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DOVER-HARVARD THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY 
M D C C C C X 

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 



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SOCIALISM 
VERSUS THE STATE 



BY 

EMILE y_ANDERVELDE 

MINISTER OF STATE : MEMBER Or THE BELGIAN GOVERNMENT 

Translated by Charles H. Kerr 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

CO-OPERATIVE 



THEDtflGJOL UB8AKT 

APR % 8 1919 

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Copyright 1919 

By Charles H. Kerr & Company 

Authorized Edition for all English-Speaking Countries 



80 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PACE 

Preface 5 

Introduction . .' 13 

1. Reformist Socialism 23 

2. Revolutionary Syndicalism 28 

3. The Social Democracy 44 

PART ONE 
The Conquest of Political Power 
Chapter I. The Capitalist Conquest of the 
Public Powers 65 

1. Action Upon the Voters 67 

2. Action Upon Those Elected 85 

Chapter II. The Bankruptcy of Parliamentarism 102 
Chapter III. Proletarian Action 107 

1. Resistance to Capitalism Ill 

2. Pressure From Without 116 

3. The Formation of the New System 122 

4. The Proletarian Conquest of Political 

Power 126 

PART TWO 
The Socialization of the Means of Production 

Section I. Public Corporations 150 

Section II. Autonomy of Public Services 159 

Chapter I. Financial Autonomy 161 



4 TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 
Chapter II. Administrative Autonomy 167 

1. The Administration of Mines in Prussia... 168 

2. The State Railways 170 

3. The Belgian National Railway Project 177 

Chapter III. Autonomy of the Working Force. . 181 

1. Belgium . . 187 

2. France 189 

3. England 191 

4. Summary and Conclusion 194 

Chapter IV. Socialism and State Industries 205 

Chapter V. Socialism and Statism 220 



PREFACE 

This book was at the point of completion when 
the war broke out. I carried the manuscript to 
An vers, then to Ostend and to Havre. One of 
my co-workers found it, and having read it, 
advised me to publish without waiting longer. 
On reflection, I have followed this advice: the 
problems which concerned me in 1914 have not 
ceased to be problems. On the contrary, they 
will assert themselves after peace comes, with a 
force multiplied a hundred-fold by the crushing 
financial burdens that the war will leave behind it. 

My thesis was, in substance, that we should 
guard against confusing Socialism with Statism ; 
that the creation of government monopolies and 
State industries may often be due to causes, of a 
technical or fiscal order, which have nothing to 
do with labor and socialist demands; that the 
formidable growth of war and naval budgets is 
perhaps the principal factor in this development 
of statism; that this growing statization would 
be of a nature to involve the gravest disadvantages, if it were not accompanied by correspond 
ing changes in the political organization of the State and in the social organization of industries. 

Now if this was true before the war, it is still 
more true at present. 

The whirlpool of public debt grows deeper 
day by day. The after-war finances will require 
in all countries the creation of new state monop- 
olies. The actual needs of the conflict have placed 
most of the principal industries under control of 
the States. And in the public mind, it seems that 
this governmental seizure of the means of pro- 
duction and exchange appears more than ever 
like an application and realization of socialist 
principles. 

Thus, in May, 1916, at the moment when the 
"economic dictatorship" was inaugurated in Ger- 
many by Batocki, the predecessor of Michaelis, 
one might have read in the Gazette de Lausanne 
the following Article : 

"The economic dictatorship is in itself an 
event of enormous import from the social point 
of view. It marks the culmination of a system 
of State socialism toward which the Empire has 
progressed gradually and without check since the 
beginning of the war. Industrial organization 
for war, followed by the creation of all the 
societies for the purchase and distribution of 
commodities imagined by Dr. Delbrueck, — these 
have been stages in this progress toward the 



PREFACE 7 

realization of the dream of Karl Marx. Finally, 
the economic dictatorship, that is, the distribution 
of food for all under the guardianship of the 
State, marks the final point. It is absolute 
Statism. 

"And what is most remarkable . is that the 
complete overthrow of a capitalist organization 
has been realized in a few months, by virtue of 
the common will, without discussions, without 
recourse to the luminaries of Parliament. The 
Germans are all Socialists now, Liebknecht alone 
is a Socialist no longer. And that is why he is in 
prison I 

"The import of this concluding experience will 
be tremendous in the future. As a matter of fact, 
the theories which were called Utopian have fur- 
nished the leaven which has saved the Empire 
from an economic catastrophe, and their applica- 
tion, with the Germans' well-known spirit of 
organization, will not fail to be regarded by 
all economists as a precious foundation for a 
financial structure. 

"Saved at first by stocks of goods whose exist- 
ence no one, not even in Germany, suspected 
(every intense economic organization, in reality, 
functions only through abundant stocks) the 
Empire will owe its economic safety to the appli- 
cation of socialist theories." 



8 PREFACE 

However interesting this homage to socialism 
by a newspaper which has never been regarded 
as favorable to socialist theories, we could not 
subscribe to it without many and various reserva- 
tions. 

True, such facts as the "economic dictator- 
ship," the requisition of war industries, the 
extension of State control to the principal 
branches of social activity, furnish valuable argu- 
ments to the advocates of industrial socialization ; 
but between this self-styled socialism, this war 
socialism, and real socialism, there is all the 
difference that exists between an authoritarian 
organization and a democratic organization of 
the life of the members of society. 

All that can be said is that on the day when it 
was necessary to carry national energies to the 
maximum, the system of private initiative gave 
way to a system of co-ordination of social forces, 
and that henceforth it may be foreseen that on 
the day after the war, for financial reasons, the 
number of State monopolies will increase rather 
than diminish. 

Try to imagine, indeed, what the budgets of all 
the belligerent States will be during the coming 
years. 

In an article in the Neues Wiener Tageblatt of 
August 4, 1917, Dr. E. L. summarizes in the 



PREFACE 9 

following table the present financial situation of 

the principal European States: 

Debts of the Belligerent Nations of Europe 

Quadruple Alliance and Allies 

July 31, 1914 July 31, 1917 
(in millions of crowns) 

England 15,624 83,424 

France 32,787 87,169 

Russia 25,731 96,000 

Italy 15,586 38,051 

Roumania 1,715 2,715 

Belgium 3,734 ? 

Serbia 900 ? 

Portugal 3,833 ? 

Central Powers and Allies 

Germany 5,910 74,510 

Austria-Hungary 12,954 47,454 

Bulgaria 1,029 5,029 

Turkey 4,180 9,180 

These figures, naturally, have only a relative 
value. They do not, for example, take account 
of the fact that the Imperial debts of Germany 
and Austria-Hungary represjent but a minor part 
of their real debt. But the figures suffice to show 
this undeniable fact, that to cover the interest on 
these gigantic loans, it will be necessary to find 
fiscal resources that taxes alone will surely not be 
enough to furnish. 

In an important pamphlet by Edgar Jaffe, 
"Volkswirtschaft und Krieg," * issued in 1915, the 

1 Tubingen, Mohr, 1915. See especially pages 6, 24, 25, 26. 



10 PREFACE 

author already insisted on this inevitable conse- 
quence of a financial effort which far surpasses 
all that the boldest minds would have dared con- 
ceive at the outbreak of hostilities- 
Proud as was the strength of Germany, Jaffe 
labored under no illusions as to the future, and 
recognized that the difficulties his country would 
have to overcome on the commercial and indus- 
trial field would be as nothing to those it would 
meet on the financial field. 

Now, he adds, we can not expect everything 
from a direct tax. It will be necessary to con- 
sider the national interest alone and not attempt 
to satisfy private interests. It will be necessary 
to obtain resources by establishing State monop- 
olies. From experiences gathered before the war, 
postoffice, Imperial Bank, railroads, co-operatives 
of consumption, etc., it may be concluded that 
monopolies are possible and lucrative. The State 
would retain the total of the profits. Commerce 
in cereals, ;wool, copper, etc., would be financed 
by public or semi-official organizations. The 
State would keep a monopoly of the electrical 
industry and of electric power. 

That other countries, foremost among them 
Great Britain, are from now on as boldly or more 
boldly than Germany on the road toward "statiza- 
tion" is doubted by no one, and least of all by the 



PREFACE 11 

thousands who are moved by this tendency to the 
most resistance and apprehension. 

Certainly, a part of the war collectivism will 
disappear with the war. But, apart from the 
State monopolies which will be maintained, others 
must be created. State control will be established 
more and more over the combines, the pools and 
the trusts of big business. Industries operated 
by State bureaux will grow in number. And by 
the fact of their development, more imperiously 
than ever will arise the problems which we have 
studied in this book and which arfe summed up 
in its title: Socialism Versus the State, that is to 
say the substitution of Socialism, founded on the 
management, the administration of things, for 
Statism, founded on authority, on the government 
of men. 

The war will have as its inevitable consequence 
an inordinate increase in the domain of Statism. 
But this very development will at the same time 
render both easier and more necessary the de- 
velopment of its opposite, Socialism. 

E V. 



INTRODUCTION 

Every one knows, or at least has heard of, 
Spencer's little book "The Man versus the State." 

I had in mind this title, invented to fight 
Socialism, when I called these talks "Socialism 
versus the State." 

At this time when, by the fact of war or of 
the financial burdens resulting from war, the 
State is grasping more and more of the great 
industries, it is more important than ever to react 
against the too general tendency, not escaped by 
some Socialists, to confuse socialism with statism, 
to see in the progress of statization so many 
partial victories of collectivism, to imagine that 
to assure the future of socialism it will suffice 
to push to their final consequences the develop- 
ment of municipal ownership and of State 
monopolies. 

It is this manner of observing, too prevalent, 
which in many minds creates deep-seated preju- 
dices against the socialist ideal. 

How many people, for example, never having 
made any thorough study of socialism, take for a 
portrait of socialism this caricature in which 
13 



14 INTRODUCTION 

Flaubert describes the psychology of Senecal, 
revolutionary propagandist and future police 
spy: 

He had built up an ideal of virtuous democracy 
having the double aspect of a small farm and a 
spinning-mill, a sort of. American Sparta where the 
individual existed merely to serve a society more omnip- 
otent, absolute, infallible and divine than the great 
Lamas and the Nebuchadnezzars. 

Even in the scientific world, moreover, such 
ideas are still in repute. In proof of this, one 
only need open the treatise on political economy 
by Leroy-Beaulieu ; he will find the following 
definition of socialism: 

A system which resorts to State compulsion, com- 
pulsion by regulation or compulsion by taxation, to 
introduce among men a less inequality of conditions 
than that which is produced spontaneously under the 
regime of pure freedom of contract 

Again, he says: 

Moreover the isolated individual and family today 
become parts of a multitude of voluntary and free 
combinations: different associations with different ob- 
jects, intellectual, moral, material, pecuniary. 

In a socialist system where the State would provide 
for all production, would take it upon itself to assuage 
all miseries and to enlighten all men, the individual 
would no longer have to enter into any of these 
beneficent and varied relations. Emancipated from 
particular duties to others, deprived of all initiative .in 
presence of the all-powerful and all-providing State, 
he would be, more than today, a grain of human dust. 

Thus for bourgeois political economy, socialism 
and statism are almost synonymous : socialism is 



INTRODUCTION 15 

statism ending in the absorption by the State, not 
only of every individuality, but also of every 
autonomous or independent collectivity. 

But if we now address ourselves to soc?alists, 
and especially to the two theorists, Engels and 
Marx, who have exercised a preponderant influ- 
ence on the doctrinal development of contempo- 
rary socialism, on the elaboration of the declara- 
tions of principles and program of the parties 
affiliated with the International, the response will 
be altogether different. 

For the Marxists, in fact, socialism, far from 
being confused with statism, is its opposite. Its 
final aim is not the omnipotence of the State, but 
on the contrary its abolition. 

In his book "The Origin of the Family, Private 
Property and the State," published in 1884, where 
Engels, doing what death had prevented Marx 
himself from doing, sums up in a popular treatise 
the results of their common researches, he says : 

The State, then, did not exist from all eternity. 
There have been societies without it, that had no idea 
of any State or public power. At a certain stage of 
economic development, which was of necessity accom- 
panied by a division of society into classes, the State 
became the inevitable result of this division. We are 
now rapidly approaching a stage of evolution in produc- 
tion, in which the existence of classes has not only 
ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive fetter 
on production. Hence these classes must fall as inevit- 



16 INTRODUCTION 

ably as they once rose. The State must irrevocably fall 
with them. The society that is to reorganize production 
on the basis of a free and equal association of the 
producers, will transfer the machinery of State where 
it will then belong: into the Museum of Antiquities by 
the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze ax. 

The clearness of this passage leaves nothing to 
be desired : socialism, as the masters of the theory 
explain it, is then not statist, but on the contrary, 
anti-statist* 

How comes it, then, that the popular notion 
of socialism could be the exact opposite of what 
its principal theorists teach? 

To understand this, it is indispensable to carry 
to its completion the thought of Marx and Engels 
by comparing the text just quoted with other 
passages from their writings, which relate not 
to the final goal of socialism, but to the means 
for arriving at that goal. It will then be seen 
that if they desire, when socialism shall haye 
triumphed, to "transfer the machinery of State 
to the Museum of Antiquities," they wish that 
the workers grasp this machine, and before dis- 
carding it, make it operate to their profit. 

This is found clearly explained in the follow- 
ing passages of the Communist Manifesto : 

The immediate aim of the Communists (we should 
say today Marxians) is the same as that of all the 
other proletarian parties; formation of the proletariat 
into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, 



INTRODUCTION 17 

conquest of political power by the proletariat (Page 
30, Kerr edition.) 
And again , farther on : 

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolu- 
tion by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to 
the position of ruling class, to win the battle of 
democracy. 

The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to 
wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to 
centralize all instruments of production in the hands of 
the State, i. e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling 
class; and to increase the total of productive forces as 
rapidly as possible. . 

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected 
except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of 
property, and on the conditions of bourgeois produc- 
tion; by means of measures, therefore, which appear 
economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the 
course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate 
further inroads upon the old social order, and are 
unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the 
mode of production. 

These measures will of course be different in different 
countries. 

Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the 
following will be pretty generally applicable: 

1. Abolition of property in land and application of 
all rents of land to public purposes. 

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and 
rebels. 

5. Centralization of credit fn the hands of the State, 
by means of a national bank with State capital and an 
exclusive monopoly. 

6. Centralization of the means of communication and 
transport in the hands of the State. 

7. Extension of factories and instruments of produc- 
tion owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation 



18 INTRODUCTION 

of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil gen- 
erally in accordance with a common plan. 

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of 
industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing 
industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between 
town and country, by a more equable distribution of 
population over the country. 

10. Free education for all children in public schools. 
Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. 
Combination of education with industrial production, 
etc., etc. 

When, in the course of development, class distinctions 
have disappeared, and all production has been concen- 
trated in the hands of a vast association of the whole 
nation, the public power will lose its political character. 
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organ- 
ized power of one class for oppressing another. If the 
proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is 
compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize 
itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes 
itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by 
force the old conditions of production, then it will, 
along with these conditions, have swept away the con- 
ditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of 
classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its 
own supremacy as a class. 

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes 
and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in 
which the free development of each is the condition for 
the free development of all. (Kerr edition, pp. 40-42.) 

We are now in a position to understand how 
socialism may be considered^ as statist or anti- 
statist, according to whether one has in view its 
immediate goal or its final goal. The thought of 
Marx and Engels may be summed up as follows : 



INTRODUCTION 19 

1. The State, taken in the sense of State- 
power, of State-government, of the State as 
organ of authority, — is a product of society 
arrived at a definite degree of development. "In 
order that these contradictions, these classes with 
conflicting economic interests, may not annihilate 
themselves and society in a useless struggle, a 
power becomes necessary that stands apparently 
above society and has the function of keeping 
down the conflicts and maintaining 'order.' And 
this power, this outgrowth of society, but assum- 
ing supremacy over it and becoming more and 
more divorced from it, is the State." (Origin of 
the Family, p. 206.) 

2. The State, born of the need for restraining 
class antagonisms, but also born in the midst of 
the class struggle, is, as a rule, the State of the 
most powerful class, of that one which rules 
economically, and which, by means of the State, 
becomes also the preponderant class from the 
political point of view. 

3. The immediate aim of the proletarian revo- 
lution is the conquest of the State, the capture of 
political power. 

4. The proletariat will use this political su- 
premacy to wrest little by little from the bour- 
geoisie all the capital, to centralize in the hands 
of the State, that is to say of the proletariat 



20 INTRODUCTION 

constituted as a directing class, the instruments 
of production. (Communist Manifesto.) 

5. As it will thus have suppressed the very 
conditions which lead to class antagonisms, the 
existence of classes, it will take away from its 
own supremacy the character of class supremacy : 
the State, as organ of authority, may disappear; 
for the old capitalist society with its classes and 
its class antagonisms will be substituted an asso- 
ciation in which the free development of each 
will be the condition for the free development 
of all. 

It will be seen that, in this conception, the 
word "State" is employed stricto sensu: the ques- 
tion is not of the administration of things, but of 
the government of men; not of the State as an 
organ of management, but solely of the State as 
an organ of authority. 

This is the State which we seek to conquer in 
order to abolish it, following the clear formula 
which Kautsky gives in his commentary on the 
Erfurt Program: 

"Democracy would have the working classes 
conquer political power, in order, by aid of it, to 
transform the State into a great economic co- 
operative." 

The ideas of Marx and Engels on the conquest 
of political power re-appear today with more or 



INTRODUCTION 21 

less clearness and precision in the programs of 
all the parties affiliated with the International. 

Moreover, the International admitted to its 
congresses, according to the decisions taken at the 
Congress of London (1896) and Paris (1900) 
only associations and labor organizations answer- 
ing to the following conditions : 

1. All associations which adhere to the essen- 
tial principles of socialism : centralization of the 
means of production and exchange; union and 
international action of the workers ; socialist con- 
quest of the public powers by the proletariat 
organized as a class party. 

2. All labor organizations which, placing 
themselves on the field of the class struggle and 
recognizing in their declarations the necessity of 
political action, namely legislative -and parliamen- 
tary, do not participate directly in the political 
movement. 

These decisions at London and Paris had for 
their aim and their result the exclusion, on the 
right wing and on the left wing, of associations 
or organizations which, while taking the name of 
socialism, did not accept the fundamental ideas 
which have just been explained on the subject of 
the conquest of the State, of political power, by 
the proletariat organized as a class party. 

On one side there were, in France, the Inde- 



22 INTRODUCTION 

pendent Socialists, in Italy, the "Reformists of 
the Right," in England the "Labor Men," liberals, 
like John Burns, who, while declaring for the 
socialization or at least statization and municipal- 
ization of certain means of production and ex- 
change, opposed, either in theory or in practice, 
the collaboration of the working classes in the 
class struggle. 

On the other side there were the anarchists, 
the libertarians, the anti-parliamentary syndical- 
ists who, while placing themselves on the field 
of the class struggle, and striving for the social- 
ization of the means of production and exchange, 
did not recognize the necessity of political action, 
of the "socialist conquest of the public powers 
by the proletariat organized as a class party." 

There were, in short, before the war, three 
principal tendencies in the labor movement: re- 
formist socialism, revolutionary syndicalism and 
social democracy. 

These three tendencies, from the theoretical 
point of view, are connected more or less with 
Marx and Engels, but the first two are deviations 
which lead, on one side to a sort of socialist 
radicalism and on the other side to anarchism; 
the third, on the contrary, is a development of 
the Marxian thought, and at the same time an 
adaptation of it to the modifications which half 



INTRODUCTION 23 

a century has produced in the social environment. 

We propose to characterize these three tend- 
encies, especially from the standpoint of their 
conception of the role and the nature of the 
State. 

I. Reformist Socialism 

Inside the organization of the labor and social- 
ist International as it existed on the eve of the 
war, were found groups like the "Reformists of 
the Left" in Italy, the "Revolutionists" in Ger- 
many, the "Fabians" "in England, the right wing 
of the unified socialist party in France, which 
were connected, more or less, with reformist 
socialism. 

But among the individuals belonging to these 
various groups and factions, or among these 
groups and factions themselves, there is such a 
diversity of shadings that any attempt to char- 
acterize their common ideas would inevitably 
raise numerous objections on their part. 

In France, for example, the most reformist 
among the members of the unified socialist party 
might and even ought to protest against this 
epithet of reformists, in view of the fact that the 
common declaration which stands as the basis of 
the Socialist Unity asserts that "by its aim, its 
ideal, the methods it employs, the socialist party, 
while pursuing the realization of immediate re- 



24 INTRODUCTION 

forms demanded by the working class, is not a 
party of reforms, but a party of the class struggle 
and revolution." 

To find reformist socialism one must either go 
beyond the frontier of the party, or else revert to 
an epoch preceding the Unity (of French social- 
ists), to the time when, in his celebrated speech 
at Saint-Mande, Alexandre Millerand formulated 
in these terms the three essential points, "neces- 
sary and sufficient" according to him, to char- 
acterize a socialist program: 

1. State intervention to transfer from the capitalist 
domain to the national domain the various categories of 
means of production and exchange, as fast as they 
become ripe for social appropriation. 

2. Conquest of the public powers by universal 
suffrage. 

3. International alliance of the workers. 

With a little less precision or inclusiveness in 
terms, these "three essential points" correspond, 
in short, to the "essential principles of socialism" 
to which one must adhere in order to be admitted 
into the congresses of the International. 

But while affirming the need of the interna- 
tional alliance of the workers, Millerand protested 
his patriotism in terms which already seemed to 
announce his future nationalism, and on the other 
hand, upon the two other essential points, he de- 
veloped ideas very different from those explained 



INTRODUCTION 25 

in the Communist Manifesto or the other writings 
of Marx and Engels. 

/.• Social Appropriation 
Here, to start with, is Millerand's idea of col- 
lectivism : 

He is not a socialist, in my opinion, who does not 
accept the necessary and progressive substitution of 
social property for capitalist property. 

That is to say that a socialist would not limit his 
action to those three categories of production and 
exchange which may be called classic: credit or bank- 
ing, railway transportation and mining. 

Thus, outside of these, take an example about which 
there can be no question, an industry which is incon- 
testably ripe for social appropriation at the present 
time, because, monopolized in a few hands, returning 
enormous profits to its exploiters, it is altogether suited 
to furnish a fertile field for social exploitation. I refer 
to the sugar refineries. 

That is one example, and only an example: but is 
there in truth any great novelty in this national admin- 
istration which tomorrow shall restore to all the profit 
unduly monopolized by a few ; that already ... by 
assuming control of water works; electric power, the 
local transportation systems, and the service in common 
of farm machinery, a number of small collectivities, 
urban and rural, have in their sphere substituted social 
property for capitalist property? 1 

It will be seen that in M. Millerand's concep- 
tion, the substitution of social property for capi- 
talist property was, in reality, the establishment 
of a certain number of government bureaux, the 



1 Le Socialisme rtformiste, p. 27. 



26 INTRODUCTION 

statization or municipalization of a few which 
already, as a matter of fact, constituted 
monopolies. 

In the quotation we have just made from his 
speech, we find in substance the theory of the 
"socialization of monopolies" which Benoit Malon 
had set forth in his book on "Integral Socialism," 
the second volume of which appeared in 1891. 

Reforms of this kind, moreover, are merely 
the realization, partial at least, of the program 
of immediate action which Marx and Engels were 
already developing in 1848!. 

But the authors of the Manifesto saw in this 
program only the starting point for more radi- 
cal transformations. Measures will have to be 
taken, they said (Manifesto, p. 41), "which ap- 
pear economically insufficient and untenable, but 
which in the course of the movement outstrip 
themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the 
old social order, and are unavoidable as a means 
,of entirely revolutionizing the mode of produc- 
tion." 

For Malon and Millerand, on the contrary, the 
transformation of private monopolies into pro- 
ductive services constitutes not a means, but an 
end. They see in it nothing less than the culmi- 
nation of socialist effort so far as property is 
concerned. 



INTRODUCTION 27 

2. Conquest of Public Powers 

For Marx and Engels, the measifres of which 
we have just spoken were to be taken by the 
proletariat, having become a ruling class, after 
conquering the public power (Manifesto, p. 41). 

For Malon and Millerand, on the contrary, the 
socialization of monopolies can and must take 
place beginning now; it must be accomplished 
gradually, progressively, by way of purchase, as 
must also be eff ected gradually, progressively the 
conquest of public, powers through universal 
suffrage. 

That is what Millerand, in his speech at Saint- 
Mande, affirmed in the most categorical terms, 
protesting energetically against the "ridiculous 
reproach" of expecting the triumph of his ideas 
from violent revolution : 

"Resort to force, and for whom, and against whom? 
Republicans before all else, we do not entertain the 
crazy idea of appealing to the illusory prestige of a 
pretender or the sabre of a dictator to make our doc- 
trine triumph. . . . No, to realize immediate re- 
forms, capable of alleviating the lot of the working 
class and thus .making it more fit to conquer its own 
emancipation, to begin, under conditions determined by 
the nature of things, the socialization of the means of 
production, it is necessary and sufficient for die socialist 
party to pursue through universal suffrage the conquest 
of the public powers. 1 



1 Le Socialisme r<5f ormiste f rancais, p. 32. 



28 INTRODUCTION 

The socialism thus understood is evidently a 
State socialism, answering to the general defini- 
tion of socialism given by Leroy-Beaulieu. It 
strives to conquer the State, not to abolish it, but 
on the contrary to extend its domain, entrust new 
funcions to it, so as to assure its grasp on all 
monopolies, natural or artificial. 

2. Revolutionary Syndicalism 

The whole doctrine of revolutionary syndical- 
ism will be found in embryo in the article on 
the new society which Sorel published, in 1898, 
under the title 'The Socialist Future of the Syn- 
dicats" (industrial unions). 

Before this, it should be understood, there were 
in France syndicalists more or less hostile to 
parliamentary action, and who advocated, in op- 
position to the militants of the Parti Ouvrier, 
founded by Guesde and Lafargue, theories or 
tactics which connected them, consciously or un- 
consciously, with Proudhon or Bakounin. 1 
[ But Sorel's originality was in representing syn- 
dicalism as a logical deduction from the Marxian 
conception itself. His conclusion on this point is 
worth quoting entire : 

This study furnishes us with a beautiful illustration 
of the doctrines of Marx : the leaders of the syndicalist 

1 See on this subject the study by Lagardelle on the origfau 
of syndicalism in France in the uouvement Socialist*. Nov.- 
Dec., 1909. 



