most insufficient patchwork in this field because it is itself the bough from which unemployment hangs. Only the proletariat and the victorious proletariat can and will enact the measures which are capable of completely abolishing the necessity of the unemployed whether this be through sickness or otherwise. An actually effective maintenance of all the unemployed must completely alter the relative strength of the proletariat and capitalist. It will make the proletariat master in the factory. That the laborer of to-day is compelled to sell himself to the employer and that the latter can exploit and enslave him is because of the ghost of the unemployed and the hunger whip that swings above his head. If the laborer can once be secure of existence even when he is not working, nothing would be easier than for him to overthrow capital. He no longer needs capitalists, while the latter cannot continue his business without him. Once things have gone thus far the employer would be beaten in every conflict with his employes and be quickly compelled to give in to them. The capitalists could then perhaps continue to be the directors of the factories, but they would cease to be their masters and exploiters. Once the capitalists recognized, however, that they had the right to bear only the risk and burdens of capitalist business, these men would be the very first ones to renounce the further extension of capitalist production and to demand that their undertakings be purchased because they could no longer carry them on with any advantage. We have already had similar results. This was the case, for example, in Ireland at the time the anti-rent movement reached its highest point and the land owners were not in a position to forcibly collect their rents. Accordingly it was the landlords themselves who demanded that the State purchase all their landed possessions. We could expect the same from the capitalist undertakers under a proletarian regime, even if this regime was not dominated by socialist theories and did not proceed directly from the point of view of bringing the capitalist means of production into social possession. Capitalists would themselves demand that their means of production be purchased. The political domination of the proletariat and the continuation of the capitalist system of production are irreconcilable. Whoever concedes the possibility of the first must also grant the possibility of the disappearance of the latter.
The question then arises as to what purchasers are at the command of capitalists when they wish to sell their undertakings. A portion of the factories, mines, etc., could be sold directly to the laborers who are working them, and could be henceforth operated co-operatively; another portion could be sold to co-operatives of distribution, and still another to the communities or to the states. It is clear, however, that capital would find its most extensive and generous purchaser in the States or municipalities, and for this very reason the majority of the industries would pass into the possession of the States and municipalities. That the Social Democrats when they came into control would strive consciously for this solution is well recognized. On the other side, even a proletariat which was not governed by socialist ideas would proceed from the point of view of transforming into State or municipal property those industries which for natural reasons—for example, mines—or through the form of their organization—as, for example, trusts—have become monopolies.
These private monopolies have become unbearable, not simply for the wage-workers, but for all classes of society who do not share in their ownership. It is only the weakness of the bourgeois world, as opposed to capital, which hinders it from taking effective action against these monopolies. A proletarian revolution must from its very necessity lead to the abolition of private property in these monopolies. They are to-day very extensive and dominate in a high grade the whole economic life and develop with great rapidity. Their nationalization and communalization signifies simply the domination of the whole productive process by society and its organs,—the State and municipalities.
The industries which are most prepared for nationalization are the national means of transportation, railroads and steamships, together with those which produce raw material and partially produced goods; for example, mines, forests, iron foundries, machine manufactures etc. These are also the very spheres where the great industries and trustification are highest developed. The manufacture of raw material and partially produced articles for personal consumption as well as small trading have many local characteristics, and are still largely decentralized. In these spheres the municipality and co-operatives will come more to the front, leaving the national industries to play a secondary role. But with the increasing division of labor, production for direct personal consumption becomes of less and less importance compared with the production of means of production, and therewith also the sphere of governmental production increases. On the other side this field is extended by the development of commerce and of the great industries, which bursts the local bonds of the market for each branch of production one after another, and transforms one after another from a local into a national industry. For example, gas lighting is clearly a municipal business. The development of electric lighting and the transformation of power in mountainous regions makes the nationalization of water power necessary. This operates also to transform illumination from a municipal to a national business. Again, the business of the shoemaker was formerly confined to the local market. The shoe factory does not supply simply the community, but the whole nation, with its production, and is ripe not for communalization, but for nationalization. The same is true of sugar factories, breweries, etc.
The trend of evolution under a proletarian regime would be towards making the national form of industry predominant.
So much then concerning the property in the means of production of the great industries, including those in agriculture. What then is to happen to money capital and landed property? Money capital is that portion of capital taking the form of interest-bearing loans. The money capitalist fulfills no personal function in the social life, and can without difficulty be at once expropriated. This will be all the more readily done as it is this portion of the capitalist class, the financier, who is most superfluous, and who is continually usurping domination over the whole economic life. He is also the master of the great private monopolies, the trusts, etc., and it is therefore impossible to expropriate industrial capital without including money capital. They are too completely bound up in each other. The socialization of capitalist industry (as one may designate for short the transference to national, municipal and co-operative possession) will carry with it the socialization of the greater part of the money capital. When a factory or a piece of landed property is nationalized, its debts will be also nationalized, and private debts will become public debts. In the case of a corporation the stockholders will become holders of government bonds.
In this connection comes the consideration of landed property. I refer here to property in land, and not agricultural industry. The great capitalistic socially operated agricultural industries will be subject to the same evolution as the other great industries. They will lose their wage-slaves and be compelled to offer their possessions to the State or municipality for purchase, and will thereby become socialized. The little farming industries may well remain private property. But I shall return to this subject later.
But we are not here discussing agricultural industry, but the ownership of land, independent of industry, the private property in the ground that yields to its possessor ground rent, through leasing or renting or interest on a mortgage, whether the property be urban or rural.
What we said of the money capitalist holds true also of the land owner. He likewise has no longer any personal function to fulfill in the economic life, and can easily be shoved to one side. As noted above in the instance of private monopoly, so with regard to private property in land, we find much opposition even in bourgeois circles, which expresses itself in a demand for socialization, since this private land monopoly is constantly growing more oppressive and injurious, especially in the cities. Here also nothing is lacking but the necessary power to bring about socialization. The victorious proletariat will furnish this power.
The expropriation of the exploiting classes presents itself purely as a question of power. It proceeds essentially from the economic necessities of the proletariat, and will be the inevitable result of their victory.
CONFISCATION OR COMPENSATION.
The question of the possibility and necessity of the expropriation of the exploiters can be answered with much greater degree of certainty than the question which naturally arises therefrom: Will the expropriation proceed as a process of confiscation or compensation; will the previous possessors be indemnified or not? This is a question which it is impossible to answer to-day. We are not the ones who will have to complete this development. It is now impossible to determine any force inherent in conditions which will make either one answer or the other necessary. In spite of this, there are, however, a number of reasons which indicate that a proletarian regime will seek the road of compensation, and payment of the capitalists and landowners. I will here mention but two of these reasons which appear the most important to me. Money capital, as already stated, has become an impersonal power, and every sum of money can to-day be transformed into money capital without the owner