(considers the idea of goods owned in common, and the idea of a society without compulsion, and how these ideas have fared in russia.)
the russian revolution has familiarized us with the word communism. in the beginning of the revolutionary movement communism denoted what we now call socialism; for example, the communist manifesto of marx and engels became the platform of the social-democratic parties. but because most of these parties supported their governments during the war, the more radical elements have now rejected the word socialism, and taken up the old word communism. in the russian revolution the communists went so far as to seize all the property of the rich, and so the word communism has come to bear something of its early christian significance.
it is obvious that here, too, it is a question of degree, and socialism will shade into communism by an infinite variety of stages, depending upon what forms of property it is decided to socialize. the socialist formula commonly accepted is that "goods socially used shall be socially owned, and goods privately used shall be privately owned." if you own a factory, it will be taken by the state, or by the workers, and made social property like the postoffice; but no socialist wants to socialize your clothing, or your books, any more than he wants to socialize your toothbrush.
but when you come to apply this formula, you run quickly into difficulties. suppose you are a millionaire, and own a palace with one or two hundred rooms, and a hundred servants. do you use that socially, or do you use it privately? and suppose there is a scarcity of houses, and thousands of children are dying of tuberculosis in crowded tenement rooms? you own a dozen automobiles, and do you use them all privately? i point out to you that in time of emergency the capitalist state does not hesitate over such a problem; it seizes your palace and turns it into a hospital, it takes all your cars and uses them to carry troops. it should be obvious that a proletarian state would be tempted by this precedent.
the communists also have a formula, which reads: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his necessity." i do not see how any sensitive person can deny that this is an extremely fine statement of an ideal in social life. we take it quite for granted in family life; if you knew a family in which that rule did not apply, you would consider it an unloving and uncivilized family. i believe that when once industry has been socialized, and we have a chance to see what production can become, we shall find ourselves quickly adopting that family custom as our law, for all except a few congenital criminals and cheats. we shall find that we can produce so much wealth that it is not worth while keeping count of unimportant items. if today you meet someone on the street and ask him for a match or a pin, you do not think of offering to pay him. this is an automatic consequence of the cheapness of matches and pins. once upon a time you were stopped on the road every few miles and made to pay a few cents toll. i remember seeing toll-gates when i was a boy, but i don't think i have seen one for twenty years.
in exactly the same way, under socialized industry, we shall probably make street-car traffic free, and then railroad traffic; we shall abolish water meters and gas meters and electric light meters, also telephone charges, except perhaps for long distances, and telegraph tolls for personal messages. then, presently, we shall find ourselves with such a large wheat crop that we shall make bread free; and then music and theatres and clothing and books. at present we use furniture and clothing as a means of manifesting our economic superiority to our fellowmen. one of the most charming books in our language is veblen's "theory of the leisure class," in which these processes are studied. we shall, of course, have to raise up a new generation, unaccustomed to the idea of class and of class distinction, before we could undertake to supply people with all the clothing they wanted free of charge.
the russian theorists made haste to carry out these ideas all at once; they tried to leap several centuries in the evolution of russian society. they ordained complete communism in land; but the peasants would have nothing to do with such notions—each wanted his own land, and what he produced on it. the soviets have now been forced to give way, not merely to the peasants, but to the traders; and so we see once again that it is better to take one step forward than to take several steps forward and then several steps backward. the russian revolution is not yet completed, so no one can say how many steps backward it will be forced to take.
this revolution was an interesting combination of the ideas of socialism and syndicalism. the trade unionists seized the factories, and made an effort at democratic control of industry. at the same time the state was overthrown by a political party, the bolsheviks, who set up a dictatorship of the proletariat. because of civil war and outside invasion, the democratic elements in the experiment have been more and more driven into the background, and the authority of the state has correspondingly increased. this causes us to think of the soviet system as necessarily opposed to democracy, but this is not in any way a necessary thing. there is no inevitable connection between industrial control by the workers and a dictatorship over the state. in germany the state is proceeding to organize a national parliament of industry, and to provide for management of the factories by the labor unions. the italian government has promised to do the same thing. these, of course, are capitalist governments, and they will keep their promises only as they are made to; but it is a perfectly possible thing that in either of these countries a vote of the people might change the government, and put in authority men who would really proceed to turn industry over to the control of the workers. that would be the soviet or syndicalist system, brought about by democratic means, without dictatorship or civil war.
another group of revolutionary thinkers whose theories must be mentioned are the anarchists. the word anarchy is commonly used as a synonym for chaos and disorder, which it does not mean at all. it means the absence of authority; and it is characteristic of people's view of life that they are unable to conceive of there being such a thing as order, unless it is maintained by force. the theory of the anarchist is that order is a necessity of the human spirit, and that people would conform to the requirements of a just order by their own free will and without external compulsion. the anarchist believes that the state is an instrument of class oppression, and has no other reason for being. he wishes the industries to be organized by free associations of the people who work in them.
some of the greatest of the world's moral teachers have been anarchists: jesus, for example, and shelley and thoreau and tolstoi, and in our time kropotkin. these men voiced the highest aspirations of the human spirit, and the form of society which they dreamed is the one we set before us as our final goal. but the world does not leap into perfection all at once, and meantime here we have the capitalist system and the capitalist state, and what attitude shall we take to them? there are impassioned idealists who refuse to make any terms with injustice, or to submit to compulsion, and these preach the immediate destruction of capitalist government, and capitalist government responds with prison and torture, and so we have some anarchists who throw bombs.
there are those who call themselves "philosophic" anarchists, wishing to indicate thereby that they preach this doctrine, but do not attempt to carry it into action as yet. some among these verge toward the communist point of view, and call themselves communist-anarchists; such was kropotkin, whose theories of social organization you will find in his book "the conquest of bread." there are others who call themselves syndicalist-anarchists, finding their centers of free association in the radical labor unions.
after the russian revolution, the anarchists found themselves in a dilemma, and their groups were torn apart like every other party and class in russia. here was a new form of state set up in society, a workers' state, and what attitude should the anarchists take toward that? many of them stood out for their principles, and resisted the bolshevik state, and put the bolsheviks under the embarrassing necessity of throwing them into jail. we good orthodox americans, who are accustomed to dump socialists and communists and syndicalists and anarchists all together into one common kettle, took emma goldman and alexander berkman and shipped them over to russia, where we thought they belonged. now our capitalist newspapers find it strange that these anarchists do not like the russian government any better than they like the american government!
on the other hand, a great many anarchists have suddenly found themselves compelled by the russian situation to face the facts of life. they have decided that a government is not such a bad thing after all—when it is your own government! robert minor, for example, has recanted his anarchist position, and joined the communists in advocating the dropping of all differences among the workers, all theories as to the future, and concentrating upon the immediate task of overthrowing capitalist government and keeping it overthrown. in every civilized nation the russian revolution has had this effect upon the extreme revolutionists. it has given them a definite aim and a definite program upon which they can unite; it has presented to capitalist government the answer of force to force; it has shown the masters of industry in precise and definite form what they have to face—unless they set themselves immediately and in good faith to the task of establishing real democracy in industry.