INTRODUCTION 29 

movement did not know his theories and, oftener than 
not, had only confused notions of historical materialism. 
Their tactics may have been sometimes open to criticism, 
because they were doing pioneer work, with no one to 
advise them. Today, things are sufficiently advanced so 
that we may take account of the role which the syndi- 
cats are called upon to play. 

We see today very clearly that the proletariat can 
emancipate itself from all exploitation only by estab- 
lishing itself on the model of the old social classes, 
taking lessons from the bourgeoisie as that class for- 
merly took lessons from the nobility, by adapting the 
old political formulas to its new needs, and by conquer- 
ing the public powers in order to appropriate the profit 
from them as the capitalist class has done in all 
countries. 

If, as Marx says, the proletarians can not lay hold 
of the forces of social production without abolishing 
the "mode of appropriation in force up to our time," 
how can one admit that they can preserve the quintes- 
sence of the capitalist mode of appropriation, that is to 
say, the forms of the traditional government? Such a 
conclusion would be the negation of the whole of 
historical materialism. Finally, how could the differen- 
tiation of governed and governors disappear, if there 
did not exist in society forces, long ago developed, 
capable of preventing the return of the past? 

As it confronts the State, the action of the pro- 
letariat is two- fold : it must struggle within the present 
relations of the political organization, to obtain social 
legislation favorable to its development; it must use 
whatever influence it acquires either in public opinion 
or in the government, to destroy the present relation- 
ships of die political organization, to strip the State 
and the municipality, one by one, of all their attributes, 
thereby to enrich the proletarian organisms in process 
of formation, namely, the syndicats (industrial 
unions). 



30 INTRODUCTION 

The proletariat must aim to emancipate itself hence- 
forth from all outside authority; it is by movement and 
action that it must acquire legal and political capacity. 
The first rule of its conduct must be to "remain exclu- 
sively working-class," that is, to exclude the intellec- 
tuals, whose leadership would result in restoring the 
hierarchies and dividing the army of toilers. The role 
of the intellectuals is an auxiliary role; they may serve 
as employees of the unions; they have no qualification 
for leadership, now that the proletariat has begun to 
be conscious of its reality and to establish its own 
organization. 

The development of the proletariat makes possible a 
powerful moral discipline exercised over its members: 
this can be exercised by its unions, which are destined 
to wipe out all forms of organization bequeathed by 
the bourgeoisie. 

To sum up my whole thought in one formula, I will 
say that the whole future of socialism is contained in 
the free development of the industrial unions. 

It will be seen that at this moment Sorel did 
not declare against all political action. Neither 
did he profess the contempt that he proclaimed 
later in his "Introduction to Modern Economics" 
for co-operative action. He admitted on the con- 
trary that, even if the co-operatives did nothing 
but make life less hard for the workers, even this 
would be an enormous result. Experience had 
already shown to Young that the best paid 
workers were the most inclined to resistance; 
all writers are today unanimous in recognizing 
that poverty is a great obstacle to the progress of 
socialism, but, they add, the co-operative has 



INTRODUCTION 31 

one effect still more direct, in that it takes the 
worker away from the influence of the shop- 
keeper, that great elector of bourgeois democracy ; 
this is no small result. 

However, according to Sorel, it is for the 
unions to preserve the proletarian spirit in the 
co-operatives, to prevent their growing into mere 
business concerns, and to eliminate from them 
whatever savors of the capitalist corporation. 
And again, it is on the unions, on the direct action 
of the unions, that he counts for obtaining from 
the legislator, not laws of protection and guar- 
dianship, but facilities for proceeding with the 
transformation of the nation by itself. 

Thus for example : 

1. Many people think that the employment 
agencies ought to be municipalized, but the 
unions have well understood that if they could 
obtain control of these agencies, this conquest 
would be of great importance for them, not only 
because of the authority they would have over 
the workers of each trade, but especially because 
they would have wrested from the traditional 
authority a scrap of its power. 

2. A few years ago, miners' delegates were in- 
troduced to supplement the insufficiency of gov- 
ernment supervision; in selecting them the old 
democratic tradition was followed, leaving the 



32 INTRODUCTION 

unions side-tracked; So again when it was neces- 
sary to organize pensions and sickness and acci- 
dent benefits. As a matter of fact, the unions 
strive to conquer this power of supervision in- 
directly, by contesting the elections; when they 
shall have acquired it in a general and indirect 
manner, the legislator will be forced to recog- 
nize them and to suppress the fiction of a useless 
vote. 

3. Every one complains of the excessive super- 
vision exercised over factories ; the inspectors are 
too numerous, and their good will (when they 
have any) is nullified by administrative inertia or 
even repressed by the public powers. The solu- 
tion of the radicals is very simple: to multiply 
functionaries so as to furnish jobs to the intel- 
lectuals who are out of work. The socialist solu- 
tion is even simpler and more economical: to 
assign the duty of inspection to the unions ; thus 
it would be assured that this would be serious 
and practical. 

4. Finally, it is not evident that the unions 
would be much more capable than municipal em- 
ployes to take care of questions of relief? There 
again their intervention would be more efficient 
and less costly than that of the established bodies. 

To sum up then, in Sorel's view, unionist action 
in the political field should not have for its aim to 



INTRODUCTION 33 

conquer the State in order to abolish it later, but 
to work from now on for its final abolition, by 
substituting union action for state action : 

It is necessary that the unions strip the State of its 
powers, little by little, by demanding them incessantly, 
by interesting the public in their efforts, by denouncing 
abuses without respite, by showing the incompetence or 
the dishonesty of the public administrations. They will 
thus eventually take away from the old forms, pre- 
served by the democrats, everything vital in them, and 
leave them nothing but the repulsive functions of police 
repression. Then a new society will have been created, 
with elements completely new, with principles purely 
proletarian. The societies of resistance will have ended 
by enlarging their field of action to such a degree that 
they will have absorbed nearly everything political. 

That, as I understand it, according to the material- 
istic conception of history, is the final struggle for the 
public powers. It is not a struggle to capture the 
positions held by the bourgeois and to deck ourselves 
out in their spoils; it is a struggle to empty the bour- 
geois political organism of all life, and to transfer 
everything useful contained by it into a proletarian 
political organism, created as fast as the proletariat 
develops. 

This study by Sorel, at the time of its publica- 
tion, received scarcely any notice. 

The C. G. T. (General Confederation of Labor) 
created in 1895, numbered few adherents and had 
not yet clearly defined its syndicalist tendencies. 

The Federation of Labor Exchanges, headed 
by Fernand Pelloutier, remained the head and 
the heart of the syndicalist movement. Like the 



34 INTRODUCTION 

C G. T., it aimed to co-ordinate wcrking-class 
action outside the socialist groups, and to unite 
the workers on the economic field in the struggle 
for their complete emancipation. 

But, while affirming the theoretical necessity of 
a rupture between the bourgeois State and the 
organized labor movement, the Federation re- 
mained practically incorporated into the State 
which it pretended to combat, by the fact that it 
accepted the subsidy from the government as its 
normal means of existence. 

Before the syndicalist tendencies, outlined in 
theory by Sorel, could take shape in a powerful 
organization, a crisis was needed, and this was 
produced in the socialist and labor circles in 1900, 
when M. Millerand, at that time one of the leaders 
of parliamentary socialism, accepted a portfolio 
in the Waldeck-Rousseau-Gallifet ministry. 

As Griffuelhes pointed out at the C. G. T. Con- 
gress six years later, it was to react against the 
reformism of the parliamentary socialists that a 
coalition of anarchists, Guesdists, Blanquists, 
Allemanists and various other elements was 
formed, to isolate the unions from the govern- 
ment This coalition succeeded in maintaining 
itself, and was the life of the C. G. T. 

At its origin then, the syndicalist movement 
was nothing else than a protest against Millerand- 



INTRODUCTION 35 

ism and against government attempts at the 
domestication of the trade unions. 

While the majority of the socialist party ap- 
proved the policy of M. Millerand and accorded 
its parliamentary support, the advanced elements 
of the unions took an attitude more and more 
hostile, both toward the minister and toward the 
socialists who supported him. 

But little by little this mistrust of a definite 
kind of politics took on a character of hostility 
or at least indifference, towards all politics in 
general, and in 1906, at the syndicalist Congress 
of Amiens, an enormous majority declared in 
favor of a motion proclaiming the absolute sepa- 
ration of the political movement and the syn- 
dicalist movement. 

True, the Congress asserted for each member 
of a union "entire liberty to participate, outside 
his co-operative group, in such forms of struggle 
as correspond to his philosophical and political 
condition," but he was requested not to introduce 
into the union the opinions that he professed out- 
side. It was proclaimed that the federated organ- 
izations should not, as unions, concern themselves 
with parties or sects. On the other hand, a clearly 
anti-capitalist viewpoint was adopted. They took 
their stand on the field of the class struggle, pro- 
claiming that the mission of syndicalism is to pre- 



36 INTRODUCTION 

pare for the complete emancipation of the prole- 
tariat, which can only be realized by the expro- 
priation of the capitalists; they advocated the 
general strike as a means of action, and held that 
the union, today a group for resistance, will be 
tomorrow a group for production and distribu- 
tion, a basis for social reorganization. 

But, in fact, the motion passed at Amiens gave 
to the libertarian or syndicalist elements, which 
already dominated the C. G. T., full license to pur- 
sue their advantage and consolidate their control. 

Thus, less than six years after the publication 
of Sorel's pamphlet, his ruling ideas had become 
the official doctrine of the C. G. T. 

To become convinced of this, one need only 
read in the library of the Mouvement Socialists, 
published by Lagardelle, the pamphlets published 
in 1907-1908 under the following titles : 

I. Syndicalistic et Socialisme, by Lagardelle, La- 
briola, Michels, Kritchewsky, Griffuelhes. 

II. La Confederation generate du Travail, by Pouget. 

III. La Decomposition du Marxisme, by Sorel. 

IV. L' Action syndicaliste, by Griffuelhes. 

V. Le Parti socialiste et la C. G. T., a discussion by 
Jules Guesde, Lagardelle, Vaillant. 

In the pamphlet by Pouget, for example, we 

find this very clear affirmation, that the working 

class, in giving itself an independent organization, 

meant "to establish itself as a class party, in op- 



INTRODUCTION 37 

position to all other parties and in opposition to 
all other classes." 

The goal which it seeks is to "realize and to 
fortify groups fit to accomplish the expropriation 
of the capitalists and capable of proceeding to a 
social reorganization on the communist plan." 
(Page 3.) 

To arrive at these ends, the "federal union is 
accomplished outside all political schools, which 
are all— even those which connect themselves with 
doctrines of social transformation — nothing but 
a prolongation of democracy." (Page 25.) 

The C. G. T.; on the other hand, makes a 
complete break between present society and the 
working class. It does not abdicate before any 
social problem, not even politics, using that word 
in its broad sense. What distinguishes it from 
the democratic parties, is that it does not partici- 
pate in parliamentary life ; it is non-parliamentary, 
as it is non-religious, and also as it is non- 
patriotic. 

But its indifference to parliamentary matters 
does not prevent it from reacting against the 
government, and experience has proved the 
efficacy of its action exerted against the public 
powers by exterior pressure. (Page 28.) 

As for tactics, these are pretty nearly the op- 



38 INTRODUCTION 

posite of the tactics followed by the democratic 

parties, socialists included. 

1. The democratic parties strive to win the 

majority. The C. G. T., on the contrary, counts 

most of all on the action of the minority: 

If the democratic mechanism were practiced in labor 
organizations, the non-will of the unthinking and non- 
syndicalist majority would paralyze all action. But the 
minority is not disposed to abdicate its demands and 
its aspirations before the inertia of a mass not yet 
animated and vivified with the spirit of revolt. Conse- 
quently there exists for the conscious minority an 
obligation to act without taking account of the retard- 
ing mass, under penalty of being forced to bend the 
spine like the unthinking ones. (Page 35.) 

The democratic parties count on their dele- 
gates in political assemblies. The C. G. T., on the 
other hand, practices direct action, that is to say, 
syndicalist action, free from all alloy, without 
capitalistic or governmental compromise, without 
intrusion into the debate of "persons interposed." 
(Page 37.) 

This direct action, morover, is not necessarily 
violent : it may appear under aspects benevolent 
and pacific or very vigorous and even violent, 
without ceasing to be, in either case, direct action. 

Again, it is various in its modalities, according 
to whether the attack is more expressly directed 
against the capitalists or against the State. 
Against the latter, direct action materializes itself 



INTRODUCTION 39 

under form of external pressure, while against 
the employer, the common methods are the strike, 
boycott and sabotage. 

3. Finally, the democratic parties, the socialist 
parties included, wish to grasp political power, 
and among the means for arriving at that solu- 
tion, include parliamentary action. The C. G. T., 
on the contrary, does not conduct its struggle 
against the government on the parliamentary 
field: 

And that because syndicalism does not look to a 
simple modification of the governmental personnel, but 
rather to a reduction of the State to zero, by trans- 
planting into the syndicalist organs the few useful 
functions which keep up the illusion of the value of 
government, and by suppressing the others purely and 
simply. (Page 45.) 

And the method of action which will permit 
the working class to carry through this work — 
that of general emancipation — is the logical cul- 
mination of its grouping on the economic field and 
of the conceptions arising from this. It has its 
expression in the idea of the general strike : 

The general strike is the material break between the 
proletariat and the bourgeoisie, preceded by the moral 
and ideological break involved in the affirmation of the 
autonomy of the working class. This class, after having 
proclaimed that it bears within itself all the real ele- 
ments of social life, having acquired the vigor and the 
consciousness necessary to impose its will, will proceed 
to action, by refusing to produce for the capitalist class, 
and this decisive revolt will be the general strike. 



40 INTRODUCTION 

This refusal to continue production on the capi- 
talist plan will not be purely negative: it will 
coincide with the seizure of the social machinery 
and a reorganization on the communist plan ac- 
complished by the social assemblies which the 
unions constitute. The syndicalist organisms, 
grown into the hearthstones of the new life, will 
break up and replace the hearthstones of the old 
life constituted by the State and the munici- 
palities : 

Thenceforth, the centers of cohesion will be the 
federations of industries, in the syndicalist unions, and 
to these organisms will revert the few useful functions 
that today devolve upon the public powers and the 
municipalities. (Page 48.) 

As we said just now, there is nothing in this 
pamphlet of Pouget that is not a logical deduction 
from the premises of Sorel in "The Socialist 
Future of the Unions." 

But while Sorel, in 1898, still maintained that 
his revolutionary syndicalism was nothing but 
the development of the anti-statist conceptions of 
Marxism, Pouget, an old-time anarchist, endeav- 
ors on the contrary to differentiate as clearly as 
possible revolutionary syndicalism from demo- 
cratic socialism. 

Perhaps in Griffuelhes, who has passed through 
socialism, or in Lagardelle, who has never ceased 
to be a member of the socialist party, the break 



~i 



INTRODUCTION 41 

is not quite so clear. Nevertheless, the funda- 
mental conception remains the same. Griffudhes, 
like Pouget, sees in syndicalism the "reaction of 
the unions against democracy." And, on his side, 
Lagardelle, at the socialist Congress of Nancy 
(August 11-15, 1907) criticizes sharply the 
Marxian conception, restated by Guesde, of the 
conquest of political power : 

Hubert Lagardelle. — There are two ways of conceiv- 
ing this seizure of die State. The first, which is that 
of the reformist socialists, is the fragmentary and pro- 
gressive method. It consists in saying : The day when 
we shall be one-half plus one in Parliament, when the 
majority of the districts shall be represented by a 
majority of socialist deputies; or again the day when, 
after having participated in various governments, we 
shall be able to constitute a government by ourselves, — 
on that day we shall bring about, through legislation, 
the social transformation. 

Jules Guesde.— That is not my theory. 

Hubert Lagardelle.— Then here is your theory, your 
universal and revolutionary method, which says: Let 
us conquer the State by a sudden attack, and once 
masters of its power, we shall impose the "impersonal 
dictatorship of the proletariat/' we shall socialize the 
means of production and exchange, we shall decree the 
social revolution. 

I say that these two conceptions are equally Utopian 
because they give the coercive power of the State a 
creative value which it does not possess. Whether you 
operate according to the reformist fashion or accord- 
ing to the revolutionary fashion, whether you become 
the half-plus-one in the Chamber or whether you have 
taken the government by assault, you will not cause a 
completely constructed society to arise from one day to 



42 INTRODUCTION 

the next No matter what authority you have at your 
disposal, you will not give to the workers who vote for 
socialist candidates, or to the electors who for motives 
sometimes futile and intangible give you their support, 
the capacity to direct production and exchange. You 
will be the masters of the hour, you will wield all the 
power which yesterday belonged to the bourgeoisie, you 
will pile decree upon decree and law upon law, but you 
will work no miracle, and no blow you can strike will 
make the workers competent to replace the capitalists 
In what, tell me, will the possession of power by certain 
men called political socialists have transformed the 
psychology of the masses, modified their sentiments, 
increased their aptitudes, created new rules of life, and 
made way for a society of free men to exist in place of 
a society of masters and slaves? 

No, the transformation of the world does not depend 
on a simple change in governmental personnel. That 
would truly be too easy, and the march of history has 
other requirements. A social State is not born without 
long preparation, and it is here that syndicalism, with 
a more realistic conception of things, opposes to you 
what I call the socialism of institutions. It reminds the 
workers that no change will be possible until they shall 
have created with their own hands a complete mass 
of institutions destined to replace the institutions of the 
capitalists. 

Such are, in short, the principal theses of revo- 
lutionary syndicalism. 

It cannot be denied that they contain, at the 
very least, a kernel of truth. 

By reacting against the tendencies of certain 
socialist parties toward too much politics, by 
showing that socialism should not devote itself too 
exclusively to the conquest of political power, by 



INTRODUCTION 43 

insisting on the pre-eminent value of union ac- 
tivity, and by putting the working class on guard 
against the temptation of acting only through 
delegates, syndicalism has certainly done a useful 
work and has contributed in large measure, not 
to the decomposition of Marxism, but on the con- 
trary, to a more exact comprehension of the fund- 
amental ideas of Marxism. 

Only, the syndicalists would be the first to pro- 
test, if we were to pretend to see in their doctrine 
merely a return to Marx, or even a simple re- 
vision — revision in the revolutionary sense— of 
Marxism. 

When Sorel, in "L'Avenir Socialiste des Syn- 
dicats," wrote that the action of the proletariat 
confronting the State should be two- fold:' to 
struggle to obtain social legislation favorable to 
its development; to use whatever influence it 
acquires "to strip the municipality and the State, 
one by one, of all their attributes, thereby to 
enrich the proletarian organisms in process of 
formation, namely, the industrial unions," his 
syndicalism practically repeats or comes near re- 
peating what Marx and Engels had said long ago. 

But he is already separating from them when 
he maintains that "the whole future of socialism 
dwells in the autonomous development of the 
industrial unions." And soon we shall find our- 



44 INTRODUCTION 

selves very far from Marxism, when Pouget, 
Griffuelhes, Merrheim, pretend to reduce all pro- 
letarian action to syndicalist action alone, when 
they proclaim under all circumstances their con- 
tempt for the parliamentarians and politicians of. 
the socialist parties, when they affirm their exclu- 
sive confidence in the action of conscious minori- 
ties, when they ridicule large memberships and 
high dues, when they oppose to the reformist or 
revolutionary idea of conquest of political power 
the idea of the general strike as the sole means 
of accomplishing the expropriation of the capi- 
talists and of proceeding to social reorganization 
on the communist plan. 

At this stage of development, the syndicalist 
doctrine has, so to speak, no longer anything in 
common- with the conceptions of Marx and 
Engels. It borrows its principal elements from 
other sources. It has been profoundly influenced 
by libertarian theories. It sees in the abolition of 
the State no longer a final goal, but a near goal. 
It rejects or relegates to the background the action 
of the proletariat with a view to conquering 
political power. 

And by this fact, it puts itself in opposition 
with the ruling ideas of the social democracy. 
3. The Social Democracy 

Reformist socialism, retaining from the Com- 



INTRODUCTION 45 

munist Manifesto nothing but its program for 
immediate realization, tends to degenerate into 
a State of socialism, dominated by parliamentary 
and electoral considerations. 

Revolutionary syndicalism, on the contrary, 
pushing to extremes the anti-statism of Marx and 
Engels, retains only their final objective, the abo- 
lition of the State, and sees in the political action 
of the labor parties only an accessory or even 
a nuisance. 

It is at once against this syndicalist exclusivism 
and this reformist exclusivism that the social 
democracy strives to react, by assigning to the 
workers a double objective: (1) the conquest of 
the State by the proletariat organized into politi- 
cal parties ; (2) this conquest being accomplished, 
the abolition of the State as an organ of domina- 
tion of one class over another, or, to repeat the 
expressions already quoted from Kautsky, "the 
transformation of present society into a great 
economic co-operative by the centralization of the 
means of production." 

But inside the social democracy, we may point 
out notable divergencies as regards the manner 
of conceiving the conquest of the State, the seiz- 
ure of political power. 

Among the members of the International and 
of the parties affiliated with the International, 



46 INTRODUCTION 

there are some, on the right, whose conception 
does not greatly differ from that of the inde- 
pendent socialists or reformists ; there are others, 
on the left, who are on the contrary more or less 
close to revolutionary syndicalism; and between 
these two extremes, we find, more or less numer- 
ous in the various countries, under the names of 
"Marxians," "radicals," "revolutionary socialists," 
militants who strive to shape their action to the 
fundamental ideas developed in the Communist 
Manifesto and the other writings of Marx and 
Engels. 

As a matter of fact, no lines of demarcation are 
clearly drawn between these three groups. 

Among the socialists with reformist tendencies 
who adhere to the International, there is none, 
however enamored of electoral and parliamentary 
methods, who does not admit that, at a given 
moment, the conquest of political power may be 
the result of a revolutionary act or a series of 
revolutionary acts, and that, on the other hand, 
the direct action of the industrial unions may 
be a necessary adjunct to the action of the social- 
ist parties. 

Likewise, among the "revolutionaries," there 
are none who ignore the utility of parliamentary 
or syndicalist action. 

As for the socialists with syndicalist tendencies, 



INTRODUCTION 47 

from the moment they join the socialist party 
and the International, they must, by that very 
fact, admit the necessity of political action, 
whether reformist or revolutionary. 

This was recognized by Hubert Lagardelle, for 
example, in the following terms in an article, 
"The Syndicalist Critique of Democracy," pub- 
lished in the Mouvement Socialist e in 1911. 

In emphasizing the value of the industrial union, we 
have not denied the task of the socialist party. We 
have simply given it a limited role: to recognize the 
priority of labor organizations in the elaboration of 
socialist values and proclaim the relativity of its own 
task ; then to limit its action to the field of pure politics, 
which syndicalism does not touch; finally, to reduce 
the power of the State, by reorganizing the public 
service on syndicalist foundations; 

Such ideas, assuredly, do not go directly counter 
to the declarations of principles found in the 
programs of the various socialist parties. They 
do not prevent the socialists who "emphasize 
the value of the industrial union" from joining 
the same groups as other socialists who attach 
a greater importance to political action, in the 
sense of parliamentary action. 

Nevertheless, it should not be ignored that 
from the point of view of principles/as well as of 
methods, there is somewhat of a margin between 
socialism thus conceived and the traditional social- 
ism developed from the Communist Manifesto. 



48 INTRODUCTION 

In order the better to understand this differ- 
ence, again, it will be best to compare the argu- 
ments of Lagardelle with those of the French 
socialists who, under the influence of Jules 
Guesde, oppose most energetically the "syndic- 
alist" tendencies, and glory in being the most 
faithful disciples of Marx and Engels. 

Let us not forget, however, that more than 
half a century has passed since the Manifesto, 
that the unification of socialist forces in France 
is, as elsewhere, the result of theoretical and prac- 
tical compromises between divergent tendencies; 
that, consequently, it becomes difficult today to 
oppose clearly Guesdism, the French adaptation 
of Marxism, either to the socialism with reform- 
ist tendencies, or to the socialism with syndicalist 
tendencies. On the contrary, the opposition of 
these tendencies becomes very clear when, going 
a few years back, as we have for syndicalism 
and reformism, we revert to the Declaration of 
Principles of the Parti Ouvrier Fran^ais, founded 
in 1880 by Guesde and Laf argue, under the direct 
inspiration and with the doctrinal collaboration of 
Marx and Engels. 

In the theoretical preamble of this program, in 
which are found all the essential ideas of the 
Manifesto, it is affirmed that "the collective ap* 
propriation of the means of production (lands, 



INTRODUCTION 49 

factories, ships, banks, credit, etc.), can proceed 
only from the revolutionary action of the pro- 
ductive class, of the proletariat organized as a 
distinct party," and that "such an organization 
must be striven for by all the means at the dis- 
posal of the proletariat, including universal suf- 
frage, thus transformed from an instrument of 
dupery, which it has been until now, into an in- 
strument of emancipation." 

It is scarcely necessary to insist on the differ- 
ence between this conception and those of syn- 
dicalist 'socialism or of reformist socialism, as 
well from the viewpoint of the goal to attain as 
of the means to employ. 

First, as regards the seizure of political power, 
the founders of the Parti Ouvrier believed no 
more in the efficacy of the general strike, con^ 
ceived as the means of accomplishing the social 
revolution, then in the gradual conquest of the 
State by the sole virtue of universal suffrage. 

Moreover, they have not changed their opinion 
on this point. 

A noteworthy declaration of Guesde is found 
in his discussion with Lagardelle at the Congress 
of Nancy in 1907 : 

Contrary to what some assert, I have never subordi- 
nated the emancipation of the proletariat to its electoral 
or legal accession to power. 

Never have I led the workers to believe for a 



50 INTRODUCTION 

moment, either in my general propaganda, or in my 
campaigns in support of the candidacies of my com- 
rades, that the ballot could suffice to set them free; 
last year again, at Reims, during the whole electoral 
campaign I have been repeating that the elections are 
only a means for organizing the proletariat; they are 
its grand manoeuvres. Here it acquires a conscious- 
ness and a measure of its strength, at the same time 
that it is approaching the position to be captured, until, 
with a thrust of two, three, four millions of voters, full 
of confidence in itself, it gives the final push, exer- 
cising its right of insurrection, accomplishing its 
inevitable revolution. To this language I have held 
everywhere and always. 1 

On the other hand, against the anti-statism of 

the syndicalists and the statism of the reformists, 

the Guesdists maintained, and still maintain, with 

more or less fanaticism, that : 

1. The existence of public services in the pres- 
ent society, by the nationalization of certain 
monopolies, has nothing to do with socialism; 
that for the proletariat it presents far more dis- 
advantages than advantages. 

2. The inauguration of public services is sub- 
ordinated to the socialization of the means of pro- 
duction and exchange, which itself is subordi- 
nated to the seizure of political power by the 
proletariat and the expropriation of the capitalist 
class, which means revolution.' 



*Le parti soclaliste et la Confederation generate du 
Travail, p. 39. 
'Guesde, le Soclallsme et les services publics, p. 20. 



INTRODUCTION 51 

On this subject one should read the pamphlet 
written by Jules Guesde in October, 1883, from 
the prison of Sainte-Pelagie, against Brousse, 
Malon and other "possibilists" who advocated, 
within the structure of the present society, the 
nationalization of the railroads, mines and other 
monopolized industries. 

Public services thus understood, he said in 
substance, have nothing to do with modern social- 
ism. Rather than pursue the extension of these, 
there is ground for attacking those which exist 
and which constitute so many obstacles in the 
way of proletarian organization and action. If 
Germany has incorporated the railroads into the 
imperial State of the Hohenzollerns, it is in order 
to bring to its maximum power that machine for 
murder and pillage which, across the Vosges 
mountains, as everywhere, the army of passive 
obedience constitutes, — it is a strategic or mili- 
tary expedient. If France has been menaced 
for some time with a new public service, the tele- 
phones, it is because private'telephoning makes a 
serious competition with State telegraphy, and 
because, moreover, it escapes that eagle eye which 
the capitalist State, master of telegraphs and 
posts, turns at pleasure upon our letters and mes- 
sages, — it is an expedient both of the Treasury 
and the police. If the French submarine cables 



52 INTRODUCTION 

have been laid and operated by the- State, it is be- 
cause, under the urgent need of binding to the 
Metropolis colonies which must not be left to 
themselves, our rulers could not extend the neces- 
sary time for completing this work to private en- 
terprise, — it was a colonial expedient. 

We can not even say, as some pretend, that the 
public services are at least fortunate expedients, 
that they will facilitate the expropriation of the 
ruling classes by the proletariat, that the more 
the bourgeois State shall have already accom- 
plished in the way of public properties with its 
various services, so much the easier will be the 
task of the expropriators. 

In the first place it is not true that public 
property results from the private industries an- 
nexed by the bourgeois State. In reverting to 
the present State, the industries do not lose their 
character of capitalist property, that is to say, of 
property from which the working class is ex- 
cluded. From the property of such or such a 
capitalist, they become the property of the entire 
capitalist class. 

In the second place, the extension of public 
services adds a direct increase to the bourgeois 
forces. The more industries the bourgeois State 
concentrates, the more individuals it binds to 
itself and interests in its preservation, if we in- 



INTRODUCTION ~ 53 

dude merely those, who, favored with better pay 
or higher station, must fear any change as a leap 
into the unknown. 

Moreover, the progress of statizatibn indirectly 
fortifies the enemy, by weakening the working 
class, whose movements it paralyzes. 

Who is less free than the State laborer? Against the 
State, no struggle, — I do not say possible to win, but 
possible to engage in. The strike is without doubt 
nothing but a petty war. It can not lead to emancipa- 
tion, because, not touching the principle of wages, it 
can not, even if victorious, do more than ameliorate 
the condition of the wage-workers, in a word, lighten 
their chains. 

But the strike is an excellent field for manoeuvres: 
it creates at once labor solidarity and labor organiza- 
tion. It is a veritable school of war. And from this 
school of war is excluded all that part of the proletariat 
which the State immobilizes in its workshops. With 
the State for employer, the worker is doubly enslaved, 
because, held by his stomach, he is equally held by his 
collar. The closed shop re-enforces itself with the open 
prison, not to take into account that the State, with no 
bankruptcy to fear, in the case of persistent working- 
class demands, has no economic reason for yielding. 

Under these conditions, far from pushing for 
the establishment of new public services, the 
proletariat ought to urge the suppression of the 
public services that exist. So decided the Con- 
gresses of Havre and of Roanne, inscribing in 
the program of the Parti Ouvrier the following 
article: Operation of State factories to be en- 
trusted to the laborers who work in them. 



54 INTRODUCTION 

Let the Bismarcks and the bourgeois republi- 
cans strive on the contrary to multiply what they 
call public services ; they are in their proper role. 
So are the opportunist leaders who, inside the 
socialist movement to exploit it, have never seen 
in it anything but a roundabout way to impose 
themselves upon the bourgeoisie and to get politi- 
cal offices for themselves ; but the Parti Ouvrier, 
that is to say, the class-conscious party of our 
proletariat, will remain faithful to its watch- 
word : 

"The revolution first, that is to say, the political 
and economic expropriation of the capitalist class ; 
the public services afterwards, because, only after 
the fusion of classes into one class, that of the 
producers, will services really public be possible." 

It is quite evident that socialism thus presented 
is clearly distinguished from statism. 

Far from pushing to their development certain 
organs and functions of the State, under its pres- 
ent form, it opposes all transformation of private 
monopolies into State monopolies, all extension 
of public services within the structure of capi- 
talist society ; and even today, we see the Guesd- 
ists, and generally the strict Marxians, remaining 
more or less faithful to this line of conduct. 

Thus for example in France the socialists who 
follow Jules Guesde pronounced formally, in 1909, 



INTRODUCTION 55 

against the redemption of the West State railway. 

But, in the democratic countries at least, the 
socialist parties for the most part have departed 
or tend to depart from their old uncompromising 
attitude. 

They approve the immediate monopolization or 
nationalization of certain industries. They urge 
the seizure of the railroads, the mines, the sugar 
or petroleum refineries. They have given over 
waiting for the revolution to be first accomplished, 
before proceeding to partial extensions of the col- 
lective domain, and thenceforth, one may well in- 
quire of himself whether there can still be a ques- 
tion of speaking of socialism versus the State, — 
whether one ought not to admit on the contrary 
that, little by little, democratic socialism, sliding 
over a dangerous precipice, tends to become a 
State socialism. 

It is this that we propose to examine, inquiring 
in what measure, under the pressure of events, 
the primitive conception of Marxism is being 
modified, or must be modified, on these two 
essential points : 

1. The conquest of political power by the 
proletariat; 

2. The transformation of present society into 
a "great economic co-operative by the socializa- 
tion of the means of production! 9 



Socialism Versus the State 



PART ONE 
The Conquest of Political Power 
The idea of the proletarian conquest of politi- 
cal power presents itself, at its origin, under 
very simple forms. 

This, for example, is how Engels describes at 
opce the goal and the means of the revolution 
which the socialist proletariat is to accomplish : 

Anarchy in social production will be replaced by the 
social and systematic regulation of production, taking 
into account the needs of the community as well as of 
each particular individual ; the mode of capitalist appro- 
priation in which the product enslaves first its producer, 
then also its consumer will give way to a mode of dis- 
tribution solidly founded on the nature of the modern 
means of production: on the one hand, direct social 
appropriation as means of maintaining and developing 
production; on the other hand, direct individual appro- 
priation as means of existence and enjoyment 

The capitalist mode of production, by progressively 
transforming the great majority of the people into 
proletarians, creates the force which, under penalty of 
death, is constrained to accomplish this revolution. By 
progressively transforming the principal means of pro- 
duction into State property, it indicates unmistakably 
the means for accomplishing this revolution. The pro- 
letariat grasps the power of the State, and first of all 
transforms die means of production into State property. 

57 



58 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

By that act, it abolishes itself as proletariat, it abolishes 
all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and at the 
same time also it abolishes the State as State. 

We see that, in Engels' thought, the conquest 

of political power by the proletariat, that is to say, 

the social revolution, requires for its realization 

two preliminary conditions : 

1. The proletarianization of the great mass of 
the population; 

2. Political action by the proletarian class, with 
a view to grasping the power of the State, thus 
becoming the ruling class. 

Of these two conditions, the former does not 
depend on the will of the workers. Without capi- 
talism, no proletariat, and without proletariat, no 
socialism; consequently, the first question which 
arises is to know whether, really, in the most 
advanced countries, the proletariat constitutes, or 
tends to constitute, "the great majority of the 
population." 

It would be going outside the limits of this 
study to justify, by complete statistical evidence, 
our affirmative answer on this point. 

We have done this elsewhere, 1 and, for the rest, 
the great industrial census reports of recent years 
prove that in all the countries where capitalist 
production prevails, the number of wage-workers 

*E. Vandervelde, Le Collectivisme et involution ln- 
dustrlelle. Paris, Bibliotbeque socialists 



THE CONQUEST OP POLITICAL POWER 59 

is increasing at the expense of the independent 
producers. 

Even in a country like France, where the small 
bourgeoisie is still deeply rooted, the official sta- 
tistics of 1906 estimates that, in the active popu- 
lation, 20,000,000 in round numbers, there are no 
more than 8,300,000 proprietors (men and 
women) against 11,700,000 wage- workers, — about 
two proprietors to three laborers,* and the pro- 
portion of the latter tends to increase. 

Much more is this so in Germany, where capi- 
talist evolution is far more accentuated. One 
may judge from the following figures: 

Active Population in Commerce, Manufactures, 
Agriculture 
Employers Wage-workers Proportion 

1882 5,191,000 11,013,000 2.1 

1895 5,474,000 13,438,000 2.5 

1907 5,490,000 19,127,000 3.5 

The number of proprietors, then, remains sta- 
tionary; the number of wage-workers increases 
rapidly, and if the proletarianization of the 
laborers is not equally marked in all countries, 
there are some, even at present, like Saxony, 
Belgium, England, where one of the two pre- 
liminary conditions for the conquest of political 
power is already realized: the great majority of 

'Introduction, par M. Fontaine, aux Conferences faltes ft 
1'Bcole des Hautes Etudes sociales sur la concentration dee 
entreprises industrielles et commerciales. Paris, Alcan, 1918. 



60 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

the people is composed of proletarians, manual 
or intellectual. 

As for the other condition, it is enough to open 
one of the periodical Bulletins of the International 
Socialist Bureau to be convinced that wherever 
capitalism is deeply rooted, there exists hence- 
forth, under the names of social-democracy, 
socialist party, Parti Ouvrier, Labour Party, etc., 
an organization composed mainly of proletarians 
who, following the ideas of Marx and Engels, 
take for their goal the conquest of the State by 
the political action of the working class. 

That this political action may, or must, at a 
given moment, take a revolutionary form, using 
this word in the sense of a resort to force, — most 
socialists, if not all socialists, admit. 

But in practice this does not prevent them from 
being unanimous in the opinion : 

1. That the proletariat should strive to obtain 
universal suffrage applying to all elections, with 
political liberties to make possible its normal 
functioning. 

2. That it should use the ballot, in order to 
penetrate the local, provincial or national as- 
semblies with as many delegates as possible. 

The establishment or the complete extension of 
universal suffrage is evidently no longer more 
than a question of time. It has lately been estab- 



THE CONQUEST OF POLITICAL POWER 61 

lished in Holland and Roumania. It will be to- 
morrow in Belgium, and after what has come 
about in Germany, where the Kaiser himself pro- 
claims the necessity of doing away with the Prus- 
sian electoral system, no one doubts that within 
a few years democracy will triumph in all coun- 
tries of European civilization; in law, if not in 
fact, the "sovereignty of the people" will be com- 
plete; the ancient thrones will no longer exist, 
unless in the form of decorative survivals; we 
shall see a general extension of the system already 
existing — with "conservative guarantees" whose 
importance will diminish — in France, in England, 
in the United States, in the English colonies, 
Australia or South Africa. 

But it is not enough to have the ballot. There 
is also need of the knowledge and power to use 
it. Now it is precisely in the countries where the 
ancient thrones have most completely disappeared, 
where the forms of democracy are most com- 
pletely realized, that the gravest doubts arise as 
to the efficacy of political action and the possi- 
bility for the proletariat of achieving by this 
method the conquest of power. 

Who, in fact, in the countries where purely 
democratic forms exist, so to speak, would ven- 
ture to characterize as false this description of 
modern political evolution given by Ostrogorski 



62 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

in "La Democratic et les Partis Politiques," a 
book admirably fortified with references to 
original sources: 

Going back to the starting point, we see the State in 
the hands of a class, and society, incarnated in this 
ruling class, dominating the individual by overwhelming 
him with all the weight of social, religious and political 
convention. But this triple tyranny yields and declines 
under the pressure of multiple forces of a moral and a 
material order. The enthusiasm of religious faith, 
which discloses itself to itself, the critique of reason 
which asserts itself triumphantly, the new engines of 
industry, — all unite to free the individual from his 
bonds. The autonomous individual is finally proclaimed 
sovereign in the State, and jealous of his new power, 
he seeks to gather directly to himself, as to their source, 
all relations of public order, constitutional as well as 
extra-constitutional. But, singular phenomenon, the 
more he advances the more he seems again to ap- 
proach his point of departure. . 

In fact, we observe that the role of the individual in 
the State is reduced to a very small thing: he exercises 
but the shadow of the sovereignty so pompously and 
hypocritically ascribed to him; he has, in reality, no 
power over the choice of the men who govern in his 
name and by his authority; the Government is a 
monopoly: it is in the hands of a class which, without 
forming a caste, constitutes a group apart in society; 
often it is exercised by one man who leans on this 
class and enjoys the power of an autocrat despite the 
republican forms of the State. This yoke is borne by 
the great mass of society with indifference and pass- 
ively, as in the former time when it was forbidden to 
concern itself with public affairs under penalty of being 
treated as in rebellion. The Government is put at the 
disposal of private interests in their enterprises against 
the general interest; legislation and administration are 



THE CONQUEST OF POLITICAL POWER 63 

bought and sold ; public offices themselves are virtually 
put up at auction. 

Under such conditions, democracy appears as 
an empty form, to which the capitalist class 
adapts itself as readily as to systems of restricted 
suffrage. 

The causes of this situation are only too easy to 
determine: ignorance, credulity, passivity of the 
masses of the people ; corruption practiced by pro- 
fessional politicians; resistance opposed by the 
rigid structure of the traditional parties to the 
birth and development of new political forma- 
tions; demoralizing influence of a cheap press, 
sold out to capitalism; direct action of the 
bourgeois State on the functionaries who depend 
on it, on the children and young people who re- 
ceive its instruction, on the soldiers shut in its 
barracks, on the faithful members of the churches 
which, in the interest of social conservation, it 
subsidizes. 

But all these causes themselves carry us back, 
on final analysis, to a fundamental cause ; this is, 
that in our democracies, even more than in coun- 
tries less developed politically and economically, 
the real power belongs to the kings of finance, of 
industry, of the great landed property, and that, 
for the moment, the beginnings toward the con- 
quest of political power by the proletariat are but 



64 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

a trifle in presence of the achievement of the 
conquest of the public powers by the capitalist 
class. 

How, by What means, has this conquest been 
made and how is it maintained? That is what 
we shall show, drawing our examples, especially 
from the three great democracies of the con- 
temporary world, the United States, England and 
France. 

We shall next inquire whether, in the very 
hypothesis that the proletariat, in spite of the 
means of resistance of the capitalist class, suc- 
ceeded in winning the majority, this victory would 
not be rendered inoperative by the bankruptcy 
of parliamentarism, the present decadence of 
which seems to presage its final burial. 



CHAPTER I 

THE CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF THE PUBLIC POWERS 

In most countries, the establishment of uni- 
versal suffrage has been the result, either of an 
insurrectional movement, as in France, or of a 
proletarian effort characterized by demonstra- 
tions, riots or political strikes, as in Belgium, 
Sweden, Austria and England. 

Suddenly the bourgeoisie, until then solely in- 
vested with the ballot, saw itself despoiled of its 
privilege. A flood of new voters, belonging to 
all classes, submerged the landholding minority, 
and then, in the industrial countries at least, this 
problem confronted the rulers : * How take con- 
trol of universal suffrage? How arrive at this 
result, paradoxical in appearance, that in an elec- 
toral body where the class interest of the majority 
of the citizens is to emancipate themselves from 
capitalist rule, this rule shall be more than ever 
maintained and sometimes even consolidated? 

Certainly, to realize this conquest, the capitalist 

minority has been obliged to reckon with other 

classes, to seek the alliance of the peasants and 

little bourgeois, to give its politics at least the 

65 



66 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

appearance of democracy, to interest in its plans 
the prestige and the political influence of the 
churches, and to increase by all methods the action 
of the "social authorities" upon the masses. But 
all this would not have sufficed if the masses 
themselves were not, in normal times, stubbornly 
conservative, instinctively hostile to all change, 
profoundly respectful of the established order. 

This is what Ibsen has shown in -a gripping 
way in his "Enemy of the People," and this is 
what an English publicist, Mr. Buchan, declared 
with undisguised satisfaction in an article in the 
Fortnightly Review (November, 1913), "Democ- 
racy and Representative Government" : 

Everyman is a pretty sagacious fellow. He is not 
the neurotic being, living in a whirl of elementary 
emotions, that some would have us picture him. He 
is, as a rule, much wiser, much more steadfast than 
his official interpreters. He has no jealousy of the 
State, but on the other hand he has no morbid craving 
for its attentions. He is not a doctrinaire, and he is 
eminently practical. I know him in my capacity as a 
tradesman offering him wares, and I have the utmost 
respect for his good sense. If you present him with 
fantastic schemes of change, he will be apt to reply 
as the Highlander replied to a certain Commission, 
which offered him a holding if he was prepared to keep 
some thirty official commandments— he declined on the 
ground that he could have the whole Kingdom of 
Heaven for keeping ten. At the same time, he is no 
anarchist, he is an obedient soul, and he has a strong 
respect for all reasonable laws. In his heart of hearts, 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 67 

as Lord Hugh Cecil once said, he is "profoundly 
unrevolutionary." 

Of all the "conservative guarantees" that- the 
partisans of the present social system can ask 
against democracy, assuredly none is more effi- 
cacious than this conservatism, this hatred of the 
new, in the masses. Nevertheless, we willingly 
recognize — and but for this we should be indiffer- 
ent to universal suffrage — that from the instant 
when an important fraction of the proletariat be- 
comes conscious of its class interests, the bour- 
geoisie can no longer count exclusively on these 
moral factors, determined as they are by the 
economic conditions of the past. 

So it puts into operation, with increasing 
energy, the various means of influence at its dis- 
posal, whether upon the electors or upon those 
elected by universal suffrage. 

1. Action Upon the Voters 

By the very fact of their wealth the possessing 
classes have at their disposal a series of means of 
influence whose relative importance varies in the 
different countries. Chief among these are : cor- 
ruption, direct or indirect ; pressure exercised on 
voters by employers, landlords, charitable institu- 
tions, or again even by the State ; the permanent 
action of the press; the methodical organization 
of voting masses, under the form of parties, dis- 



68 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

posing of considerable resources furnished by 
the master class. 

(a) Corruption 

"To represent the Belgian people," said the 
newspaper Ulndependance of June 19, 1908, "it 
is not necessary to have either intelligence or 
knowledge ; it is necessary to have money. This 
is stupid, it is revolting, it is shameful, but it is 
so. The facts are there." 

We are tempted to take this statement literally 
when we see that in Belgium, and still more in 
other countries, in spite of the poor forming the 
great majority, almost all the deputies are rich, 
or at least well-to-do. 

Nevertheless, it would be a serious and unde- 
served insult to the poor if we were to attach 
excessive importance to direct corruption. We 
may take it for granted, on the contrary, that 
most people, in most districts, are not influenced 
by gifts or promises of money or food. 

In Belgium, and in France, a few districts can 
be named, but only a few, where notoriously con- 
sciences are for sale. 

In England, where formerly corruption was a 
constant plague of political life, the two traditional 
types of electoral corruption, bribery and treat- 
ing, no longer have, since the extension of the 
franchise, the same development as formerly. 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 69 

There are districts, especially in the "cathedral 
cities," where votes are bought at a tariff ranging 
from one shilling to ten. Often, also, beer is 
offered at a reduced price, on the eve of elections. 
But on the whole, these rudimentary forms of 
corruption no longer play any considerable role. 
They have given way to more disguised processes, 
which agree better with improved manners and 
the vast extension of the electoral body : presents 
are made to cities, gifts to all sorts of religious, 
charitable or sporting institutions ; "smoking con- 
certs," amusements, picnics, dances, "primrose 
league feasts" are organized ; all this costs dearly 
and is within the reach of none but rich men or 
rich parties ; but it is hard to maintain that this is 
corruption properly so-called. 1 

In fact, the buying of votes, or distributions of 
beer and wine are not practiced wholesale and 
have no real influence except in a few rotten 
boroughs, in certain localities where receivers of 
charity are particularly numerous, and in coun- 
tries where, as in the United States, the condi- 
tions of political and social life are more favor- 
able than elsewhere to the development of cor- 
ruption. 

Before the civil war there were in the United 



1 Ostrogorski, La Democratic et les Partis politiques, edi- 
tion 1912, p. 217 and following. 



70 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

States only three or four cities, headed by New 
York, in which money was used to buy votes. 
But after the war, the increasing violence of 
party spirit and the extraordinary development of 
the spoils system made the corruption of voters 
a regular practice. The rapid growth of the 
cities, inevitably accompanied by the development 
of the proletariat and also of a semi-criminal 
class, the arrival of miserable emigrants from 
Europe and the extension of suffrage to the 
Negroes, had, on their sijle, increased the venal 
contingents. The entry upon the political stage 
of the trusts, and, in general, of the great indus- 
trial and financial interests, which sought to select 
for their own convenience the legislative, admin- 
istrative and judicial officers, contributed largely 
to furnish the necessary funds for the purchase 
of votes. 

In many parts of the Union, the electoral customs 
are pure enough, but in many others corruption is 
permanently established. And what is remarkable and 
somewhat surprising is that the cities are not the only 
or even the principal home of corruption. Even in 
the contaminated cities, corruption is not always indi- 
vidual, they Buy the "workers," the petty "leaders," who 
exercise an irresistible influence over- a certain number 
of poor voters and make them vote according to their 
command without paying them regularly the price of 
their votes. The parties often obtain, almost in the 
same manner, the votes of the members of the labor 
unions: the leaders "sell out" to the parties, without 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 71 

the laborers suspecting it. The city electors who sell 
their votes deliberately belong, for the most part, to 
the dregs of the population. The most shameless ven- 
ality is often found in the rural districts, notably in 
New England, inhabited by the descendants of the 
Puritans. Votes are sold there openly as at market; 
they are quoted regularly at fixed prices. And it is 
not merely the wretchedly poor who traffic in their 
votes, but very comfortable farmers, of American stock, 
pious people who go to church every Sunday. In some 
rural districts, a quarter or a third of the electors sell 
their votes. (Ostrogorski.) 

Note, however, that in recent years things have 
improved, due to the electoral reform assuring 
secret voting, known as the Australian Ballot. 

The public market for votes held in New York 
and other large cities has disappeared. Good 
order prevails at elections. In certain places, the 
parties agree to abstain from corrupt practices. 
(b) Coercion 

There is perhaps no country where, on the day 
after an electoral battle, the vanquished parties do 
not attribute their defeat to acts of coercion of 
which the adversary is guilty. 

In Belgium, for example, the parliamentary 
annals are full of such accusations. 

Whether it is a question of municipal or of 
legislative elections, liberals and catholics 
mutually accuse one another of having, by illicit 
means, influenced the votes of their laborers, their 
tenants, or again of unfortunates receiving public 



72 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

or private charity, or finally of employes and 
functionaries dependent on them. 

Such doings, certainly, can have no great effect 
in the cities, but it is otherwise in certain indus- 
trial neighborhoods where a big employer makes 
the laws, and especially in the rural districts. 

Nothing is more sadly instructive on this sub- 
ject than the debate that occurred in the Belgian 
Chamber in July, 1912, on the validity of the elec- 
tions in the district of Nivelles. A liberal deputy, 
M. Jourez, had described in these impressive 
terms what he called "landlord pressure" : 

In this sort of fraud, there is no outlay on the part 
of the corrupter. It is enough, for him who would 
dictate how men shall vote, to have or even merely to 
be administering landed property, and finally, to add 
to these rare gifts a little audacity. 

This system of fraud, moreover, is practiced in an 
interesting little world of which a few words need to 
be said. It is not a rich world, often poor, still 
attached to its native soil, resisting the seduction of 
the city octopus. Like his father and often his grand- 
father, the little cultivator lives on his land, which 
does not belong to him, but which he considers some- 
what as if it did. Never or very rarely does he hear 
of the real master, that is of the proprietor, whom he 
knows slightly if at all. He thinks of him only at the 
feast of Saint Andre, when leases are signed. If he 
attends to his business, this date will trouble him little. 
But the time that the master of the land reveals him- 
self (understand of course that this master is of the 
clerical party) is on election day. This day has often 
been a tragical one for people bound to the land, for 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 73 

it is then that the proprietor or his agent looms up 
before the little tenant and tells him : "Today you have 
to choose between your interests and what your con- 
science dictates, you are going to vote as I think best 
and as I wish, or I will take your land away. You will 
have to leave this land on which you were reared, where 
your forefathers have lived." 

And then, this unfortunate who thinks of his wife 
and of his children whom he must feed, while perhaps 
professing a political opinion contrary to that of his 
landlord, bows before this will stronger than his. He 
hides deep down in his heart his feelings of revolt. He 
marches 1 But if his conscience is stronger than his 
interests, it resumes its rights to liberty, and then, 
because he refuses to be enslaved, and does not march, 
they crush him. (Annates parlementaires, 1912, p. 185.) 

These facts were scarcely contested by the 
opponents of M. Jourez. They merely replied 
that the liberals acted in the same way, that they 
bought land to lease it to the electors who voted 
right, and that on the whole they were as little 
qualified as possible to pose as defenders of the 
liberty of the weak. 

We do not propose to inquire as to the extent 
of the truth in these reciprocal accusations. In 
such matters, legal proof is generally difficult to 
find, and, moreover, acts of direct and punishable 
coercion are, on the whole, a very small thing 
compared with the indirect and non-punishable 
pressure exercised in all countries by the heads 
of industries, the landlords, the superintendents 
of charity bureaux, the members of charitable 



74 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

societies, and the high officials, over the people 
who become dependent on them. 

Consider, indeed, the enormous percentage rep- 
resented in the electoral body by laborers who 
would have trouble, in case of dismissal, to find 
another job, by tenant farmers who are afraid 
of losing their holdings when their leases expire, 
or who have no written lease, by unfortunates 
who find themselves in the power of the overseers 
of the poor or of the visitors from the Catholic 
charitable societies, and by government employes 
and officials whose advancement is subject to the 
good pleasure of their superiors. Perhaps this 
does not go to the point of forbidding them to 
vote as they like, — something which the secret 
ballot may render difficult, if not impossible, — 
but they are forbidden to go into politics, or to 
receive certain newspapers, or, if they have a little 
tavern, to put rooms at the disposal of propa- 
gandists of the party they might prefer ; and alto- 
gether, it is possible thus to crush in the egg — 
wherever these influences are not counteracted — 
any movement which might tend to emancipate 
the workers. 

What this dependence of the poor may be, espe- 
cially in rural districts where the clergy and the 
landed proprietors work together, may be judged 
by this extract from a pamphlet written by a 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 75 

Belgian Catholic, in the form of an open letter 
to Mgr. Mercier, cardinal archbishop of Malines : 

When oppression results from the fraternal accord 
of the ecclesiastical authority with the powers of gold, 
with the armies of the land and of the feudal past, that 
is the regime of Pharisaism. 

In no part of Belgium has this lamentable league of 
the castle and the altar produced more disastrous con- 
sequences than in the province of Namur, where the 
Administration is resolutely theocratic. Here it is 
systematically based on servitude. Here the money- 
lenders of the Powers dictate their sovereign wills to 
their beneficiaries, who are but persons interposed, the 
pensioners of the system. Everything, public or private, 
that attempt a show of resistance, is boycotted and 
despoiled administratively of its most sacred rights: it 
is outlawed. Pitiless demands are made on the small 
and the humble, by the same title and by the same 
means of pressure, with the practice of religion, homage 
to the priest, and low servilities, homage to the lord of 
the manor. Nowhere is the poor more despised and the 
worker less honored. 1 

All who know our country districts will recog- 
nize the truth of this picture. 

(c) The Press 

"In a democracy," said Montesquieu, "institu- 
tions are worth no more than the public opinion 
that controls them." 

Now public opinion is, in great part, made by 
the press, and except in a few countries where a 
powerful labor organization exists, the press is 

*Stephane, Le Projet Poullet, p. 24. Bruxelles, Lebtgue, 
1913. 



76 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

almost wholly in the hands of the capitalist class. 

Formerly, a newspaper was an enterprise essen- 
tially political. Certain men associated themselves 
for the defense of an idea or for the conquest 
of power. They founded a daily, an instrument 
of propaganda or combat. They did not seek to 
make profits from the sale of their sheet. Jour- 
nalism had nothing in common with business. 

Within some thirty years, all has changed. No 
doubt, there are always some political papers, de- 
pending more or less on party organizations, but 
more and more we see the development in all 
countries of a new press, cheap and widely cir- 
culated. It declares itself "independent," but it 
is really the servant of the business men who 
direct it, own it or subsidize it. 

Here again we observe, as far as power is con- 
cerned, an apparent democratization of the organs 
of opinion, and an actual seizure of these by the 
plutocracy. 

This evolution was long ago accomplished in 
the United States. It has even provoked such 
scandals that the influence of the press tends to 
decrease, and the intellectual leadership has 
passed, for the "better element," to the magazines 
and the weekly and monthly reviews. 

It would certainly be exaggerating to claim 
that the situation was as bad in England, where, 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 77 

however, within the last few years most of the 
newspapers have been bought by financiers or 
syndicates of wealthy men, 1 but it is perhaps in 
France that the abuses are most flagrant, and the 
organization of the press most detestable. De- 
laisi, in "La Democratic et les Financiers," * and 
with more precision and exactness Andre Mori- 
zet, in a pamphlet published in 1912, "Why We 
Need a Powerful Press," have clearly shown in 
fact, that lacking a maximum sale, as in the case 
with almost all radical sheets, or by reason of 
expenses so high that no sale, however, enormous, 
could cover them, as is the case with the great 
newspapers — most French journals are obliged, 
in order to live, to count on their "publicity," to 
accept secret funds, to assist in floating the securi- 
ties of the big banks, not to speak of unclean 
messes such as receiving subsidies for undertak- 
ing private campaigns, masked under a pretext 
of public utility or patriotism, or better still to 
maintain a silence as of the tomb on questions 
that an honest press ought to raise. 

It is easy to imagine what, under these condi- 
tions, must be the influence upon universal suf- 
frage of a press which, to quote the words of 
Jaures on the N'Goko Sanga scandal, "through 

1 Ostrogorski, edition of 1912, p. 182. 
• Page 145 and following. 



78 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

the organs of all parties strikes the same note at 
the same hour, discredits or exalts the same enter- 
prises, and pushes all opinions like a flock of 
sheep along the same road/' 

This influence, which is still enormous, would 
be limitless, if the public had not learned to mis- 
trust the tendency campaigns of the "big papers," 
and if, despite the insufficiency of their circula- 
tion, the labor and socialist papers were not 
sometimes in a position to check them. It should 
be added that, in many countries, and notably in 
France, the press of the smaller cities, less con- 
taminated, possesses a political influence greater, 
perhaps, than the press of the capital. 

(d) The Methodical Organisation of 
the Voting Masses 
Aside from the people who are bought, in- 
timidated or deceived, there are others who are 
enrolled in the traditional parties, and who conse- 
quently remain faithful to them, through habit, 
through conservatism, through fear also that the 
creation of new parties might help their oppo- 
nents. This in part explains, for example, the 
survival in the United States of two parties, two 
"machines," which differ very little in their pro- 
grams, and which are both made up of elements 
absolutely heterogeneous. 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 79 

The same situation, under other forms, exists 
in France, where the political labels — republican, 
radical, radical-socialist, independent socialist — 
have little meaning. 

It is the same, although to a less degree, in 
England, where Ostrogorski characterizes in 
these terms the degeneracy of the two great 

Scarcely distinguishable from each other by their 
principles and by their methods, the parties contend, 
first and last, for power. Their leaders, some of whom 
are men of great talent and executive ability, can not 
nevertheless act like statesmen, even if they have it in 
them; they have not and can not have a definite 
harmony of ideas, nor a determined and consecutive 
policy. Their supreme concern is momentary party 
advantage. Their programs are constructed above all 
for the needs of the war that the parties wage on each 
other ; apart from the problems really arising from the 
national life, others are introduced in order to play 
with them, head or tail. The current phrase "the party 
game" is in fact a key to the predominant character of 
their combats. Not that the leaders and their partisans, 
the great majority at least, lack convictions and sin- 
cerity, but the eager pursuit of party success disguises 
them so well that often it is impossible to distinguish 
whether this success is a means or an end. 

Under these conditions, it is inevitable that to 
win success, the parties, reduced in a way to the 
status of machines, substitute for the propaganda 
of ideas the processes of advertising which are 
used in the business world. But these advertising 
processes come high. It is necessary to put up. 



80 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

on all the walls of the city or the country districts, 
innumerable posters, to print and carry to the 
homes professions of political faith, circulars, 
portraits, biographies, to have a newspaper to 
defend their ideas and insult their adversaries, to 
hold meetings, rent halls, support a whole army 
of ward workers, bill posters, and electoral 
agents. 

Delaisi 1 estimates the average expense of an 
election in France at 50,000 francs. In England 
and the United States it costs more, since, inde- 
pendently of election expenses properly so called, 
campaign advertising plays a part much more 
considerable and ever increasing. For some time, 
Ostrogorski tells us, the campaign period in Eng- 
land has been marked by a veritable poster de- 
bauch. It is a sort of steeplechase, between the 
rival candidates, as to who shall cover and recover 
the most walls with posters. The more numerous 
a candidate's posters, the greater is the impression 
he produces upon the crowd. If, on the contrary, 
a candidate wearies of the game, it must be sup- 
posed that he has lost confidence in his cause, or, 
which is more serious, that he has exhausted his 
bank roll. And naturally, these posters are much 
less for instructing and convincing the voters than 

1 La Democratic et leg Financiers, 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 81 

to stun them, to hypnotize them, to give them the 
illusion of power and superior numbers. 

In the United States, as every one knows, it is 
worse still. 

To manifest enthusiasm, or to provoke it, the 
"workers" of the different parties resort to an 
assortment of methods which they themselves 
designate under the name of "the Chinese busi- 
ness": mass meetings, with musical interludes, 
fireworks, torchlight processions, cavalcades with 
horses and bicycles, aquatic parades with hun- 
dreds of vessels ranged in file, and processions 
where sometimes more than 100,000 men march 
past some high personage of the party, headed 
by the candidates themselves, with music, flags 
and banners. 

It goes without saying that campaign advertis- 
ing, when it reaches such proportions, is possible 
only for the parties supported by very rich people. 
And naturally, these subsidize only parties from 
which they have something to expect for the 
defense of their class interests or even their 
private interests. 

The role played in France by the great com- 
mittees of Paris is well known, for example the 
famous "Comite Mascuraud"; or again in Eng- 
land, the brewers, who are, with the great landed 
proprietors, the principal support of the Conserv- 



82 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

ative party, while the newly-rich, aspiring to 
nobility, are the most generous contributors to 
the funds of the Liberal party. 

In the United States, the dependence of the 
politicians on capitalism is still more flagrant. 

Gifts from private persons, Ostrogorski 1 tells us, 
furnish a very considerable part of the campaign funds. 
In most cases, this is pure speculation, an investment 
of money which, later on, may return much in the way 
of favors. The representatives of the big industrial or 
financial interests, the corporations or the individual 
capitalists, by a heavy contribution to the campaign 
funds, obtain a sort of mortgage on future administra- 
tion or legislation. The sums given by corporations, 
secretly be it understood, for the presidential campaigns 
of 1896-1904, furnished an enormous corruption fund 
which was duly expended. It is estimated that in 1896 
the national Republican chairman had at his disposal a 
war chest of $7,000,000; in 1900, $3,500,000; in 1904, 
$3,000,000. 

The revelations made after the presidential 
campaign of 1904 excited public opinion against 
contributions from corporations. Laws were 
enacted. The scandal itself was a healthy sign. 
The last presidential campaigns were conducted 
more scrupulously. But the interests at stake are 
too considerable for the ruling classes to omit 
employing, more or less openly, the means of 
action at their disposal for influencing voters. 

To recapitulate, the possessing minorities have 
powerful methods, legal or illegal, to neutralize 

1 Page 473. 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 83 

or turn in their favor the "force of numbers." 
They have on their side tradition, the prestige of 
"social authorities," experience in affairs, the 
superiority of knowing how. They hold the poor 
through the church, through the school, through 
the charitable societies, by a thousand ties of 
interest or fear. They can boycott the merchants 
who think evil, discharge the laborers who make 
a show of independence, evict the tenants .who 
dare oppose them. They have an all-powerful 
press. They dominate the old parties, which 
need their money to live on. And, under these 
conditions, wherever these methods of control are 
not checked by powerful labor organizations, they 
preserve, under the system of universal suffrage, 
almost the same preponderance as under the 
system of restricted suffrage. 

But, in proportion as their traditional influence 
decreases, they are obliged to resort to cruder 
or more dishonest methods to maintain their 
dominance. 

On the one hand, corruption and coercion, 
direct, and especially indirect, play a role more 
or less important; on the other hand certain 
bourgeois parties, although worn out, decom- 
posed and made up of heterogeneous elements, 
make- up for their lack of a program by their 
art in opportunism and in the machinery of or- 



84 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

ganization. Speaking of England, where, how- 
ever, the political manners still pass as relatively 
good, Ostrogorski sketches this picture, by no 
means flattering, of the political contests: 

All the party activity culminates in a campaign less 
for persuading than for hypnotizing the voters; it is 
nothing but a continuous appeal to the emotions. All 
the methods employed are a general conspiracy against 
the credulity of the voters; the parties compete in 
devices to surprise their innocence with falsehoods that 
would choke a trooper, with slanderous insinuations in 
words and pictures, with appeals to covetousness or 
fear, or by the vulgar display of corruption pure and 
simple. The captured voters are led to the polls like 
cattle, and victory is awarded not to the parties with the 
highest principles and the most beneficent laws to 
their credit, but to those with the most automobiles 
at their disposal. 

The author declares, it is true, that the entrance 
on the field of the Labour Party has, within the 
limits of its action, improved these customs. But 
this action has as yet only a limited reach, and 
the fact remains that, in the present state of 
things, in spite of universal suffrage, in spite of 
the "sovereignty of the people," the real power 
in the electoral body belongs generally to the 
rich. 

Moreover, even should this power escape them, 
they can re-conquer it by acting, no longer upon 
the electors, but upon the elected. 



capitalist conquest of public powers 85 

2. Action Upon Those Elected 

Thanks to the power of control of the possess- 
ing classes over the electors, the three great 
democracies of the western world are governed 
by bourgeois parties. 

But these parties call themselves radicals or 
democrats. They are obliged to reckon with the 
working class. It is sometimes even impossible 
for them to form a parliamentary majority with- 
out the representatives of the proletariat. To 
survive, they are obliged to put through certain 
reforms, to repress certain abuses, to attack cer- 
tain class privileges, and no doubt they would 
do far more toward equalizing conditions if, to 
the influences that capitalism exercises upon the 
voters, there were not added the influences that 
it operates upon those elected and upon the 
governments. 

This action, naturally, is not so apparent. It 
can not be really effective without disguising it- 
self. Nevertheless, its results can be guessed. It 
is discovered, by studying the relations which 
exist between politics and industry or finance. It 
is seen, too often, brought into the light of day 
by scandalous affairs, which expose the cynicism 
of the capitalists and tarnish the reputation of the 
politician. 



86 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

Moreover, to penetrate this underworld of 
democratic politics, we have guides. Here again, 
Ostrogorski's book "La Democratic et les Partis 
politiques" is still the principal source of informa- 
tion. But it can be supplemented to advantage 
by these two other books, one of which we have 
already quoted: Delaisi, "f-a Democratic et les 
Financiers," for France, and for England: Bel- 
lock and Chesterton, "The Party System." 
a. United States 

After having shown how in the United States 
the bourgeois parties, dominated by the money 
interests, are almost always directed by what is 
called the "machine," a hierarchy with mercenary 
foundations, of professional politicians headed by 
a "boss," — Ostrogorski describes in these terms 
the action of the machines — State machines or 
municipal machines — upon those elected by uni- 
versal suffrage: 

In every legislative assembly, the machine "owns" a 
certain number of members whose election expenses it 
has paid. . . . Some legislators sell themselves. 
Others, and these are more numerous, honest people 
from country districts, yield through weakness. 

It goes without saying that most of the time 
the "boss" and other "wire pullers" and poli- 
ticians are themselves merely instruments in the 
hands of the great railroad companies and other 
financial or industrial corporations, 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 87 

During the last few years especially, the cor- 
rupted politicians who direct the political ma- 
chines have been, in a way, subordinated, the 
retail business of corruption, without being sup- 
pressed, now plays only a secondary role; above 
the extra-constitutional government, which holds 
the parliamentary or municipal assemblies under 
its sway, stand no longer the boss or the political 
ring, but the magnates of high finance and big 
business. The capitalist conquest of the public 
powers is complete, as may be judged from this 
summary, made by Ostrogorski, of the situation 
in the two chambers of congress, in the state 
legislatures and in the municipal assemblies. 

1. Congress. In the Senate, the great as- 
sembly of the States, there is no public spirit. 
It is rather a vast national exchange, with sev- 
eral "corners," for steel, cotton, lumber, oil, etc., 
with astute managers and adroit solicitors who 
have charge of all these private interests, pre- 
occupied with obtaining certain laws or with 
preventing their enactment. Business is their 
object and business methods are their methods: 
the legislative state is conducted on the principle 
"do ut des" (I give that you may give), each 
interest exacting its price for its support and 
obstructing the vote until it receives satisfaction. 

The interests are not represented so amply 



88 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

in the House as in the Senate; there are perhaps 
not more than a third of the members who repre- 
sent private "interests" ; but the others are looked 
after by means of the party discipline which 
makes them vote with their eyes shut. 

2. State Legislatures. In the states dominated 
by the machine, and these are precisely the richest 
and the most advanced in capitalist concentration, 
the majority of the members of the legislature 
are merely the damned souls of the "boss," and 
at his demand they docilely grant to the rich 
industrial or financial companies all sorts of 
franchises. 

3. Municipalities. The municipal councils are 
as a rule like the legislatures: filled with men 
elected by the corporation, or with "boodle alder- 
men," directly bought by them, they engage in 
the same exploits, and with the same disastrous 
results for the public fortune. 

What corruption leaves undone, thoughtless- 
ness and habits of waste accomplish. Affecting 
nearly half of the American population and its 
most important interests, the administration of 
cities furnishes the specatacle of the most com- 
plete fisaco of selective government in the United 
States. It would, however, be unjust not to point 
out that in recent years an effort has been made 
to improve the ^ministration of the cities, and, 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 89 

in a general way, to give deliberative assemblies 
a more healthful atmosphere. 

In the course of the presidential campaign of 
1912, President Wilson made certain interesting 
statements on this subject: 

The people of the United States have made up their 
minds to do a healthy thing for both politics and big 
business. . . . They are going to open doors; they 
are going to let up blinds; they are going to drag sick 
things into the open air and into the light of the sun. 
They are going to organize a great hunt, and smoke 
certain animals out of their burrows. They are going 
to unearth the beast in the jungle in which when they 
hunted they were caught by the beast instead of catching 
him. They have determined, therefore, to take an axe 
and raze the jungle, and then see where the beast will 
find cover. . . .* 

No doubt, those are the words of a candidate, 
to which it would be wrong to attach too much 
importance. Nevertheless the tendency exists. 
Impartial observers — I have in mind for example 
President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard Uni- 
versity 2 — call attention to it and hold that the 
Europeans may exaggerate the organic disorders 
of American legislative bodies. 

But on the other hand they do not and cannot 
fail to recognize that at the present time the 



1 Woodrow Wilson. The New Freedom. New York, Double- 
day, Page ft Co., 1918, p. 116. 

* Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government, p. 139, 
Few York, Longmans, Green ft Co., 1913, 



90 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

great corporations exercise a formidable influence 
over the representative bodies, by the innumerable 
berths they can offer the relatives and friends 
of the "boss" and of the politicians dependent on 
him. 

(b) England 

In a country like England which has political 
traditions and well-established social divisions, 
the action which the money power can exercise 
upon the legislative and governmental personnel 
is not so direct, not so brutal, and on the other 
hand, not so necessary. 

The Conservative party, when it is not in the 
majority, has at its disposal a powerful minority, 
singularly keen to defend its class interests. The 
Liberal party would be condemned to impotence, 
if the rich men who form its right wing refused 
their support. And in these two great bourgeois 
parties, the organization is so oligarchic that 
the American methods for operating on public 
opinion have not the same reasons for existence. 

But what they do not do, dare not do, could 
not do directly, they do, to a certain extent, 
indirectly. 

There seems to be no doubt, in fact, that, espe- 
cially in the Liberal party, many members of 
parliament find themselves more or less depend- 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 91 

ent upon the big capitalists who provide the 
party funds. 

Through what mechanism? 

To understand this, one should-^allowing for 
evident exaggerations — read the curious little 
book by Bellock and Chesterton. 1 

To believe our two authors — and Ostrogorski 
in his large work arrives at practically the same 
conclusions — modern England is not governed, 
as would appear, by the House of Commons, but 
by a group, or rather two groups, of directors — 
the "front benches" — who organize the govern- 
ment, under the supreme authority of the "lead- 
ers,'" assisted by their "whips." 

To whom has passed (they ask) the power of the 
House of Commons? To a political committee for 
which there is no official name (since it acts in secret), 
but which may be called the Front Benches. This 
committee is not named by vote, by acclamation, or even 
by tacit consent. Its members do not owe their posi- 
tion to the will of the House nor to the will of the 
nation. It is chosen by a process of co-optation, and, 
for the most part, among the rich politicians and their 
creatures. It forms, in reality, a single body, and when 
its interests or its power are at stake, acts like a single 
man. 

Assuredly, the "front benches" do not wield 

absolute power. They must take account of the 

aspirations of the masses, of the wishes of their 

party, of the opinions of the "rank and file" of 

1 The Party System. London, 1910. 



92 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

their colleagues. But over these last at least the 
leaders exercise, through the intermediary of the 
whips, a considerable influence, not always rest- 
ing solely on moral factors. 

Elections, in fact, cost dear, and the local 
organizations of the parties are generally poor. 
To hold a seat in the House involves very heavy 
expenses, even today when members receive a 
salary. 

Under these conditions, labor members aside, 
there are but three types of men who can nor- 
mally enter the House of Commons: first, the 
rich men of a certain locality, who can indemnify 
the local organizations; second, rich men from 
outside, who can, by reason of the liberality ex- 
pected from them, get themselves accepted by 
the Central Committee of the party ; lastly, people 
relatively poor, who consent to be more or less 
the servants of the party and receive subsidies 
to a greater or less extent from the central treas- 
ury to defray their election expenses. 

Now, the secret funds which keep this chest 
filled are at the complete disposal of the leaders, 
thus providing, in some sort, a material basis for 
their authority. These funds, which they some- 
times try to increase by speculations more or 
less licit, come, for the most part, from the rich 
members of the party. But it is rarely that these 



capitalist Conquest of public powers 93 

donors are moved, or solely moved, by enthusiasm 
for the good cause. They are more or less inter- 
ested in assuring to themselves recognition from 
the supreme organizations of the party. 

The money given is for them an investment. 
Some expect "safe seats" in the House, others 
honorific titles: that of knight, baron or even 
peer. The others, finally, like the great brewers 
who energetically support the Conservative party, 
count on the support of their political co-religion- 
ists, for the defense of their interests. 

In what measure do these pecuniary interven- 
tions act upon those elected? This is rather hard 
to say, and certainly nothing happens in England 
that resembles, even remotely, the scandalous 
scenes sometimes enacted in certain legislatures 
of the United States. But the least to be said is 
that, the Conservative party being by definition 
the party of the status quo, the dependence of 
the Liberal party on a few rich men makes it 
timorous, retards its march on the path to demo- 
cratic or social reforms, and, on the whole, Ostro- 
gorski seems to pass an equitable judgment on 
English politics when he writes: 

While making the greatest possible allowance for 
reservations and extensions, ... we arrive at the 
conclusion that the Government of England, taken as 
it is with conflicting social and plutocratic influences, 
with its system of organized parties, with the supremacy 



94 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

of executive power and the crushing bureaucracy, is 
not a government truly popular. It is a democracy 
directed by an oligarchy. 

(c) France 

Of all the great countries of Europe, France 
is undeniably the one whose institutions approach 
nearest to the democratic ideal. 

All Frenchmen past the age of twenty-one are 
voters. The deputies, elected by a majority of 
the votes, levy taxes, make laws, control the acts 
of the Government, and can, by a vote of censure, 
overthrow it. The Senate, that great council of 
the communes of France, has itself an origin 
more or less democratic. The President of the 
Republic is a temporary constitutional sovereign, 
who reigns for seven years, but does not govern. 

It seems under these conditions that nowhere 
should popular sovereignty be so effective. From 
the social viewpoint however, there are few as- 
semblies so conservative as this Parliament of 
the Third Republic, which will have been the 
last in Europe to establish, under pressure of 
war, the progressive income tax. 

Sir Charles Dilke, speaking one day of I know 
not what politician of his country, whom he re- 
proached with being systematically hostile to 
every reform measure, said to me, — "He is as 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 95 

conservative as a French radical." And in fact 
many of the deputies who sit in the Palais- 
Bourbon on the benches of the Left — whether 
they are called socialists, radical-socialists, radi- 
cals, democrats or progressives — have this in 
common, that their politics is essentially respect- 
ful toward everything that touches income, indi- 
vidual property, or capitalist monopolies. 

This conservatism of the self-styled radical 
parties is due, of course, in great part, to the 
fact that France is an agricultural country, that a 
majority of the voters are proprietors, that the 
Revolution, by dividing the land, interested mil- 
lions of peasants in the maintenance of the order 
which it estalbished. 

But these peasants, despite their numerical and 
social importance, are not the real masters of 
France. 

In this country, where the greater capitalism is 
less developed than, for example, in England or 
Germany, its influence over the government is 
perhaps greater than anywhere else, because it 
meets less opposition. 

The Bank of France, the Credit Fonder (land 
bank), the railroad companies, the captains of 
industry are not only economic powers, but poli- 
tical powers, which dominate the apparent mas- 
ters of the democracy. 



96 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

It is what Lamartine already foresaw in 1838 
when he delivered his admirable address in the 
Chamber of Deputies, against the grant of rail- 
ways to private companies. 

There is a sentiment that has always powerfully 
moved me, in reading history or in observing events; 
it is horror of corporations, it is the incompatibility of 
sincere, progressive liberty with the existence of corpo- 
rations in a State or in a civilization. What will it be, 
great God! when, according to your imprudent system 
you shall have established into collective interests and 
into industrial and financial corporations the innu- 
merable stockholders of the five or six billions that the 
organization of the railroads will concentrate in the 
hands of its companies. 

Change the tariffs then? But how will you change 
them? By the law. But who will vote the law? Stock- 
holders in the majority. Take over the lines ! But who 
will vote on this? Stockholders again. Then establish 
rival lines. But who will vote for these lines? Stock- 
holders in the majority. Improve, complete, change 
the systems back of your lines! But who will vote on 
these improvements and extensions, demanded perhaps 
by the general interest of the country? Stockholders 
again. That is to say that you are mortgaging forever, 
at a single word, all competition, the future product, 
the future improvements of your entire territory. 
Vainly will the people demand, complain, accuse the 
authorities, they will and you will be, for quarter- 
centuries or half-centuries, in the power of the com- 
panies. To them you will subject the interests of the 
people and the general interests. 

Never, perhaps, has social prophecy been so 
completely realized ; and, naturally, what Lamar- 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 97 

tine said of the railroad companies applies, 
mutatis mutandis, to the other great corporations 
that dominate the Republic. 

We have seen that, to assure this administra- 
tion, the capitalists act upon the electoral body, 
either having themselves elected when they can, 
or subsidizing, without much regard for appear- 
ances, the committees of politicians that offer 
them guarantees. 

But furthermore they act directly on the 
deputies and the Government. 

In Delaisi * will be found in detail, with names 
to confirm it, a statement of the means employed 
to have, in every group, liegemen who put their 
influence at the service of the great capitalist 
interests. 

Observe, in the first place, apart from the 
deputies of business properly so called, who were 
in finance or industry before they were in politics, 
a certain number of politicians who have been 
bound to the interests by admitting them to one 
or to several boards of directors. 

These business deputies of both groups are 
not numerous ; including the senators, they are a 
hundred, at most, in the two Chambers. But 
they have a considerable influence over their col- 



1 La Dftmocratie et les Financiers, d. 76 et 



98 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

leagues in the parliament. It is easy for them to 
make places in the offices of their companies for 
the sons, brothers, nephews or cousins of their 
poorer colleagues. They thus make for them- 
selves in all parties a clientele of friends ready 
to pay with their votes and to carry them into 
power when the moment arrives. 

Next come the deputies or senators who are 
corporation lawyers. Every industrial or finan- 
cial corporation must have close at hand a 
General Counsel, who gives it advice, indicates 
methods of not infringing the law, when delicate 
matters are concerned, such as the formation of 
combines, trusts, mergers and other attempts at 
monopoly, and who, when necessary, plead for 
them in the courts. These functions are very 
well paid. There is usually a fixed salary, plus 
a high fee for each case in court. So these 
positions are much sought after. 

Now, for the last fifteen years, the great indus- 
trial and financial corporations have been taking 
their attorneys preferably from among the mem- 
bers of parliament. It is of course understood 
that they do not employ the deputy or the senator, 
but the attorney, and if when the case comes up, 
this attorney, depuy or senator, adds to the weight 
of his legal talent that of his influence with the 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 99 

government, that is a simple coincidence which 
only evil minds will criticise. 

Corporation lawyers and capitalists, moreover, 
form only a small part of the total number of 
representatives. But they are generally leaders. 
Their experience or their talent adapt them for 
different tasks. In executing these, they demon- 
strate their capacity to fill cabinet positions, and 
after a few tests, if nothing happens to compro- 
mise or discredit them, they attain to power. 

Is it surprising, in view of this, that the rulers 
of the Republic, incapable of survivihg if they 
had the Bank and the press against them, escape 
from the control of the people and submit to 
control by the men of affairs ? 

Anatole France once asked a minister the 
causes of governmental powerlessness in the mat- 
ter of reforms. 

What would you have us do? — was the reply — 
the minister of finance is in the Credit Lyonnais, 
the minister of marine is in the Creusot company, 
the minister of war is in the "Commissions," etc. 

We arrive on the whole at the conclusion that 
everywhere, in modern democracies, the real sov- 
ereignty belongs not to the people, but to parties 
dominated by the money power. 

To remedy this situation, the dangers of which 



100 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

he has pointed out with unusual force, Ostro- 
gorski proposes certain purely political solutions, 
as uncertain as they are insufficient. 

Is not the solution, he says, of the problem raised by 
parties plainly indicated? Does it not consist in elim- 
inating from our practice the use of rigid parties, 
permanent parties having power for its end, and in 
restoring arid reserving to the party its essential char- 
acter of a group of citizens, especially formed in view 
of a definite political demand? 

We are as far as possible from this opinion. 
True, we may find that party concerns play far 
too considerable a role in our societies ; it may be 
useful, as a counterpoise to this exclusive influ- 
ence, to organize groups of citizens formed with 
a view to one definite demand. But how can one 
imagine that the creation of leagues of this kind 
would suffice to put an end to the reign of 
plutocracy, under the mask of party govern- 
ments? The fact that permits capitalism to 
dominate the democracies, as well as the old 
governments, is that "wealth is power." 

The only means to check it, and as a final result 
to expropriate it politically, is to oppose to its 
power, to oppose to the old parties which are 
merely its political expression, the power of the 
proletariat organized as a class party. But, will 
this power itself be sufficient? And supposing it 



CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 101 

to be sufficient, is it not to be feared that the con- 
quest of political power may be vain and im- 
potent, by reason of the bankruptcy of parlia- 
mentarism? It is this that we shall now examine. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BANKRUPTCY OF PARLIAMENTARISM 

Under this title, a few years ago, innumerable 
articles were published, and even those that at- 
tempted to defend the parliamentary system 
recognized that it is passing through a crisis, and 
ask themselves whether it will survive the circum- 
stances which gave it birth. 

In February, 1912, at the moment when the 
C. G. T. in France was particularly aggressive, 
and when the gifeat transport workers' strikes 
had just marked the advent of new social forces 
in England, the Revue Bleue, of Paris, questioned 
a certain number of public men, — Paul De- 
schanel, Maxime Kowalewsky, Virgile Rossel, 
deputy of the Swiss National Council, and Emile 
Vandervelde — on the probable issue of the con- 
flict, in several countries, between syndicalism 
and parliamentarism. 

We wish to reprint here the critical part of our 
reply, on the subject of parliamentary govern- 
ment. To develop it would be useless. It deals 
with facts that every one can observe daily. 
102 



THE BANKRUPTCY OF PARLIAMENTARISM 103 

"What is this parliamentary government, ar- 
rived at the fullness of its developments? 

"It is the system of government which has as 
its center of gravity an elected assembly the 
majority of which makes the laws, votes the 
budgets, decides — and this is essential — the fate 
of the ministers, intervenes, through them, in 
nominations for administrative and judicial 
offices, — which possesses, in a word, all the sub- 
stance of power, apart from preserving, as forms, 
certain traditional institutions, reduced to a deco- 
rative status. 

"This sovereign assembly, whether divided into 
two Chambers or not, is composed of some hun- 
dreds of men, who for the most part owe their 
election to, their local influence, their fortune, 
their popularity on good or bad grounds, rather 
than to their knowledge or political capacity, — all 
of which does not prevent them from being 
omnipotent and thus considered omniscient. 
Having to pronounce on all questions, they are 
presumed to know them all. And in fact, com- 
petent or incompetent, they do pronounce on 
them, whether they have a personal opinion more 
or less ripe, or whether they obey the order of 
certain leaders. 

"For such a system to function, without result- 
ing in bungling and impotence, it requires an 



104 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

enlightened electorate, elected representatives 
having, with a healthy moral sense, experience in 
large affairs, an executive stabilized by party dis- 
cipline, legislative problems not too numerous, — 
in short, a combination of conditions such as 
were found united, for the greater profit, by the 
way, of bourgeois egoism, at the time of the 
landlords' regime, under Louis Philippe or 
Leopold I. So it should not be surprising that, 
on the continent, their reign was the golden age 
of bourgeois parliamentarism. 

"Today, on the contrary, is the iron age. We 
can not blind ourselves to the fact that, more and 
more, the conditions for the normal working of 
the system tend to disappear. The development 
of the functions and the interferences of the 
State, in all fields, multiplies indefinitely the 
questions to be solved, without any proportionate 
increase in the political capacity of the legislators. 
The multiplication, not to say the crumbling, of 
parties makes more difficult the establishment of 
parliamentary majorities grouped around stable 
ministries, and these difficulties, judging from 
the example of Belgium, will only increase under 
proportional representation. The elected repre- 
sentatives, when they are not business men work- 
ing for their own interests, are almost wholly 
ignorant of all the complex gearings of modern 



THE BANKRUPTCY OF PARLIAMENTARISM 105 

society, and serve the popular cause only by 
hollow formulas and legal phraseology. Finally, 
the electoral body, with its enormous dead weight 
of illiterates and incapables, justifies only too well 
this bitter word of P. J. Proudhon: 'In many 
cases the voters under universal suffrage have 
shown themselves inferior to the landholding 
electors of the July monarchy/ 

"Certainly the machine rims, in spite of every- 
thing, because there are bureaux, commissions of 
specialists, and grand councils, which eat up work 
for the legislature ; then there is the press, which 
supplements, to a certain extent, the flagrant in- 
sufficiency of the budget control; the machine 
runs, but with what friction, what jerks, what 
wastage of power, and also what deception for 
the popular masses, who had based such vast 
hopes and such high ambitions on universal 
suffrage. 

"Oppressed by this deception, they do not see, 
they do not wish to see that parliamentary gov- 
ernment, with all its faults, constitutes neverthe- 
less an immense progress over the former sys- 
tems ; that if it is a very mediocre instrument of 
reform, it is still an efficacious means for prevent- 
ing the abuses of power, — in short that, in the 
present state of things, if it did not exist, we 
should have to invent it. 



106 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

"What they see, and how could they fail to 
see it? — is the lost time, the fruitless bustle of the 
lobbies, the miserable game of bidding for votes, 
the flood of petty neighborhood questions, the 
endless babble of legislators who wish to show 
their importance, and, inevitable consequence, the 
accumulation of unfinished parliamentary busi- 
ness, and the miscarriage of hoped-for reforms. 

"True, the situation is not equally bad in all 
countries. Remedies can be found, or at least 
palliatives. But the fact remains that parliamen- 
tary government, which was equal to its task 
when it was merely the administrative council for 
the affairs of the bourgeoisie, is found powerless 
to solve all the problems, to face all the diffi- 
culties, that arise in a society on the road toward 
a revolutionary transformation. 

"So no one should be surprised that the work- 
ing class, more and more, understanding that it 
can not emancipate itself through representatives, 
counts before all else upon itself, resorts to direct 
action to stimulate, or to replace, the reformist 
activity of the parliaments, and, especially in the 
countries where parliamentarism has attained the 
maximum of discredit, attaches more importance 
to syndicalist and co-operative action than to 
political action." 



CHAPTER III 

PROLETARIAN ACTION 

Crisis, decadence, perhaps bankruptcy of par- 
liamentarism ; capitalist conquest of the public 
powers; control by the possessing classes of the 
electors and of the elected; such are the results, 
all too apparent, of the democratic system under 
its present form. 

On this statement, the democrats and the 
socialists, or at least such of them as refuse 
to take words at face value, are in accord with 
the opponents of democracy, syndicalists or tra- 
ditionalists, like Maurras, Deherme, or Georges 
Sorel. 1 

But, it must be said, divergences appear, when 
it comes to drawing conclusions. 

We naturally pass by those who dream of re- 
versing the machine, of substituting for elections 
that form of lottery called hereditary monarchy. 
For choosing the most competent rulers, we fail 
to understand in what respect the chance of 
generation is superior to the chance of lottery. 

1 8ee Guy -Grand, "Le Proems de la Democratic." Paris, 
Colin, 1913. 

107 



108 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

We dismiss likewise those who would graft 
upon universal suffrage certain "conservative 
guarantees," such as plural voting, which would 
aggravate instead of diminishing the already 
excessive power of the ruling classes. 

As a matter of fact, whether welcome or 
otherwise, every one understands today that 
wherever universal suffrage exists, and it exists 
almost everywhere, there can be no question of 
suppressing it. But if it can not be suppressed, 
it can be organized, or else, which is by no means 
the same thing, it can organize itself. 

Those who wish to organize universal suffrage 
by an act of authority, a legislative act, are advo- 
cates of various systems designated under the 
name of representation of interests. All these 
systems have this in common, that they are 
essentially arbitrary, that they consolidate, the 
positions gained by the possessing classes, that 
they give a legal sanction to the division of 
classes, and substitute artificial compartments 
for the spontaneous groups which incessantly 
arise from the transformations of the social life. 
They do not constitute progress. They are, on 
the contrary, an obvious retrogression. 

But if we do not admit, if we will not at any 
price admit that universal suffrage should be 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 109 

organized from above, we are, on the contrary, 
deeply convinced that it should organize itself. 

From now on, it is striving to do this. In all 
countries, to facilitate the elaboration of laws, to 
aid the parliament in its legislative work, con- 
sulting commissions are being created, where the 
great interests can be advantageously represented 
to make their voices heard, when once the final 
decision rests with the national sovereignty. On 
the other hand, in the most advanced democ- 
racies, universal suffrage tends to replace de- 
liberative assemblies on the greatest questions, 
through direct legislation. The representative 
system continues. The parliamentary system is 
on the way to disappear. 

In Switzerland, for example, the Federal 
Council is not a ministry. It makes room among 
its members for the minority. It does not resign 
when its propositions are rejected. And, at least 
in serious questions, if the National Council and 
the Council of States discuss laws, they do not 
make them. The legislative power, first and last, 
belongs to the people themselves. They have the 
right of initiative. They can demand the ref- 
erendum. They can at any moment, and on all 
questions, substitute themselves for the delibera- 
tive assemblies. 



110 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

' Such institutions, without doubt, have the 

future on their side. 

But however developed and however perfect 
we may conceive them to be, they would still 
bring nothing but disillusions and deceptions to 
the proletariat, if it counted upon them alone to 
conquer real political power. 

If this formidable power, the capitalist State, 
is first to be checked and later to be abolished, 
it is not enough that universal suffrage be organ- 
ized. The workers must organize themselves 
under universal suffrage. They must, by the 
development of working-class organization, under 
all its forms, create a State within the State, 
whose growing power tends to substitute co- 
operative management for capitalist domination. 

It is on this condition, and on this condition 
alone, that democracy ceases to be an illusion and 
a lie. 

From the moment, in fact, that real labor 
unions exist, they can through their organization 
oppose an effective resistance to the effort of the 
capitalists to buy, intimidate, deceive and organize 
the voting masses. 

In the second place, the action of the unions, 
and to a less degree, of the other groups, fur- 
nishes them the means for exercising from with- 
out an effective pressure upon the government 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 111 

Finally, it is in the labor organization itself 
that a new society is forming, that a new system 
of law is being elaborated, and that the proletariat 
is acquiring the preparation indispensable for 
substituting some day its auto-direction for the 
rule of the captains of industry and the magnates 
of capitalist society. 

1. Resistance to Capitalism 

There is on the whole, at the present time, a 
single political system in all the nations of 
western civilization. The political forms are 
diverse and changing. The proportions of power 
among the classes vary according to the industrial 
development and the groupings of interests aris- 
ing from it. The condition of the workers is not 
everywhere equally bad, but everywhere the 
bourgeoisie alone, or in partnership with other 
classes that are declining, cdntrols the govern- 
ment. It controls it because really, economically, 
intellectually, it is still the directing class. And 
that will not change, that can not change, until 
the day when the proletariat shall be sufficiently 
organized, economically and intellectually, to be 
in a position to substitute social production for 
capitalist production. 

Meanwhile, it is all very well to be the most 
numerous class, to have the right to vote, to 



112 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

possess the theoretical right to elect the parlia- 
mentary majority; the proletariat does not use 
this right, and if by any impossible chance it were 
to use it, that would merely give the world the 
spectacle of its impotence. 

If moreover it had any inclination to stop 
voting for its masters, to deprive the possessing 
minorities of the support which they need in 
order to have a parliamentary majority, we have 
seen that by its money, by its press, by its 
"machine" inside the traditional parties, the bour- 
geoisie exercises enormous powers of influence 
upon the mass of the voters. 

Under these conditions, democracy is and can 
be only a vain illusion, so long as the proletariat 
remains a dust-heap of individuals. 

That is what the syndicalists constantly repeat, 
and on this point they are right. Even if electoral 
and parliamentary action alone could suffice to 
realize socialism — which we do not believe — this 
electoral and parliamentary action can not, in 
any case, be effective unless the working class 
organizes itself, — and not on the political field 
alone. 

From this point of view, the Social-Democratic 
Party of Germany had, .before the war, given 
examples from which we might have expected it 
to take a better attitude at the hour of trial. 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 113 

To understand this, look through the report of 
the Parteivorstand at the Congress of Jena 
(1913). At that time there were nearly a million 
members (982,850) for the 397 electoral districts. 
The receipts of the central organization amounted 
to 1,469,000 marks ; the expenditures to 1,075,000 
marks. Ninety newspapers were under the con- 
trol of the party, including the official organ, 
Vorwaerts, with 157,000 subscribers. The cen- 
tral educational bureau, founded seven years 
earlier, had at its disposal in 1913 for courses 
and meetings more than 700,000 marks. 1 In 
short, the party itself, from the viewpoint of 
financial resources, surpasses all the bourgeois 
parties. Its press can compete, in number of 
readers and in wealth of information, with the 
capitalist press. Its educational works are at 
once a complement and a corrective to the pri- 
mary school. And if, among the four million 
voters and more in the Social Democracy, there 
are "Mitlaufer" who came into socialism through 
a simple spirit of opposition, still perhaps no- 
where else can be found so many men with a 
clear and precise idea of the final aim to pursue. 
Moreover this party organization, without an 
equal in the word, would not have had, even from 



1 Berlcht des Parteivorstandes an dem Parteltag En Iena. 
Berlin, Vorwaerts, 1913. 



114 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

the political viewpoint, the power that it pos- 
sessed, if the great co-operatives of consumption 
affiliated with the wholesale co-operative at Ham- 
burg, or the Freie Gewerkschaften, the independ- 
ent unions, with their 2,500,000 adherents, not to 
speak of the compulsory insurance groups, had 
not made of the German working class an eco- 
nomic power with which the capitalists were 
obliged to reckon on a broad scale. 

Why was all this force to be powerless, when 
it came to a choice for the German proletariat 
between revolt and complicity? Surely, in normal 
times at least, the force of the proletarian organ- 
ization never lost an occasion to strengthen itself. 

Perhaps some may remember, by way of ex- 
ample, the conflict that arose in 1914 between 
the Deutsche Bank and the Central Commission 
of Unions. 

An employee of the Deutsche Bank, having ac- 
cepted a position of trust in the Union of Bank 
Employees, was disciplined by the bank manage- 
ment. The association, identifying themselves 
with the employee in question, protested. But 
this protest would have had no grave conse- 
quences, if the Commission of Unions had not 
intervened in the affair. It threatened the bank, 
if the measure taken against the employee were 
not reversed and explicit guarantees given for 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 115 

the future that it would withdraw the funds that 
it had on deposit. The bank refused, and more 
than 20,000,000 marks — the total deposits were 
from 80,000,000 to 100,000,000— were withdrawn 
to be entrusted to other banks more pliable in 
the face of union demands. 

It is self-evident that against a working class 
with such a defensive organization at its disposal, 
the methods of corruption or pressure, resorted 
to in other situations, become wholly inapplicable. 

One may buy or intimidate Irish or Italian 
immigrants lately arrived at New York or Buenos 
Ayres, Jewish garment workers of the East Side, 
Flemish or Neapolitan tenants, farm laborers in 
East Prussia, but nothing can prevent workers in 
whom the socialist ideal, organization and con- 
sciousness are fully developed from using the 
right to vote for the defense of their class 
interests. 

Even from this point of view, then, it becomes 
clear that the social democracy could not entrench 
itself on the political field ; could not be a party 
purely electoral and parliamentary, with the con- 
quest of the State for its sole aim. To accom- 
plish the conquest of the State, it must oppose to 
the organization of capitalist power the force of 
labor organization, with its co-operatives, its 
unions, its press, its educational institutions. 



116 socialism versus the state 

2. Pressure From Without 

Ostrogorski, replying to those who say that the 
people is incapable of self-government, and that 
universal suffrage and parliamentarism are, con- 
sequently, an absurdity, subscribes to the first of 
these affirmations, but rejects the second: 

The political function of the masses in a democracy* 
he says, Is not to govern but to intimidate the governors. 
The real question, again, is to know whether and to. 
what extent they are capable of intimidating. That the 
masses already possess in most democracies today the 
capacity to intimidate the governors seriously, is beyond 
question. It is thanks to this that actual progress has 
been realized in society; with good grace or ill, the 
governors are obliged to take account of the needs and 
aspirations of the people. 

This intimidation of governments, this pressure 
from without exercised by the masses, does not 
necessarily imply that they be organized. 

Mere dread of the voters, when a strong cur- 
rent in favor of a reform exists, may decide a 
conservative majority to make concessions. 

So again with street demonstrations; the first 
"social laws" in Belgium were voted by chambers 
elected by landholders, under the impressions 
produced by the riots of March, 1886. In the 
phrase of a conservative writer, Father Ver- 
meersch, the bourgeoisie then saw "by the .light 
of conflagrations" that there was a social 
question. 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 117 

It is by relying on theses of this sort that Sorel, 
in his "Reflections on Violence" 1 (1906), under- 
took to justify the methods of the militants of 
the C. G. T. For him, the determining factor 
in social politics is the poltroonery of the Govern- 
ment. The revolutionary syndicalists know this, 
and make excellent use of the situation. They 
teach the laborers that it is not a question of going 
to ask favors (from the government), but that 
they should take advantage of "bourgeois cow- 
ardice" to impose the will of the proletariat. 

There are too many facts supporting this 
theory for it to fail of taking root in the labor 
world. 

But in many cases, on the other hand, the event 
has shown that the workers would be making a 
grave mistake to count without limit on govern- 
mental or parliamentarian weakness, and that 
direct action thus understood could not — quite 
apart from the question of legitimacy — yield 
more than limited results. 

However, there is another form of direct 
action, which is not, at least not necessarily, ac- 
companied by violence: it is the use by labor 
organizations, to obtain a political result, to 
exercise pressure on the government, of the 

1 Sorel, Reflections sur la Violence. La MouYement social- 
late, 1906, vol. I, p. 81. 



118 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

methods customary in economic conflicts. And 
naturally, this direct action is more effective in 
proportion as the working class is better 
organized. 

It is possible at this date to cite many govern- 
mental or legislative interventions that have been 
determined by movements of this sort: the 
miners' strikes in France for the legal eight-hour 
day or the improvement of the pension system, 
the general strikes for the conquest of political 
liberties in Russia, for universal suffrage in 
Belgium and Sweden, or again the railroad and 
postoffice strikes in France, Austria, Holland and 
Italy. 

But the typical case of a strike powerfully or- 
ganized, culminating in the imposition upon the 
employing class, by legislative act, of a system of 
work to which it had refused to subscribe, is the 
great strike of the English miners in February 
and March, 1912, for a minimum wage. 

On the eve of this memorable conflict, one of 
the leaders of the Federation of Miners, Harts- 
born, said, in a speech addressed to the miners of 
South Wales: 

The full strength of British democracy can not fail 
to obtain from the employers and the State the guar- 
antee of a minimum wage for the industry. I predict 
that next week Friday (March 1), will mark the date 
of a new era in the history of this country. On that 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 119 

day a million men will break their chains, when they 
declare with one voice that they will no more be slaves 
and that they will assert their right to be treated like 
freemen. 

To carry through this great struggle, the 
610,000 members of the various miners' unions 
had at their disposal a fund of 2,167,000 pounds 
sterling, about $10,825,000, giving over $18.00 per 
capita. Assuming that each miner had earned 
about this amount in the week before the strike, 
they had at their disposal an average of $36.00 
each, not counting the personal savings they 
might have made. But in fact, the fund not 
being held in common, the resources varied 
greatly from region to region. 

Nevertheless the miners were in a position to 
hold out for several weeks, thus depriving the 
other industries of their "black bread." Thus, 
their simple decision to stop work if satisfaction 
were not obtained, determined the government to 
intervene with the employers, urging their consent 
to an amicable solution. The majority of the 
heads of enterprises promised to yield. Others 
declared themselves for resistance. An agree- 
ment failing, the strike was declared. A million 
strikers took part in it, and at the end of a few 
days, for lack of coal, other laborers, by hundreds 
of thousands, were thrown out of work. 



120 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

Then to avoid greater disasters, the liberal gov- 
ernment decided to regulate the matter by a 
legislative act. On March 19, 1912, Mr. Asquith 
introduced in the House of Commons the Coal 
Mines (minimum wage) bill, recognizing the 
principle of the minimum wage for the under- 
ground laborers of the coal mines. 

This minimum was not fixed by law, but by 
Joint District Boards, composed half of repre- 
sentatives of the employers, half of representa- 
tives of the laborers, with an arbitrator to give 
the casting vote. 

In a few days the bill passed through all the 
stages of parliamentary procedure, usually so 
lengthy. The labor members declared it insuffi- 
cient, but they had no answer for Lloyd George 
when he said to them: "If you were sure that 
your opposition would cause the rejection of the 
bill, would you speak and vote against it?" 

The Liberals, whose election in sixty-four dis- 
tricts depended on the miners' vote, supported 
Mr. Asquith with more or less enthusiasm. As 
for the Conservatives, they voted against it, and 
while making no serious effort to prevent the 
passage of the bill, they left it to Mr. Balfour 
to indicate the motives of the governmental 
initiative : 

The position of the Government is like that of an 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 121 

individual robbed in a dark street by a man of 
formidable aspect, and who might say to him: "My 
dear friend, it is not your terrible aspect nor your 
heavy club that make me give you my purse and my 
watch. Let me assure you, before we separate amicably, 
that I am grateful to you for having given me this 
opportunity to accomplish an act of tardy justice." 

Describing the bill as "panic legislation," he 

added : 

It is folly to encourage such acts by making all men 
believe that they can force the action of Parliament by 
such means. Tomorrow they will begin again from the 
same motive or others. 

It remains to know what Mr. Balfour would 
have done, if he had been in Mr. Asquith's place. 

It may help us guess, if we remember that the 
House of Lords, where his friends were in the 
majority, and where they still had the right of 
absolute veto, carefully refrained from obstruct- 
ing the proposals of the Government. 

We may differ, moreover, as to the value and 
importance of the results obtained, but, from the 
moral view-point, the victory of the miners was 
immense, and Mr. Balfour was right in saying 
that it would lead to further demands. 

Everything indicates, in fact, that more and 
more in the future the laborers will resort to the 
organized strike, for obtaining legislative re- 
forms, and that this pressure from without will 
tend to become an almost normal means of pre- 



122 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

vailing over the inertia, the weakness and the ill 
will of bourgeois parliaments. 

Nevertheless we may also foresee that, later 
on, the use of such methods will cease to be useful 
because the working class will be strong enough, 
either to dispense with protective legislation, or 
to legislate for itself, instead of constraining its 
masters to legislate for it. 

3. The Formation of the New System 

The unions and other labor groups have thus 
far appeared to us as the necessary sub-stratum 
of political action and the most effective means 
at the disposal of the proletariat for acting on 
governments and parliamentary majorities. 

But from the view-point of the conquest of 
power, their development has an importance even 
greater, it is in fact through labor organization 
and in labor organization that the workers pre- 
pare themselves, by managing enterprises and 
administering free associations, to substitute 
themselves one day for the administrators and 
the captains of industry of the capitalist system. 

To understand this immense subterranean 
labor, it is necessary to read such books as "La 
Coutume Ouvriere" by Maxime Leroy or "In- 
dustrial Democracy," by Sidney and Beatrice 
Webb. 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 123 

As the Webbs point out so well, the organiza- 
tion of labor offers to the student of democracy 
the spectacle of a multitude of independent, 
autonomous republics, trying repeatedly all 
known political expedients, with a view to com* 
bining an efficient administration with popular 
control. 

Whatever the system adopted, the organization 
remains democratic. The general assembly has 
the last word. But, when it comes to administer- 
ing federations* of unions, grouping thousands of 
members, or managing wholesale stores, like 
those of Hamburg, Manchester or Glasgow, they 
have quickly renounced the primitive forms of 
democracy, with nominations of managers for 
short terms, and direct intervention of the gen- 
eral assemblies in the smallest affairs. They 
create permanent functionaries. To them they 
delegate extended powers. These officials receive 
guarantees for the future. Salaries are assured 
them which make it possible to recruit an efficient 
force. And thus, in the union sphere, as in the 
co-operative or political sphere, is formed little 
by little a personnel of technicians and managers, 
who would be capable, if the need arose, of 
stepping into the places of the present capitalists. 

Moreover, if this substitution took place, thou- 
sands of proletarian intellectuals today incorpo- 



124 . SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

rated into the structure of private industry would 
have every motive of private interest for joining 
the new order. 

Such a development, true, is still in its first 
stages. Nothing would expose the workers to 
more deceptions than to conceive an excessive 
idea of their political and industrial capacity. But 
it is the progressive acquirement of this capacity 
that gives all their importance to the various 
forms of labor organization. A new world is in 
course of creation, on the edge of bourgeois 
society and in opposition to it. It has its ethics, 
its discipline, its juridical institutions, its con- 
stitutional and civil rules. It constitutes, already, 
an immense federation, co-operative, unionist, 
political, whose closely-woven woof covers the 
entire world. And, just as the bourgeois revo- 
lution was not the application of an abstract doc- 
trine, but the systematization of an organization 
already pre-existing in fact, so the conquest of 
power by the proletariat may be accompanied by 
victorious strokes or triumphant elections, but it 
will have as a preliminary condition, a condition 
sine qua non, the pre-existence of an organization 
capable of furnishing elements of direction and 
management within the new system. 

Briefly, the conquest of power, thus under- 
stood, ceases to be confused, either with the 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 125 

conquest of the parliamentary majority and the 
government by electoral action alone, or with 
the sudden seizure of the State by force. Before 
the workers can become the directing class, they 
must, having become through capitalistic evolu- 
tion the great (or as the Communist Manifesto 
says the immense) majority of the population, 
add to their numerical power "the power of organ- 
iziation, political and economic. 

Now, that alone is enough to show how grossly 
deceived are those who maintain, with Leroy- 
Beaulieu, that socialism is statism, and that in a 
socialist system the various associations, the 
voluntary and free combinations would disappear, 
absorbed by the all-powerful and all-providing 
State. 

Without the individual and collective "self- 
help" of the working class, without a vast organic 
development of the unions, of the co-operatives, 
of association under all its forms, it is not even 
possible to conceive of the seizure of political 
power by the workers, and after that, how can 
we believe that once masters of these powers, the 
toilers, destroying their work, would consent, as 
Leroy-Beaulieu predicts, to become once more 
human dust, and to abdicate into the hands of 
the police-State the power which by their free 
effort they had conquered. * 



126 socialism versus the state 

4. The Proletarian Conquest of 
Political Power 
It only remains to draw our conclusion. 
What must we think of that schematic view of 
the social revolution, which is found constantly 
in Marx and Engels, from the Manifesto to the 
"Civil War in France": conquest of political 
power by the proletariat; collective dictatorship 
of the proletariat; abolition of the State? 

(a) Conquest of Political Power By 
the Proletariat 

It will be asked at the start whether the word 
proletariat has not too restricted a meaning, and 
if it is not better to say: conquest of political 
power by the workers, manual or intellectual? 

In its usual sense the term proletariat indicates 
"people who are in indigence" (Hatzfeld and 
Darmesteter). Now all workers are not indigent, 
and at this point we must recognize that the 
expression is liable to be misunderstood. But 
this is not a question of terminology. 

For Marx and Engels, the proletariat is "the 
modern working-class, a class of laborers, who 
live only so long as they find work, and who find 
work only so long as their labor increases 
capital." 1 



1 Communist Manifesto, page 21 Kerr edition. 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 127 

These laborers, assuredly, are not the only 
laborers. But they are the only ones who have a 
direct, immediate, personal interest in emancipat- 
ing themselves from capitalist domination. The 
intellectuals, the people of the liberal professions, 
may have sympathy for the proletarian cause. 
They may say that under a socialist system, as 
well as today, their capacities would find employ- 
ment. And in fact, it is hard to imagine how, 
without the support, or at least the neutralization 
of these elements, or of a part of these elements, 
the proletariat can grasp the power of the State. 
Nevertheless, the history of every socialist move- 
ment — and even at the present hour, of Russia — 
shows that the real motive power of the social 
revolution, the class really agitating against capi- 
talism, is certainly the working class. In view of 
this, we see no sufficient reasons for modifying 
the traditional terminology. 

If it has been consecrated by usage, neither has 
it ceased to be enlarged by practice, and the 
affirmation of the proletarian, the labor character 
of the social democracy has been no obstacle to 
the recruiting of workers who are not, properly 
speaking, proletarians or laborers. 

(b) The Collective Dictatorship of 
the Proletariat 

Marx and Engels foresaw that at a given 



128 SOCIALISM VERSUS TB& STATE 

moment — following, for example, an inter- 
national war — the workers, carried into power 
by events, will use this power to take away, little 
by little, from the bourgeoisie, all its capital, 
putting the means of production in the hands of 
the State. They say this in the Manifesto, 
Engels repeats it, in 1891, in the introduction to 
the German translation of "The Civil War in 
France" : 

The State, he says, is neither more nor less than a 
machine for the oppression of one class by another, and 
that quite as much in a democratic republic as in a 
monarchy; and the least to be said is that it is a 
scourge which the proletariat inherits in its struggle 
for class domination; but of which it must, as the Com- 
mune did, and in the greatest measure possible, atten- 
uate the most grievous effects, until the day when a 
new generation, reared in a new society of free and 
equal men, may rid itself of all governmental rubbish. 
The German Philistines are always plunged into holy 
terror at the words "dictatorship of the proletariat" 
Would you know, gentlemen, what that dictatorship 
means? Look at the Paris Commune. There is the 
dictatorship of the proletariat 

Such indeed is, in substance, the idea com- 
monly held in socialist circles of the social revo- 
lution : a new Commune, this time victorious, no 
longer at a single point, but in the principal 
centers of the capitalist world. 

Hypothesis; but hypothesis with nothing im- 
probable in it, in these times when it already 
appears that the after-war period in a number of 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 129 

countries will bring class antagonisms and un- 
heard-of social convulsions. 

Only, if the defeat of the Paris Commune, not 
to speak of the difficulties of the Russian Revo- 
lution, proves anything, it is the impossibility of 
ending the capitalist system as long as the pro- 
letariat is not sufficiently prepared to exercise 
the power which circumstances might let fall into 
its hands. 

Neither does Marx claim more. Witness this 
celebrated passage from "The Civil . War in 
France": 

The working class did not expect miracles from the 
Commune. They have no ready-made Utopias to intro- 
duce by order of the people. They know that in order 
to work out their own emanciptation, and along with 
it that higher form to which present society is irre- 
sistibly tending, by its own economical agencies, they 
will have to pass through long struggles, through a 
series of historic processes, transforming circumstances 
and men. 

Consequently what matters to the proletariat is 
not to make prophecies, nor to discuss the 
prophecies of others on the hypothesis of its col- 
lective dictatorship, but to prepare itself, by the 
development of its organization, economic and po- 
litical, to dominate events, whatever may happen. 

Meanwhile it should be noted that the more this 
autonomous organization of the working class 
develops, the more profoundly must the primitive 



i 



130 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

and elementary conception of the proletarian 
dictatorship be modified. 

As a matter of fact it seems undeniable that 
Engels and Marx, at least in the Manifesto, 
suppose that at a given moment the proletarians, 
donning the boots of the police-state, will appro- 
priate the coercive powers created by the bour- 
geoisie, to govern against the bourgeoisie, that 
they will, in a word, to make the social revolution, 
utilize the instrument of rule forged by the 
master class to make revolution impossible. Now, 
with a proletariat powerfully organized, we may 
admit that it would be far less a question . of 
utilizing the bourgeois State for other ends, than 
of substituting for it a new State which is, from 
now on, in process of formation in the great, 
trade-union, co-operative and political federations 
of the working class. 

That does not mean, assuredly, that nothing 
ought to be preserved, even provisionally, of the 
old state-machine. But, to speak frankly, we 
have trouble in admitting that this instrument of 
domination and oppression can, without essential 
modifications, be used as a means of liberation 
and enfranchisement. Engels moreover admits 
this to a certain extent when he writes (see the 
introduction quoted above) that in the example 
of the Commune, the proletariat, heir to this 



PROLETARIAN ACTION 131 

scourge, ought, while awaiting its complete aboli- 
tion, "to attenuate, as far as possible, its most 
grievous effects." 

(c) Abolition of the State 

What is to be said? 

If certain expressions are taken literally, it 
seems that in speaking of the abolition of the 
State, the Marxians foresee the passage, by a 
mutation more or less abrupt, from the pro- 
letarian dictatorship to anarchy, to the absence of 
government. 

But consider more closely. 

As we have said, the State, as the term is used 
by Marx and Engels, is not the State in the broad 
sense, the State, organ of management, the State,, 
representing the general interests of society. It 
is the State-power, the State, organ of authority, 
the State, instrument of domination by one class 
over another. 

In "The Civil War in France," for example, 
Marx opposes the "free federation of all men" 
to the State as "national power of capital over 
labor . . ., public force organized for social 
enslavement . . ., engine of class despotism." 

Likewise, in "Anti-Duehring," Engels tells us 
that the State is the organization of the exploiting 
class at every epoch with a view to maintaining 
these exterior conditions of production, and 



132 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

notably with a view to holding the exploited class 
by force within the conditions of oppression re- 
quired by the existing mode of production 
(slavery, serfdom, wage-labor). 

Once these definitions are admitted, the Marx- 
ian syllogism is logically unassailable : 

1. The State is the organ of the domination 
of one class over another. 

2. Now, socialism aims at the suppression of 
classes by the socialization of the means of 
production and exchange. 

3. Thus socialism tends, by this very fact, to 
abolish the State. 

All would thus be for the best if the Marxian 
sense of the word "State" did not differ from the 
usual sense. But as it does differ, misunder- 
standings and confusions may arise regarding the 
abolition of the State, as understood by Marxians. 

It is therefore important to be definite and to 
say once more that if, in a socialist society, the 
State, organ of authority, saw its functions re- 
duced to the minimum, the State, organ of 
administration, wbuld continue to be the repre- 
sentative of the general interests of the com- 
munity. 

This necessary distinction will moreover be 
increasingly important, now that we are to dis- 
cuss the socialization of the means of production. 



PART TWO 

The Socialization of the Means of 

Production 

Even before the present war, which in the 
nature of things brought with it a prodigious 
development of statism, one of the characteristics 
of social evolution has been the considerable in- 
crease of the functions and the domain of the 
State. The old monopolies or fiscal domains, 
which not long ago were thought to be about to 
disappear — the tobacco monopoly in France for 
example, or the fiscal lands in Prussia — are not 
only preserved, but extended and developed. 
National 1 forests are bought or created. The rail- 
roads are taken over. The rights of the nation 
over water power are proclaimed. Monopolies 
are established or projected in alcohol, as in 
Switzerland, in potash or petroleum, as in Hun- 
gary, not to speak of camphor, as in Japan, or 
radium, as in the United States. 

We have said that a number of socialists, and 
also of adversaries of socialism, see in this prog- 
ress of statization so many partial victories for 
collectivist ideas. 

That is, to say the least, a manifest exaggera- 
133 



134 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

tion. The truth is that in "statizing" certain 
industries, the governments as they existed before 
the war were obeying certain very complex con- 
siderations, of which some were military and 
fiscal, others social in their nature. 

It is beyond doubt, for example, that in the 
larger countries, the State, in buying the railways, 
or in keeping a heavy hand on the companies, as 
in France, had in view especially the transporta- 
tion of troops in case of war. It is no accident 
that the only countries in which the railroads 
remain wholly or almost wholly in private hands 
are England and the United States. Both of 
these countries, for various reasons, believed 
themselves dispensed from seeing, in their iron 
roads, means for attack or for defense. 

But, independently of this direct influence, 
modern militarism exerts an indirect action, still 
more important, upon the development and 
multiplication of State monopolies. From year 
to year, up to the moment of the catastrophe, it 
has demanded new expenditures. Along with 
the burdens of the governments' social policy, 
the burdens of the armed peace have increased 
in such proportions, that the ordinary resources 
of the public treasuries no longer sufficed. 

In the six principal countries of Europe, for 
example, the foreseen military expenditures, not 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 135 

including those disguised in other budgets, 
amounted to the following figures in 1883 and in 
1912: 

Total Military Expenditures of the Six Great European 

Powers in 1883 <*nd in 1912 

(In millions of francs) 

Increase between 1883 and 1912 
Country 1883 1912 Millions Per Cent 

Germany 504 1,648 1,144 227.0 

England 702 1,779 1,077 153.4 

Austria-Hungary.... 318 674 356 111.9 

France 789 1,343 554 70.2 

Italy 311 649 338 108.6 

Russia 894 1,920 1,026 114.8 

' Totals 3,518 8,013 4,495 127.7 

To find these billions, which the enormous in- 
crease of public debts will multiply after the war, 
by resorting to taxes alone, becomes irksome and 
will become more and more irksome. Even be- 
fore the war there were plans for fiscal monop- 
olies. Those already existing were developed. 
Thereby results an extension of the collective 
domain, but it should be well understood that it 
is difficult to see in this phenomenon a triumph 
for socialist ideas. 

Let us add however that, apart from the influ- 
ences of a fiscal and military order, other factors 
have intervened, and will intervene more and 
more. It is not to secure revenue nor with a 



136 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

view to preparing for war that the Belgian State 
and the Swiss State have bought the railways, 
that Switzerland wishes to nationalize insurance, 
that hydraulic power is being socialized almost 
everywhere, that national forestry is being ex- 
tended, or that the Prussian Stite, which already 
possesses some coal mines, is trying to acquire 
more. 

In proportion as the influence of socialism 
increases, as the mass of consumers becomes 
aware of the exploitation imposed by the capital- 
istic monopolies, the governments must appeal to 
other motives than fiscal ones for bringing new 
industries within the State's sphere of action. 

Thus for example in the French Chamber, on 

November 19, 1909, the minister of finance, M. 

Cochery, on the day following certain monster 

meetings protesting against new taxes on alcohol, 

organized by the retailers of liquor, supported 

and encouraged by the big distillers, expressed 

himself in these terms: 

M. Cochery, Minister of Finance: I shall not follow 
M. Guillemet into the parlors of the Tuileries, where he 
wished to conduct us the other day, to show us the 
splendor and luxury of a certain tobacco merchant, the 
revelation of which has been enough to determine 
Napoleon to establish the tobacco monopoly. I shall 
remain far more modern. I shall confine myself, while 
glancing over the altogether democratic meetings of 
1909, to considering for a moment that formidable 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 137 

money power, residing in certain manufacturers, that 
they have revealed to us, and I shall merely say: the 
problem of the alcohol monopoly, agitated for some 
years in the past, studied with ardor, then fallen into 
slumber, is re-awakened; its examination will follow 
shortly. (Lively applause on the left and extreme left.) 
******* 

And before long the other problem will perhaps be 
raised; that of the consideration of the monopoly of 
insurance or of certain forms of insurance. (Applause.) 

M. Lasies : It is only the moderates who play radical 
politics. However, I do not blame you for it 

The Minister of Finance: Monsieur Lasies, if the 
moderates sometimes play radical politics, it is because 
there are times when certain interests show in such a 
striking fashion their influence over the life of this 
country that men of good faith ask themselves whether 
this role really belongs to private interests. (Applause 
on the left and the extreme left.) * 

Even before the war it could be foreseen that 
in the near future the French State, which drew 
each year more than 300,000,000 francs from the 
tobacco monopoly, which manufactured matches 
(badly enough, by the way), which operated rail- 
ways, made porcelains at Sevres and tapestries at 
Gobelins, would also make itself an insurance 
agent and a producer or rectifier of alcohol. 

But, in France as elsewhere, this tendency to- 
ward the statization of certain industries has been 
counteracted, thus far, by active opposition based 



1 Journal offlclel da 20 novembre 1910, Debats parlemen- 
taires. p. 2794-2705. 



138 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

on the disadvantages presented by State exploita- 
tion in its present form. 

Certainly, in this matter, we can not be too 
distrustful of the deliberate exaggerations of 
those who have a direct interest in saying the 
worst possible things about the management of 
public enterprises. 

Too often, in fact, public opinion in this matter 
is manufactured by a press whose "doctrinal pub- 
licity," to use the neat phrase of a French deputy, 
reflects with a systematic fidelity the opinion 
of the capitalists who wish to preserve their 
monopolies. 

It will be remembered, for example, that the 
London Times published, a few years ago, a 
series of unsigned articles, emanating, it was 
said, from an impartial observer, against the 
municipal lighting systems in England. These 
articles made the tour of Europe. They furnish, 
even today, arguments for the opponents of 
municipalization. Now, a short time after their 
publication, it was learned that the "impartial ob- 
server" was the general manager of one of the 
big electric light and power companies of London. 

In like manner we have seen a press campaign 
against the Western State Railway of France, 
very instructive for those who knew or guessed 
what was behind it. 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEAN$ OF PRODUCTION 139 

As always happens, the Western Company, 
which had always been very badly managed, 
began to be managed worse still when it saw the 
government purchase coming. The rolling stock 
was not renewed, the maintenance of the railways 
was scandalously neglected. In short, when the 
State had taken it over, it found itself confronted 
with a situation such that any normal operation 
became impossible. This occasioned numerous 
accidents, chargeable, at least in part, to the vices 
of the former system, but affording material for 
so many propagandist indictments against opera- 
tion by the State. When an accident took place 
on the lines operated by the companies, it was 
merely an incident; on the "West State" it be- 
came an argument. 

As for the explanation of this attitude of a 
part of the press, it will be found, for lack of 
more recent documents, in the parliamentary 
inquiry made in 1895 by the French Chamber, 
with the aim of studying the moral conditions of 
the famous articles of agreement (between the 
State and the railways) of 1883, so justly char- 
acterized as nefarious. 

In the course of the inquiry M. Carlier, gen- 
eral secretary of the Orleans Company, explained , 
that the six great companies had, long before, 
organized at their common expense a publicity 



140 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

service for the defense of their interests, and on 
the subject of the expenses incurred by this serv- 
ice, he gave the following information : 

The expense for the year 1880 was 520,000 francs for 
the six companies. That for 1881 was only 400,000 
francs or a trifle more. In 1882, it was much heavier; 
that was the year of the campaign for government 
purchase against which the companies were struggling; 
the expense went up to 735,000 francs. The following 
year it was slightly less, 718,000 francs. 

After the signing of the articles, constituting a treaty 
of peace, the expenditures diminished sharply; in 1884 
they were still 450,000 francs, I believe, but in subse- 
quent years the figures were much less. 

******* 

For the last three years, I must say, since the strike 
of 1891, we have new questions which pre-occupy us; 
difficulties may arise on this field, over which the com- 
panies, you understand, ought to be anxious. 1 

Is it surprising, after such confessions, that 
certain great newspapers show themselves so dis- 
tinctly hpstile both to the demands of the railway 
workers, and to the nationalization of the rail- 
ways? 

Nevertheless, after making allowance, and it 
should be a very large allowance, for exaggera- 
tions and falsehoods, the fact remains, at least in 
countries where the industrial State is con- 
founded with the Government-State, that the 



*V. Milhaod, Le Rachat des Chemins de fer, p. 22. Paris, 
Comply, 1904. 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 141 

present methods of operation of the public serv- 
ices give ground for absolutely just criticism. 

True, monopoly for monopoly, it may be pre- 
ferable, despite everything, to substitute the 
monopoly of the State for the monopoly of the 
great capitalist companies. But there is at least 
a germ of truth in the opinion of those who hold 
that the state is a bad merchant and a bad manu- 
facturer, and who consequently dread to see, as a 
consequence of the progress of statization, the 
development of a sluggish, routine-bound bu- 
reaucracy; who rebel at the thought of seeing 
their individual initiative weakened, and who see 
a serious menace to liberty in the transformation 
of an ever-growing number of citizens into 
officials. 

Only, we can not repeat often enough that it 
is not the State, as constituted today, to which 
the socialists would* assign the collective pro- 
prietorship of the means of production and 
exchange. 

In reality, all the misunderstandings that arise 
on this subject, all the confusions that possess 
people's minds proceed from the fact that the 
word State — with a capital S — can be taken in 
two very different senses. 

If we consult, for example, Littre's dictionary, 
we shall find the following definitions of the 



142 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

State: (1) a body of people; (2) the government 
of a country. 

In the first sense — the body of the people — it 
is true that the socialists advocate the appropria- 
tion of the principal means of production by the 
State, with this reservation, however, that certain 
industries, notably the railways, tend to become 
international, and that others, having a local char- 
acter, belong within the municipal sphere. 

In the second sense, on the contrary — the gov- 
ernment of a country — it is absolutely incorrect 
to say that the socialists wish to entrust the 
operation of the principal industries to the Gov- 
ernment-State. The function of a government, 
in brief, is to govern, not to manage industrial 
enterprises, and to entrust functions of an eco- 
nomic order to a government is like placing a 
police officer in control of a lighting plant, or 
asking the commander of an army corps to busy 
himself with posts, telegraphs and railroads. 

Unhappily, today, when the State administers 
an industry, it proceeds to a great extent in that 
very way : the police State, the military State, is 
not sufficiently distinct from the schoolmaster or 
industrial State. Their fundamental characters 
are the same. Their resources become inter- 
mingled. Their directing bodies, finally, are re- 
cruited according to the same rules. 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 143 

When, for example, it is a question of choosing 
a general manager for the State railways, they do 
not summon a technician. It is a cabinet minister 
who is being appointed. The real rulers choose 
among men of "political influence, among the 
parliamentarians in view, an attorney, a debating 
economist, and over night, they make of him the ' 
employer, the responsible head of the greatest 
industrial enterprise of the country. 

Is it surprising, under these conditions, that the 
operation of the State railways leaves something 
to be desired? It is remarkable, on the contrary, 
that oftener than not, thanks to the high quality 
of its technical staff, it can, on a definite test, 
sustain a comparison with the better operated of 
the large companies. 

. But, in spite of the advantages which, at this 
time, the public administration of railways pre- 
sents, there should be no question (and on this 
point we agree with Guesde) of extending this 
system of exploitation to most industries, of 
socializing the principal means of production and 
exchange, without first realizing the two follow- 
ing conditions: 

1. The transformation of the present State, 
organ of domination of one class over another, 
into what Menger calls the People's Labor State, 
by the proletarian conquest of political power. 



144 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STA^E 

2. The separation of the State, organ of 
authority, and the State, organ of management, 
or, to revive the expressions of Saint-Simon, the 
separation of the government of men from the 
administration of things. 

Of these two preliminary conditions, the for- 
mer — after what we have already said — requires 
no extended comment. 

So long, indeed, as the State remains what it 
is today, that is to say the bourgeois State, the 
capitalist State, the class State, founded on 
force, with its military armament against the 
enemy within and the enemy without, an arm- 
ament as burdensome as it is formidable, any 
increase in its domain threatens to re-appear as 
an increase in the powers of oppression at the 
disposal of the master class. 

If the State, for example, operates the rail- 
roads, the minister at the head of this public 
service has under his orders an army of officials, 
employees and laborers. If he treats them, from 
certain points of view, in a more satisfactory 
manner than do the private employers, — their 
positions are more permanent and their insurance 
funds generally afford better protection, — on the 
other hand he refuses them the right to strike, 
bargains with them for the right of association, 
forbids them to be active in politics, and strives 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODJJCTION 145 

to exercise political pressure upon them at elec- 
tion time. 

On the other hand, as the receipts from the 
public services are poured into the treasury of the 
Government, it procures, thanks to them, con- 
siderable resources, without being obliged to re- 
sort to taxes, and very often it devotes the greater 
part of these revenues to unproductive expendi- 
ture for the army and navy. 

Thus for example, in Prussia, in the budget 
for 1909-1910, the net revalues for the properties 
and enterprises of the State were estimated as 
follows : 

Administration of — Marks 

Crown lands 17,500,000 

Forests 57,980,000 

Mines, Iron-works, Salt-works 18,830,000 

Railroads , 276,090,000 

Total 370,400,000 

More than 370 millions of marks, more than 
four hundred million francs ($80,000,000), of 
which the greater part served to build forts, to 
buy cannon, to launch dreadnoughts, to pay 
interest on a public debt incurred almost wholly 
for war or preparation for war. 

So no one need be surprised that, under these 
conditions, the socialists of Prussia, and in a 



146 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

general way the socialists of Germany, — I mean 
those who have not surrendered to imperialism — 
have always shown themselves far from en- 
thusiastic for a fiscal collectivism, the develop- 
ment of which would have served, above all, to 
consolidate the personal power of the Kaiser 
and to fatten the budgets of the army or the 
navy. 

They have already opposed the tobacco monop- 
oly, proposed by Bismarck. They have not 
desired the nationalization of the Reichsbank or 
the statization of the grain trade. They have 
always been on the side of the liberals to check 
attempts which some wrongly imagine to be appli- 
cations of the socialist idea. 

True, this opposition to the State industries is 
weakening or is altogether disappearing, in coun- 
tries like Switzerland, France and Belgium, 
where the personal power of a monarch does not 
exist, where parliamentary control is more effec- 
tive, and where labor has more political power 
at its disposal. 

But even in these countries, the positive advan- 
tages of government operation, for the posts, the 
telegraphs, the railroads for example, should not 
make us forget their disadvantages. In any case, 
no one can find it desirable that an unlimited 
increase of the number of functionaries go on 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 147 

increasing the powers and the influence of the 
governments, which, however they may affect 
democratic appearances, are none the less the 
organs of the domination of one class over an- 
other. 

So it is only when the workers and no longer 
the capitalists shall be the masters, when, once 
more to use Menger's expressions, the State of 
force shall have been replaced by the State of 
labor, that the advantages of the extension of the 
collective domain, at the expense of private 
monopolies, will outweigh, completely and finally, 
the disadvantages that are evident today. 

But, if the conquest of political power by the 
workers is one of the conditions preliminary to 
the socialization of the means of production and 
exchange, it is not the only one. 

Even then, in fact, if the Government-State 
should be in the hands of the workers, instead of 
being in the hands of the capitalists, it would 
remain none the less a government, which might, 
like its predecessors, abuse the powers and the 
resources assured to it by the exploitation of a 
domain enormously increased. 

That is why the other condition, sine qua non, 
of the collective appropriation of the principal 
means of labor is the separation of the Govern- 
ment-State from the Industrial-State. 



148 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

On the day, in fact, when that separation shall 
be accomplished, and on that day only, it will 
become possible to extend the sphere of action of 
the State, organ of management, without by that 
very fact increasing the powers of the State, 
organ of authority. Furthermore, it would be- 
come possible to restrict the powers of the State, 
organ of authority, while extending the sphere of 
action of the State, organ of management. And 
if in our thought we prolong these two tendencies, 
the ruling tendencies of the socialist movement, 
to their final conclusions, we shall come to a social 
system in which the functions of the State, organ 
of authority, are reduced to the minimum, while 
the functions of the State, organ of management, 
are carried to the maximum. 

That is what Frederick Engels meant when, in 
his "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific/' he de- 
scribed, in these terms, the proletarian revolution : 

"The proletariat seizes the public power, and 
by means of this transforms the socialized means 
of production, slipping from the hands of the 
bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the 
proletariat frees the means of production from 
the character of capital they have thus far borne, 
and gives their socialized character complete free- 
dom to work itself out. Socialized production 
upon a predetermined plan becomes thenceforth 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 149 

possible. The development of production makes 
the existence of different classes of society 
thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as 
anarchy in social production vanishes, the po- 
litical authority of the State dies out. Man, at 
last the master of his own form of social organ- 
ization, becomes at the same time the lord over 
Nature, his own master — free." 

Certainly, we are still far from that final 
liberation, and at this time when militarism and 
the world-war menace the modern societies with 
bankruptcy, we witness, on the contrary, a simul- 
taneous development of the authoritarian and 
the economic functions of the State. 

But already, at the very least, three functions 
tend to differentiate themselves, and more and 
more, in proportion as the State industries and 
monopolies become more numerous, there is an 
attempt to increase their autonomy and to di- 
minish their dependence upon the Government 
proper. 

From the moment, indeed, that the State and 
the municipalities assume industrial functions of 
some importance, it becomes, to use Milhaud's 
expression, impossible to pour mechanically the 
nationalized or municipalized enterprises into the 
traditional molds of the municipal or national 
administrations, shaped for other needs. 



152 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

can oppose the execution of any measure which 
might be contrary either to the law, or to the 
statutes, or to the interests of the municipalities 
or of the State. 

It is interesting at this time to note that, among 
the persons consulted by Frere-Orban for the 
elaboration of this project, was the governor of 
the National Bank, Bischoffsheim, whom we 
find later among the initiators of another public 
corporation, the National Interurban Railway 
Company. 

2. The Savings and Annuity Bank 

Scarcely had the "Credit Communal" been 
founded when Frere-Orban proposed the estab- 
lishment of the other great public corporation 
which remains, with the abolition of the octrois, 
,the most remarkable effort of his governmental 
career, the General Savings and Annuity Bank 
(1862-1865). 

His attempt, however, met with active resist- 
ance. He was reproached with wishing to cen- 
tralize everything and create a new monopoly. 
"From progress to progress," cried a deputy, M. 
Julliot, "we shall all be enveloped in the nets of 
the State, the individual will no longer exist in 
our history, and our descendants will have to pay 
an admittance fee to look at a free man/' 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 153 

Although the prbposed charter gave a large 
measure of autonomy to the bank, the opposition 
took great pleasure in confounding it with the 
State itself. They repeated ad nauseam that the 
State was making itself a banker, that the State 
made itself the direct debtor of the depositors, 
that the Savings Bank was only a mask and a 
fiction. And, as the author of the project replied 
that, by the legal device of civil personification, 
he gave the Savings Bank a distinct individuality, 
one of his opponents, M. Denayer, exclaimed: 
"But if this is so, you can erect into civil person- 
alities all the wheels of the Government." 

He did not realize how truly he was speaking. 

The experience of the Credit Communal and 
of the Savings Bank was not slow in showing, 
in fact, that the system inaugurated by Frere- 
Orban presented the greatest advantages and con- 
ferred upon the artificial persons thus created an 
autonomy which was neither a mask nor a 
fiction. 

Let us recall, for example, the fact that in 
1900> that is to say at a time when the Belgian 
government was putting the socialists, so to 
speak, outside the common law, we see the direc- 
tors of the Savings Bank granting to the Maison 
du Peupie of Brussels, through the intermediary 
of the union of the members of the Parti Ouvrier, 



154 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

an advance of 1,200,000 francs for the construc- 
tion of its central building. Now what the Sav- 
ings Bank did, the State, the Government-State, 
certainly would not have done. 

j. The Inter-Urban Railway Company 

The success of the two great creations of 
Frere-Orban in the field of credit gave to the 
Liberal government of 1884 the idea of applying 
analogous formulas to the creation of a national 
inter-urban railway company. v 

The principal initiative in the project was taken 
by M. Bischoffsheim. 

In a pamphlet published by him (1884) in 
collaboration with M. Wellens, the governor of 
the Belgian National Bank, he held that the one 
way to avoid, once for all, in establishing the 
secondary system, the disadvantages of the .plan 
of concessions to private companies and those 
of direct operation by the Government-State, was 
to create a national Interurban Railway Com- 
pany, which should occupy a position analogous 
to that of the "Credit Communal." He said : 

Just as that society deals with the matter of municipal 
loans, so the new company would have the mission of 
centralizing all operations concerning interurban rail- 
ways- it would procure the capital necessary for their 
construction and operation; it will everywhere introduce 
the principles of unity and of strict economy, and finally, 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 155 

it will reserve to the municipalities, the provinces and 
the State the profits from operation. 

The establishment of a company under these condi- 
tions, placed under the control of the authorities, dis- 
misses all idea of stock-jobbing or speculation. Although 
having the form of an industrial corporation, it will 
not have its special character, that of representing pri- 
vate interests. 

In other words the Company, since the Government 
itself has made it, will be concerned only for the 
general interest, meanwhile preserving the advantages 
of private companies, namely, of acting with mpre 
rapidity, with more initiative, of examining projects 
with complete independence, outside of local influences, 
political or otherwise, and finally, by conforming better 
to the necessities engendered by circumstances and 
facts. 

In the thought of its promoters, the interurban 
railway company was therefore to be, like the 
"Credit Communal/' a corporation composed ex- 
clusively of public officers. 

The Parliament, on the contrary, while assur- 
ing the preponderance of the collective interest, 
thought it better to allow private persons to sub- 
scribe a part of the shares. 

The law of May 28, 1884, in fact, revised and 
amended June 24, 1885, authorized the Govern- 
ment to approve the charter, supplementary to 
the law, of a company established at Brussels 
under the name of National Interurban Railway 
Company. 



156 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

It is to this company that the interurban rail- 
ways are conceded by royal decree. 

Under the terms of the charter, the company's 
capital, equal to the cost of the lines to be con- 
structed, and eventually to that of their equip- 
ment, is divided into as many series of shares as 
there may be lines conceded. At least two thirds 
of the shares of each series must be subscribed 
by the State, the provinces and the municipalities. 

In view of the further fact that by far the 
greater part of the capital has been subscribed by 
the State, the provinces and the municipalities, 
we find ourselves confronting a stock company 
made up almost exclusively of public officials 
over whom the State keeps strict control. 

The president of the council of administration 
is appointed by the King to serve six years. The 
other members of the council are named half by 
the King and half by the general meeting of the 
stockholders. The general manager is appointed 
and may be removed by the King. 

As a general rule, the company does not itself 
operate the lines that it constructs, but leases 
them to other companies, in which, oftener than 
not, private interests predominate. 

The tariffs are regulated by the national com- 
pany, subject to the approval of the Government ; 
nevertheless the Government has always the right 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 157 

to raise rates or to forbid their being lowered. 
The Government can enjoin the execution of any 
measure which, in its view, would be contrary to 
the law, to the charter of the company, or to 
the interests of the State. Every year the Min- 
ister of Public Works files With the Chamber of 
Deputies the report of the administrative council 
making known the condition of the company's 
business. 

It is generally admitted that the organization 
created by the laws of 1884-1885 has given really 
remarkable results, considering the rapidity and 
the amplitude with which they have brought 
about the increase of the railway lilies and the 
development of the socially-owned capital. 

But, on the other hand, the policy adopted by 
the national company has raised a sufficient num- 
ber of criticisms, which have been developed by 
M. Gheude, in his remarkable report presented 
to the assembly of delegates of the permanent 
deputations (May, 1909) (page 14) : 

The company, he writes, has, especially in these last 
fifteen years, favored private interests rather than the 
public interest It has given concessions for the opera- 
tion of numerous lines without adjudication, has re- 
nounced the forfeiture clause which restrained improper 
exploitation, and has discouraged instead of promoting 
the effort of municipalities to operate certain neighbor- 
hood lines for themselves. 



158 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

Moreover, instead of itself furnishing electric 
power to the operating companies — which it had 
begun to do with satisfactory results — we have 
seen it abandon the course to which it had com- 
mitted itself, and treat with private companies 
for the purchase of the electric current. 

These abdications to the profit of capitalist 
interests are no less frequent, moreover, in the 
State railways than in the inter-urban railways. 
They result from a state of mind which dominates 
all capitalist institutions. But, taking everything 
into account, the fact remains that the National 
Interurban Railway Company constitutes a very 
happy application of the principle of necessary 
separation between the government of the State 
and the management of public enterprises. 

Also we have seen, in these last years, this 
formula extended to other fields. 

In 1904, for example, Hector Denis proposed 
to create a national coal mining company in the 
north of Belgium, to develop certain coal deposits 
of La Campine. This proposition was not wel- 
comed, and the greater part of the new coal 
fields was handed over to private capitalists. 

But later, taking up another idea of Hector 
Denis, the Government created an interurban 
water company (1913) and a national company 
for the building of low-priced dwellings (1914), 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 159 

The charters of these two companies are mod- 
eled on that of the National Interurbah Railway 
Company, and it is very probable that after the 
war other companies of this sort will be organ- 
ized, in various fields, to assist in national recon- 
struction. 



SECTION II. AUTONOMY QF PUBLIC 
SERVICES 

The question of the autonomy of public serv- 
ices does not date from yesterday. Napoleon 
once said, in speaking of the Bank of France : "I 
wish it to be in the hands of the Government, 
but not too much so." 

And half a century later, when Frere-Orban 
organized the "Credit Communal," the Savings 
and Annuity Bank, and the trust companies for 
the widows and orphans of state functionaries 
and agents, he replied to those who would re- 
proach him with desiring to centralize everything 
in the hands of the Government by recognizing 
in these institutions a distinct individuality, and 
consequently an autonomy more or less extensive. 

But it was naturally when the State, for 
various reasons, was led to nationalize great 
industries, such as the railroads and mines, and 
when the municipalities in their turn multiplied 



160 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

their direct enterprises, that the question opened 
up in all its fullness. 

At first the State merely created new ministers. 
The national enterprises were erected into distinct 
departments. It was attempted to give their 
organization a flexibility greater than that of the 
administrations of the Government-State. Then 
a further step was taken, and in Prussia, for 
example, for the mines, and in Switzerland, 
Italy, France, for the railroads, the principle of 
the autonomy of public services was proclaimed 
and more or less radical consequences drawn 
from it, from the triple view-point of finance, the 
administrative organization and the rights of 
those employed. 



CHAPTER I 

FINANCIAL AUTONOMY 

So long as the confusion between the Govern- 
ment-State and the management-State persists, 
the public services have no budget distinct from 
the general budget, and it is extremely difficult, 
or even impossible, to take account of the real 
financial position of the national enterprises, or, 
mutatis mutandis, the municipal enterprises. 

In Belgium, for example, it was long supposed 
that the railways brought considerable profits to 
the State. The minister Vanden Peereboom was 
called the foster-father of the minister of finance. 
M. Helleputte, one of his successors, said that the 
railway system was "a veritable rhilch cow for 
the Treasury." And on the strength of these 
affirmations, the members of Parliament incess- 
antly demanded lower tariffs for industry and 
commerce, and higher wages for the employees. 
But in his report on the railway budget for 1900 
and in the following reports, M. Jules Renkin 
undertook to put Parliament on its guard against 
this optimism. He maintained that they had been 
enthralled by an illusion, and that the situation 
161 



162 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

was far less brilliant than the system of account- 
ing adopted by the Administration tended to make 
one think. 

Since 1906, moreover, new rules for account- 
ing have been adopted for the railways, which 
cling closer to reality. Now, by applying these 
new formulas retroactively to the seventy-five 
fiscal periods already closed, the Administration 
has arrived at a figure of thirty million francs 
for the total profit. 

This does not at all mean thirty millions of net 
profits, all charges deducted, and it seems, on 
the whole, that the excess of receipts over ex- 
penses just about suffices, in general, to liquidate 
the interest charges for each fiscal period. 
. In other countries, especially Switzerland, at- 
tempts have been made for a long time to put 
an end to the confusion existing between the 
State budgets and the railway budgets. 

In his book "Les Methodes budgetaires d* une 
Democratic," M. de Lichtervelde shows very 
plainly that if strict unity in the budget seemed 
most useful to assure clearness in the accounts 
of the police-State of earlier days, it is no longer 
justified in its primitive form, now that the State 
has taken over new prerogatives, making itself 
a manufacturer, educator, transporter. 

Thus arises the distinction which tends to be 



FINANCIAL AUTONOMY 163 

made more and more between the general budget 
and the supplementary budgets, specializing the 
receipts and expenditures of the various enter- 
prises that the State administers. 

Thus Sweden, which already had a special 
railway budget, separated from the general 
budget in 1912 the posts, the telegraphs, the 
public lands and the water power plants. 

Just so in France, there exist eight supple- 
mentary budgets : Mint, Savings Bank, National 
Printing House, Legion of Honor, Naval Sick 
Benefit Bank, Central School of Arts and Crafts, 
Consolidated Railways, State Railways. The 
supplementary budget of telephones was sup- 
pressed in 1906, but in 1910, M. Steeg introduced 
a bill to re-establish it, urging the necessity for 
the State-employer, to have, like any business 
house, an exact account of its operations, so as 
to be able to borrow, or to build up reserves. 

It would be wrong, however, to consider these 
supplementary budgets as models of their kind. 
Even the accounting system of the railway 
administration is unsatisfactory. "Nevertheless, 
says M. Engelhardt, 1 we have here an enterprise 
whose receipts and expenditures are compared, 
not as formerly in columns of statistics, but in 

1 Engelhardt, L' Autonomic budgetaire des exploitations 
industrielles de l'Etat, p. 58. 



164 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

an operating account. Moreover, there is even 
a plant account. Unfortunately there are com- 
plaints regarding these two accounts." The 
annual operating account may be criticised as too 
often showing net profits that are fictitious ; ex- 
penditures are carried to the plant account which 
ought to be carried in the operating account. As 
for the capital invested, it may be said that the 
State does not know ; it is impossible to value it 
by methods of accounting, and it can not even be 
estimated accurately in documents independent 
of the accounts. 

It is not so with the Swiss federal railways. 
Here we meet complete financial autonomy. The 
Railway Administration has a property of its 
own; if it has not the right to contract directly 
for loans, at least certain loans of the Confedera- 
tion are set aside for the federal railways, which 
bear the charges of interest and amortization. 

Contrary to the practice in Prussia, where the 
railway administration, a fiscal instrument, pours 
its profits into the national treasury, in Switzer- 
land the administration keeps its profits, just as 
it bears its losses, should these occur. 

The accounts of the railroads, says Article 7 of the 
federal law of October 15, 1897, shall be separated from 
those of the other branches of the federal administra- 
tion and kept in such a manner that the financial situa- 
tion may be accurately determined at all times. 



FINANCIAL AUTONOMY 165 

The net profit of the federal railways is appropriated 
first to the payment of interest and to the amortization 
of the debt of the railways. 

Twenty per cent of the remaining surplus shall be 
paid into a special reserve fund, kept distinct from the 
rest of the assets of the federal railways, until this fund 
with its accumulated interest has reached the sum of 
50,000,000 francs. The remaining eighty per cent of the 
surplus must be used in the interest of the federal rail- 
ways to improve and to alleviate the conditions of 
transportation, and especially to reduce the passenger 
and freight rates and to extend the Swiss railway 
system, particularly branch lines. 

When the ordinary receipts with the unexpended cash 
balance do not suffice to pay operating expenses, with 
interest and amortization on the original capital, it is 
permitted to draw from the reserve fund. 

Under these conditions, the railway administra- 
tion does not differ financially from a private 
industrial enterprise except in the fact, quite to 
its advantage, that having no capital stock, it pays 
no dividends, and can apply all its profits to its 
improvement. 

Financial autonomy, however, which aims 
chiefly at an accurate accounting system, and 
serves especially to fix the responsibility of the 
managers, would contribute but little to the 
improvement of public services if administrative 
autonomy were not realized along with it. The 
most remarkable government railway system in 
Europe, and we may even say the most remark- 
able of all European railway systems is the 



166 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

Prussian State Railway, which has not financial 
autonomy, but is characterized by a notable de- 
gree of administrative autonomy. 

It would be manifestly superfluous to apply 
the term financial autonomy, in speaking of 
supplementary budgets in which the receipts and 
expenditures of certain State enterprises are 
specialized. If they have not administrative 
autonomy at the same time, their book-keeping 
individuality may be useful, in affording a more 
exact accounting of the results of their operation ; 
but they remain within the grasp of the Govern- 
ment-State; they do not control the profits that 
they realize ; they may, in spite of their separate 
book-keeping, be constrained by the Government 
to operate in the interest of revenue, rather than 
in the general interest. 



CHAPTER II 

ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 

From the moment when national industries 
take on some importance, the differentiation be* 
tween the authoritarian State and the employing 
State quickly asserts itself. 

Under penalty of being clearly inferior to 
private enterprises, public enterprises must bor- 
row their methods, must detach themselves from 
the constraint of governmental traditions, must 
free themselves from political interference, must 
acquire a liberty of action unknown to the au- 
thoritarian bureaucracies of other governmental 
departments. 

This liberty of action is more or less complete. 
Administrative autonomy has various degrees. 
But wherever there are State industries, the Gov- 
ernment is, sooner or later, led, under the press- 
ure of facts, to give them an individuality distinct 
from that of the State properly so called, the 
State as an organ of authority. 

Such is the case, for example, with the admin- 
istration of mines in Prussia and with most of the 
167 



i 



168 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

State railways, in Europe as in South Africa and 
Australia. 

i. The Administration of Mines in Prussia 
The mining industry of Sarre, which belongs 
to the revenue, has a quite extended administra- 
tive autonomy. The Directing Committee operat- 
ing the mines belonging to the revenue, which 
has charge of the commercial and administrative 
management, exercises functions very similar to 
those of the board of directors of a private com- 
pany. The actual operation of the mines is 
entrusted to engineers having very extended 
powers, while subject to the authority of the 
Directing Committee. 

To enable the reader to appreciate such a 
system, we can not do better than to quote the 
opinion of a French engineer distinctly hostile to 
the statization of coal mines, M. Weiss, who in a 
pamphlet devoted to the operation of the fiscal 
mines of Sarre, concludes in these terms: 

Considered as a whole, the Administration of Mines 
is endowed with a strong organization, which permits 
it to compete in the industrial field with the best man- 
aged private enterprises. We must say that in spite of 
the habits of authority inherent in the race, in spite 
of what may be called Prussian militarism, the Admin- 
istration is highly decentralised; responsibilities are 
well defined: a large initiative is left to the agents who 
carry out orders. . . . The working force is well 
disciplined and profoundly attached to the mine. It is 



ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 169 

through this solid organization that the Prussian State, 
operating the largest mine field in the world, has 
arrived at brilliant results, in spite of the difficulties 
inherent in all State operation. 

Let us hasten to add that, if the Administra- 
tion of the Mines of Sarre may be cited as a 
characteristic example of the tendency which 
exists, even now, to differentiation between the 
State, organ of authority and the State, organ of 
management, we are as far as possible from 
seeing in it a partial application of collectivist 
ideas. 

To begin with, the differentiation is far from 
being complete. The products of the mine are 
sold for the profit of the Government. The 
exploitation has a clearly fiscal character. Its 
essential aim is to provide resources for the 
State, for its army and navy. Any other con- 
sideration, such as the advantage of the public 
or the improvement of conditions for its work- 
men, is for it absolutely secondary. In the second 
place, the laborers are still wage-workers, labor- 
ing for the capitalist State, instead of laboring 
for private capitalists. They have no participa- 
tion in the management of the enterprise. They 
are not even represented on the Directing Com- 
mittee. They have not the right to organize, 
much less to unite in one union. They complain 



170 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

that they are not so well paid, and they are in 
any case not so free as the workers in -privately 
owned industry, for example the workers of the 
Rhenish- Westphalian Union. 

2. The State Railways 

There are few countries today where the 
administration of state railways has not a certain 
autonomy as regards the central government. An 
admirable example of administrative decentral- 
ization is given us by Prussia, with its railway 
system subdivided into twenty-one local divisions, 
each enjoying the same autonomy and the same 
initiative as the local administrations of the 
mines of Sarre, determining for themselves the 
character of their material, going into the market 
for the delivery of their locomotives, their cars 
and their fuel, and deciding matters relating to 
conditions of traffic and to claims, without re- 
ferring them, otherwise than by way of informa- 
tion, to the central Administration. But nowhere 
else has such progress been made in this direction 
as in Switzerland. 

Here we meet, at the outset, the same decen- 
tralization as in Prussia. The railway system is 
divided into five districts. Over each district is 
placed a directorate of three members, who 
supervise its management, prepare its budget and 



ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 171 

make out its operating accounts, build extensions, 
acquire property, dispensing with competitive 
bids on amounts up to 100,000 francs, and regu- 
late disputes as to the applications of tariffs and 
the loss, damage or delay of shipments. Along 
with each directorate there is a district council, 
composed of fifteen to twenty members, nom- 
inated by the cantons or sub-cantons of the dis- 
trict, which passes on all credits outside of or in 
excess of the budget, and which approves the 
budgets, accounts and annual reports of the 
directorate of the district. 

But just as in Prussia the central administra- 
tion of the railways is directly dependent upon 
the Minister of Public Works, so in Switzerland, 
the general direction of the system and the 
responsibility for low-priced service belongs to a 
special authority established by law ; the General 
Directorate of the Federal Railways, which, on 
principle, represents them as against third parties 
in administrative and legal matters. 

This directorate prepares the annual budget, 
balances the general accounts and edits the report 
of operations. It examines and executes new 
undertakings, it prepares plans and acquires 
operating material, it closes agreements with 
other transport lines, makes out the time-tables, 
elaborates the tariffs, regulates the services, con- 



172 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

trols the receipts, supervises the district directo- 
rates, the most important decisions of which it 
ratifies. It consists of a college of five members, 
chosen for six years (their functions coincide 
with those of the two houses of a legislature), 
invested with an authority and a power which 
place them above the Federal Council from which 
they emanate. "The president of the General 
Directorate," says M. Gariel, 1 "is the real chief 
of the federal railways." 

A council of administration of which a ma- 
jority of the members are elected by the cantons 
and who represent especially the business element, 
assists the general plans for buildings and ma- 
chines, the maps of new lines, the propositions 
for improvements in operation ; it approves con- 
struction and delivery contracts in excess of 
500,000 francs; it revises the budget plans, it 
examines the accounts and the reports of opera- 
tion, and transmits them to the Federal Council. 
It also fixes the basic rules for figuring salaries, 
and frames the charters of banks for the benefit 
of railway employees. 

That the autonomy of the federal railways is 
a real thing, is shown by the conflicts which break 

1 Gariel, La Centralisation tconomique en Suisse. Denxilme 
fascicule; Let Vhemina <fe fer fedtrauw. 



ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 173 

out quite frequently between their manager and 
the Federal Council. 

As M. de Lichtervelde points out in his inter- 
esting study, the Swiss railway administration 
regards itself as an independent authority. When 
it writes to the Federal Council, remarks a parlia- 
mentarian who thinks it is going too far, it 
speaks of "your" functionaries, quite as if it were 
not itself composed of State officials. In men- 
tioning the railway department and the federal 
authorities, the report of the management desig- 
nates them as "authorities of surveillance." In 
1908 the Department of Railways was obliged to 
threaten the federal railways — remember this 
means the railways of the Swiss State — to make 
them defer to the courts ; to the great scandal of 
many parliamentarians, certain commissions were 
very ill received by the railway authorities; the 
council of administration treated the remarks of 
one commission, from the National Council, as 
"unjust attacks"; they spoke of its "superficial 
resolutions," of its inconceivable frivolity. 

Let us add that this independent bearing does 
not fail to appear excessive to many politicians. 

Thus in 1908, at a moment when the situation 
of the railroads seemed rather bad, causing gen- 
eral irritation, parliamentary commissions were 
appointed to inquire into the causes of the deficit. 



174 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

The General Directorate was accused of compro- 
mising the credit of the Confederation, and the 
Federal Council frankly complained of being 
despoiled. 

Voicing these complaints, M. Secretan said 
(December 8) at the National Council: 

Your commission has arrived at the conclusion that 
there is too great a tendency to make the General 
Directorate and the Administration of the federal rail- 
ways independent of the Federal Council; there has 
been a failure to maintain between this Administration 
and the Public Powers the necessary contact and the 
indispensable subordination. With their General Direc- 
torate, almost omnipotent, with their Council of Admin- 
istration, which assumes toward the Federal Assembly 
the air of a petty independent parliament, the federal 
railways today constitute a State within the State, which 
negotiates with the Federal Council, and endures with 
difficulty any control by the Chambers., It is high time 
that the Federal Council resume control of the whole 
enterprise, that the General Directorate be immediately 
subordinated to it, and that we eliminate from the 
present organization the useless and even hurtful com- 
plexities which exist in no other federal administration. 1 

It seems however that since then the criticisms 
have become much milder. The Government is 
indeed planning a revision of the law, but it seems 
that the principal changes are to be rather in the 
direction of simplifying the too complicated in- 
terior administration of the railroads. 

Moreover, the crisis through which these 



i De Lichtervelde, p. 142. 



ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 175 

passed in 1908 is over. The profits have un- 
expectedly improved, and if certain persons still 
think it might be useful to increase the super- 
visory power of the Federal Council, it is certain 
that the autonomy of the management has never 
been seriously endangered. 

It is moreover to this autonomy that non- 
partisan observers, like Lichtervelde and Leener, 1 
attribute the satisfying results obtained during 
these last years. 

As they point out, the Swiss railways are 
known and appreciated by innumerable travelers 
who visit them each year. They take pleasure in 
praising the regularity of the service and the 
facilities offered the public. On the other hand, 
a financial equilibrium seems to be established. 

The balance sheet for 1910, writes M. Lichtervelde, 
shows a considerable profit; that for 1911 is announced 
under favorable auspices, and a profit of 7,000,000 francs 
for 1912 is now expected. Better still, it has been 
found possible to reduce expenses considerably. Thanks 
to the accounting system used, the trouble has been 
brought to light and the urgent need of a remedy has 
been recognized by all. The General Directorate has 
succeeded in reducing, from 1908 to 1910, the loco- 
motive-mile cost by 5%, while the passenger-mileage 
has increased by about 14% and the freight-mileage by 
about 8%. It has succeeded in stopping short the 
growing increase in the number of employees, in reduc- 
ing the operating cost to 65.48% despite an increase in 

1 De Leener, La Politique des Transports en Belgique, p. 65. 



176 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

wages, and in diminishing the cost of track maintenance 
by a better disposal of the force employed. All these 
measures would have been impossible but for the 
autonomy which removed the authorities responsible 
for the railways from the pressure of job-hunting 
politicians, for whom the suppression of a useless train 
or a superfluous extension is a personal check and a 
danger of non-re-election. 

And M. de Leener adds : 

We have had occasion to verify on the spot the 
accuracy of the observations gathered by M. de Lichter- 
velde. The whole administration of the federal rail- 
ways is animated by the spirit which assures the success 
of great industrial enterprises. 

Let us add that all possible measures are taken 
to reduce political interference to a minimum. 
The Federal Council names only the five mem- 
bers of the General Directorate and the twenty- 
five members of the district directorates, and 
these functionaries, again, are appointed for a 
term of not less than six years. All other ap- 
pointments are removed from political influence, 
and are made on the principle of decentralization, 
which in a general way governs the organization 
of the enterprise: the personnel of the central 
administration is named by the General Directo- 
rate, and that of each district by the district 
directorate. No appointment is made either by 
the Council of Administration or by the district 
councils ; the Council of Administration presents 
its candidates for the General Directorate, but 



ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 177 

the Federal Council is not obliged to ratify its 
choice. 

It is to be regretted that such examples do not 
seem to have had much influence upon the de- 
cisions of the special commission appointed in 
1912 by the Belgian government "for the pur- 
pose of studying under all its aspects the ques- 
tion of autonomy for the State railways and 
shipping, together with all related questions." 

J. The Project of a National Railway 
System in Belgium 

In its report offered on December 2, 1913, in 
which politicians and officials sat side by side 
with manufacturers and technical experts, this 
commission concluded in the clearest possible 
terms in favor of autonomy. 

It proposes, ia effect, that a responsible per- 
sonality, the National State Railway Administra- 
tion, be substituted for the Minister of Railways, 
with a view to the conservation, the operation and 
the extension of the State railways. 

The National Administration would not be- 
like for example the National Interurban Railway 
Company — a corporation, the existence of the 
latter presupposing the union of several stock- 
holders, whereas in the present case, the State 
alone is interested. 



178 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

The law would create an organism of a special 
kind, and would clothe it with civil personality 
with regard to the various mandates that will 
devolve upon it. Nevertheless, the National Rail- 
way Administration would possess nothing of its 
own. It would acquire, hold and alienate in the 
name of and for the account of the State. It 
would be, in fact, the agent of the State. The 
duration of its existence would depend on the 
legislator. It would be managed by a council of 
administration and supervised by a board of 
commissioners. 

The members of the Council of Administration, 
to the number of fifteen, should be appointed, 
and if need be, removed by the King, at the 
instance of the Ministers of Railways and of 
Finance. They could not take part in the Parlia- 
ment, nor fill positions with salaries paid by the 
State. 

The members of the board of commissioners, 
to the number of seven, should be named by the 
House of Representatives (four) and the Senate 
(three). They might belong to the Parliament. 

Under these conditions, the function of the 
Minister of Railways becomes for the most part 
supervisory. He remains strictly responsible for 
the observation of the laws. His intervention is 
required in all operations involving the resources 



ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 179 

of the Treasury or the credit of the State. His 
approval is necessary before the budgets can be 
presented to Parliament. 

As for the legislative Chambers, they con- 
tinue, by adopting, rejecting or amending the 
budgets and the accounts, to exercise their 
sovereign activity. But, in fact, the Council of 
Administration finds itself invested with great 
freedom of action. It appoints the executive 
staff, it determines the changes to be made in the 
installations, including fixtures and rolling stock, 
and in the time tables, tariffs and conditions of 
transport, as well as in the organization of the 
service. 1 

A superficial examination of the project permits 
us to say that if it realizes financial autonomy (it 
has merely copied the Swiss organization), it 
offers a mere appearance of administrative au- 
tonomy. It maintains all the centralization which 
is the dominant vice of the present system; far 
from tending to the suppression of political inter- 
ference, it re-enforces it. All the decisions, all 
the appointments which today belong to the 
minister are assigned, it is true, to the .Council of 
Administration, but all the members of this are 
named by the minister. The political party, 

1 See text of the project In the Bulletin du OomiU central 
induitriel, January, 1914. 



180 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

which corrupts the present organization, will 
function with more intensity and cynicism, since 
the administrators, agents of the minister, will 
no longer have to answer for their acts before 
the Chamber. 

. So it is to be hoped that after the war, while 
resisting the attempts of those who will propose 
to turn over our railways to private capitalists, 
Belgium will find a way to assume to them an 
administrative autonomy which will not invite 
such criticism^. That will be one of the most 
important tasks of our national reconstruction. 



CHAPTER III 

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 

The third question which arises, when the 
State, making itself a manufacturer, employs a 
considerable working force, is to know whether, 
from the point of view of freedom of association, 
and especially freedom to join unions, these 
laborers are to be treated like their comrades in 
private industry, or are, on the contrary, to be 
excluded from the common law and undergo, by 
reason of their position as State agents, various 
restrictions upon the ordinary liberties of citizens. 

Almost everywhere, if not everywhere, at the 
start, the governments have decided this question 
in the restrictive sense. They have refused to 
make any distinction between the State, organ of 
authority, and the State, organ of management. 
They have been unwilling to see in the workers 
of their industrial or technical services, like the 
posts, telegraphs and railways, anything but 
officials like other officials, making up part of a 
hierarchic organization, and unable to form 
unions without subjecting themselves to the 
penal laws which punish combinations of officials. 
181 



182 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

Thus, in the French Chamber, on November 
17, 1891, M. Jules Roche, Minister of Commerce, 
said : 

I do not at all recognize the right of government 
workers to organize under the trade union law, because 
this law does not apply to them, since if they formed 
themselves into a union, it would be against the national 
representation itself that they would be organizing. 
The trade union law has given laborers this liberty, 
because, two private interests confronting each other, 
that of the employers on one side, and that of the 
laborers, on the other side, it was necessary to assign 
to all interests the right to use their natural liberty to 
further their own interests. 

The employees of the State, for their part, do not 
confront a private interest, but the general interest, the 
highest of all: the interest of the State itself, repre- 
sented by the public powers, by the Chamber and by the 
Government ; consequently if they could take advantage 
of the trade union law, it would be against the nation 
itself, against the general interest of the country, against 
the national sovereignty that they would be organizing 
their struggle. 1 

Such an argument, however, took too little 
account of realities to have any chance to resist 
for long the efforts of the State laborers to win 
freedom of association and freedom to form 
unions. 

It was indeed possible by virtue of the common 
law to prevent combinations of the officials of 
the Government-State; but to forbid laborers in 



1 Barthou, 1/ Action syndicate, p. 137. Paris, Rousseau, 
1904, 



THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 183 

tobacco or match factories, metal-workers in the 
arsenals, or even postmen and telegraphers to 
form unions, was to create a formidable argument 
against any extension, even when necessary, of 
the economic functions of the State ; since on that 
hypothesis, every passage from private exploita- 
tion to State exploitation would have had for its 
consequence a diminution of the liberties and the 
fundamental rights of the working class. 

So we soon saw, under the pressure of those 
interested, who demanded energetically the same 
rights for all laborers, public or private, the 
application by jurists to this new phenomenon of 
the classic distinction between acts of authority, 
of public power, and acts of management. 

"These last," said M. Laferriere, "are those 
which the Administration accomplishes in its 
character of * manager and steward of public 
services, and not as depositary of a portion of 
sovereignty." x 

Now, from the point of vview of the right of 
association, of liberty to form unions, it seems 
logical to treat in two different ways the agents 
of authority, holding a portion of the public 
power, and agents of management, having no 
participation in the public power: 

1 Cf. Paul Errera, Traitti de Droit public Beige, 1909, p. 
818 et seq. 



184 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

If it is a question of the agents of authority, says 
M. Maurice Bourguin, the relations existing between 
them and the State are not contractual relations, they 
are relations of sovereignty. It is impossible, conse- 
quently, to recognize in the agents of authority the same 
rights as in other citizens, notably the right to form 
trade unions; a union formed among agents of the 
public powers, capable of checking or suspending the 
exercise of sovereignty, would be incompatible with the 
principles of public justice. . . . If it is a question 
of agents of management having no participation in the . 
public powers, they find themselves bound to the State 
by a veritable contract for the hiring of services. Their 
relations with the State appear to me to be of the same 
nature as those of a laborer or an ordinary employee 
with his employer, and I perceive no precise reason in 
the texts and general principles of law for refusing 
them the ordinary right of citizens, the right to defend 
their interests, face to face with their employer, the 
State, by means of trade unions. 1 

This distinction, moreover, is today admitted 
by every one, implicitly or explicitly. In the very 
countries, like Belgium, where freedom of asso- 
ciation is still' subjected to restrictions that we 
regard as unjustifiable, the Government recog-- 
nizes that these restrictions "should be more or 
less extensive according to the services in ques- 
tion," and that "all State employees are not offi- 
cials in the restricted sense of the term." * 

But difficulties arise when it comes to marking 



1 Bourguin, De l'Appication des Lois ouvrleres aux ouvriers 
et employes de l'Etat. Conferences faites an mois de juin 
1912. a l'Ecole professionelle superieure des Postes et 
Telegraphes. 

* See Expose 1 des motifs du projet de loi sur la liberty 
dissociation des C P. T, T., 14 mar 1910, 



THE AUTONOMY OP THE WORKING FORCE 185 

the precise point at which appointment to public 
office begins and contract for the hire of services 
ends. As M. Fontaine points out,' there are be- 
tween the public administrations and the clearly 
industrial operations of the State, certain serv- 
ices the character of which is contestable. Every 
one will agree that generals, magistrates and 
prefects are officials, that workers in distilleries 
or in match or tobacco factories operated by 
the State are not, but one need only refer to 
the ministerial bulletins or the records of 
French jurisprudence to become convinced that 
the intermediate cases — such for example as 
employees of the revenue department, road- 
workers, postal clerks or carriers — are ex- 
tremely numerous. 

On the other hand, even if it be admitted that 
industrial workers employed by the State ought 
to enjoy, as regards the right of association, a 
greater liberty than officials properly so called, it 
does not necessarily follow that they should be 
accorded the same rights as the laborers of pri- 
vate industry; the Administration, for example, 
may under certain conditions require that permis- 
sion be first obtained before organizing into 
unions, or may refuse the right to strike, or even 
go so far as to make striking a crime. 

•Louage du travail, Nos. 136 to 170. 



186 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

This question of the right of association for 
State workers is therefore a delicate and complex 
one. General formulas may aid in solving it. 
They do not relieve us from examining, for each 
category of State employees, the applications that 
must be made of the basic principle of the separa- 
tion of the governmental State from the indus- 
trial State, or, to use Saint-Simon's phrase, the 
government of men from the administration of 
things. But among these categories, there is one 
which, in all countries, attracts particular atten- 
tion, through the number of workers belonging 
in it, and through the gravity of the consequences 
which may result for the whole nation from the 
exercise of freedom to form unions: that is the 
category of communications and transportation 
(telegraphers, telephone operators, postmen and 
railroad workers). 

In Belgium for example, it is with reference to 
these workers exclusively that the Government 
thought it necessary to draft a law, and while 
awaiting the vote on it, to adopt special regulative 
measures. 

We have published elsewhere an account of a 
criticism of these measures. 1 We will confine 
ourselves here to a few general observations. 

*E. Vandervelde, La Liberte syndicate et la personnel de 
l'Etat en Belgique. Gand, Volksdrukkerij, 1913. 



the autonomy of the working force 187 

1. Belgium 

When in 1881 the employees of the railroads, 
posts and telegraphs attempted for the first time 
to create a federation having for its aim the im- 
provement of their condition and the defense of 
their common interests, the Liberal minister 
Sainctelette formally forbade them to associate 
themselves. He based this prohibition on the 
fact that "collective demands are prohibited as 
incompatible with administrative discipline. It 
is inadmissible, moreover, for agents of the State 
to organize an instrument of pressure upon the 
Government and the Chambers." 

Later, in 1891 and 1892, new attempts having 
developed, the minister Vanden Peereboom re- 
newed the former prohibitions. 

It required more than fifteen years before the 
governmental ideas, under pressure from the 
Parliament, were modified to a certain extent. 
On February 5, 1908, on a question raised by the 
Socialist deputy Anseele, the Chamber adopted 
a resolution refusing State employees the right to 
strike, but proclaiming that they "have the right 
to associate themselves freely to the greatest 
extent compatible with order and discipline." 

As a result of this vote, the Government 
proposed a law according, but with many re- 
strictions, a legal status to the unions of State 



188 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

employees, and, as a temporary measure, the 
Minister of Railroads, Posts and Telegraphs 
issued an order (March 9, 1910) on the right 
of association of its employees. 

This order, moreover, sanctions the principle 
of the right of association, but only with restric- 
tions and prohibitions which deprive it of almost 
every possible application. 

The employees may associate themselves, but 
they must refrain from all political action, from 
any attack on acts or decisions of the Administra- 
tion, from any measure of such nature as to 
obstruct the enforcement of orders, and from any 
demonstration with a view to obtain, in favor of 
administrative reforms, the support of persons 
outside the Administration. On the other hand, 
the Government claims the right to impose upon 
the trade unions the obligation to split themselves 
up into as many groups as there are distinct 
specialties in a category of employees. For 
t example, the local and rural carriers, the carriers 
on probation, and the postal clerks must form 
three distinct associations. Moreover, the asso- 
ciations must not federate. Finally, the em- 
ployees must not attend, even as simple auditors, 
at political meetings organized by outsiders, to 
discuss the administrative situation of the State 
employees. 



THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 189 

Is it surprising that, under these conditions, 
the railway and postal employees are not satis- 
fied? They continue their effort to obtain real 
freedom to form unions, and they invoke in sup- 
port of their argument the example of most of 
the countries of western Europe. As special 
examples we cite France and England. 

2. France 

In France, as elsewhere, the Government re- 
fused, for a long time, to agree that freedom of 
association be granted to State employees, even 
to those exercising no authority. It was not until 
May 22, 1894, that, contrary to the advice of the 
minister Casimir-Perier, who resigned, the Cham- 
ber adopted the following resolution : 

"Whereas, the law of 1884 on trade unions 
applies to workipen and employees of State in- 
dustries, as well as to those in private industry, 
the Government is requested to respect it and to 
facilitate its operation." 

Th$ result of this resolution is that the laborers 
and employees of the industrial and commercial 
enterprises of the State, the departments and the 
municipalities have freedom to organize unions. 

But, as a matter of fact, the Administration 
and the courts have made rulings and rendered 
decisions that are exceedingly variable on the 



190 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

point of determining which are the State em- 
ployees that ought to be regarded as workers in 
industrial and commercial enterprises, and not 
as officials excluded from the benefits of the law 
of 1884. 

Regarding particularly the employees of the 
Department of Public Works, the following note 
from M. Fontaine, manager of the Labor Office, 
defines the situation which has resulted for the 
different categories of workers: 

The railway workers are organized in trade unions, 
which have always figured in the successive editions of 
the "Year Book of Unions," published by the Minister 
of Labor: first, General Association of State Railway 
Workers, founded in 1899, indicated in the edition of 
1910-1911 as enrolling 3,225 members and publishing a 
monthly journal; second, Federation of Mechanics, 
Motormen and Conductors of the State Electric (rail- 
ways), dating from 1906 and enrolling 3,370 members. 

The French State seems to have made no opposition 
to the organization of these unions. 

As regards the postal and telegraph workers, the 
question is altogether different. The French Govern- 
ment has admitted the legality of unions of laborers, 
but has contested that of the unions of employees or 
clerks. 

In the "Year Book of Unions" appear the Union of 
Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Workers, established 
in 1899, enrolling 5,750 members, and the Manual 
Laborer s* Union of Posts, Telegraph and Telephones, 
established in 1905, enrolling 1,825 members. 

On the contrary, the National Union of Postal, Tele- 
graph and Telephone Employees does not figure in this 
annual, its dissolution for illegality having been pro- 



THE AUTONOMY OF THEWORKING FORCE 191 

nounced July 29, 1906, by the Correctional Tribunal 
of the Seine. 

But the French Government has never refused to the 
postal employees, as to all other employees in its service, 
the right to form associations governed, not by the 
trade union law, but by the law for incorporating 
associations. The General Association of Postal Em- 
ployees, thus constituted, has been allowed to present to 
the Administration the grievances of the employees, just 
as the laborers' union presented the demands of the 
laborers. 

There are thus in France two distinct systems, 
that of the railway workers and laborers in the 
postal service, who have the right to form trade 
unions, and that of the clerks and carriers, who 
have not that right, but who enjoy, to the fullest 
extent,*the right of association established by the 
common law, under the statute of 1901. 
3. England 

The question does not arise in England, where 
the railroads are operated by private capitalists, 
except in the case of postal employees. It has 
been decided, for the last six years, on the lines 
of the most complete freedom of association. 
The State employees not only have the right to 
organize as they see fit for the defense of their 
common interests, but their Trade Unions may, 
if they wish, take part in political action : several 
of them are on the list of the societies affiliated 
with the Labour Party. On the other hand the 



192 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

societies of this kind attached to the Postoffice 
have, since 1906, been officially recognized by the 
Government. 

From a circular of the Postmaster General 
dated April 14, 1910, (Official Recognition of 
Postoffice Servants' Trade-Union), we quote as 
follows : 

The circular of the Postoffice, dated February 13, 1906, 
announced that the Postmaster General was ready to 
recognize any association or federation of postoffice 
servants duly constituted, and that he was prepared to 
receive representatives of the members or delegates of 
these associations, or of their secretary (in the service 
or otherwise) upon all matters relative either to the 
general administration, or to the interests of the various 
classes represented by the association. This recognition 
was admitted by Mr. Buxton solely as an experiment. 

The Postmaster General is happy to state that the 
experiment of the four years just past justifies the 
extension of the limits within which <any recognized 
association should be allowed to send representatives. 

Desiring to learn whether the satisfaction of 
the Postmaster General was shared by the em- 
ployees under him, we addressed an inquiry to 
the secretary of the Postmen's Federation, Mr. 
Stuart, who answered as follows: 

"1. Are the Postmen allowed to organize 
freely?" 

"Yes, entirely so. This right was legally 
recognized many years ago, but has been prac- 
tically conceded to them only since 1890. Unions 



THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 193 

had already been organized before that time, but 
their formation had been severely discouraged 
and their leaders often victimized. In 1890, the 
Postmaster General, the late Cecil Raikes, de- 
clared: 'There is no regulation forbidding the 
postmen to organize for the defense of their 
interests and the redress of their grievances.' A 
little later the regulations requiring that the au- 
thorities be notified of the meetings of postmen, 
and permitting the Postmaster General to be 
represented at them, were abolished. Since then, 
no attempt has been made to interfere with our 
rights. In 1893, however, two postmen were 
dismissed under pretext of breach of discipline, 
but really on account of their union activity. But 
these are the only cases that have occurred since 
1890, and we have no reason to think that future 
incidents of this kind are to be apprehended." 

"2. Do the postmen's unions benefit from 
common-law legislation?" 

"Practically, the answer is affirmative. Legally, 
the question is doubtful. The law is not definitely 
fixed on the point. In fact, thq postmen's asso- 
ciations have all the privileges of ordinary unions, 
and one or two advantages that these do not 
possess. Thus, for example, the postal unions do 
not come under the so-called Osborne decision, 



194 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

forbidding unions to appropriate funds for their 
parliamentary representation." 

"3. Can the postmen go on strike as freely as 
the miners?" 

' "Legally, there is no difference. There have 
been, moreover, one or two partial strikes of little 
importance in the Postoffice. But a general strike 
'is improbable, in view of the facility with which 
•the leaders of the associations can approach the 
Postmaster General and the other authorities of 
the Postoffice." 

4. Summary and Conclusions 

There is evidently a world-wide difference be- 
tween the freedom of association recognized for 
State employees in England and even in France 
—or in Switzerland, Holland and the Scandi- 
navian countries — and the restrictive system of 
liberty to unionize which still exists in Belgium. 
The Belgian Government certainly recognizes in 
principle the legitimacy and usefulness of the 
trade unions of the C. P. T. T., but it claims 
to reserve to itself the right to limit their field of 
action and their recruiting field, to divide them 
into as many groups as there are categories and 
distinct specialties among the C. P. T. T., to 
prevent the federation of the groups thus split 
up, and to restrain their activity to the mere de- 



THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 195 

f ense of their trade interests in the strictest sense. 

To justify these derogations of the common 
law, it is said that if the so-called trade unions 
of State employees came to include the most di- 
verse categories of workers or even all the work* 
ers connected with an administration of the State, 
such a general association would no longer be a 
trade union, since all the trades, all the positions, 
would be confounded in it: "It would be noth- 
ing more than a mob of the persons employed 
by the administration, assembled with a view to 
exercising by their numbers a pressure on the 
members of Parliament and on the administra- 
tive authority." 

No one will deny this. But it is absurd to 
suppose that on the day when State employees* 
come to enjoy the liberty to organize on the same 
terms as the laborers in private industry, they 
would make a use of that liberty which would 
be the very negation of it. Is it not plain, in fact, 
that if the letter carriers, the telegraphers, the 
telephone workers and the railway workers, for 
example, were merged in the same association, 
they would put themselves, by that fact, into a 
position where they would find it absolutely 
impossible to defend their own professional 
interests? As M. Paul-Boncour, former Min- 
ister of Labor, observed very justly : "The closest 



196 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

solidarity is that uniting those who work at the 
same trade : that is expressed by the union ; what 
interests us most is to protect the labor which 
assure life to us: It is the union that permits 
this." 

Nothing then leads us to expect that, if the 
State workers were free, they would mix into one 
single association. What is true is that they 
would put an end to the system of crumbling into 
indefinitely small fractions which the Administra- 
tion imposes on them today to make them power- 
less. The postmen, for example, would reconsti- 
tute their united organization. The laborers on 
the roads and public works would perhaps form 
a single association. And without doubt the 
various trade unions of the C. P. T. T., or the 
railroads, on the one hand, and of the P. T. T. 
on the other, would join, for the defense of their 
common interests, into a single federation. 

But that is precisely what the Belgian govern- 
ment fears. The "syndicalism of functionaries" 
inspires it with a profound distrust. This is 
nothing less than an attempt at substituting trade 
associations for the Administration itself : 

They would no longer be associations composed of 
workers for the Administration ; they would be fractions 
of the Administration. Their sum-total would consti- 
tute the Administration itself. They would be "auton- 
omous/ 9 This program might not be realized imme- 



THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 197 

diately, but its partisans hope to realize it with the 
briefest delay possible. These ideas do not exist, in 
general, among our workers, except in a confused state. 
Still it is necessary to point them out, for they have 
been manifested, on certain occasions, by an interfer- 
ence, direct although unreflecting, of certain associations 
with the proper attributes of the Administration. 

In other countries, the syndicalism of functionaries 
constitutes a veritable doctrine which tends to "dis- 
establish" the State, to give the postoffice department to 
the postmen, telegraphy to the telegraphers, the navy to 
the sailors, the railroads to the railroad men. The 
public services would be treated like private industries, 
or the trade would be organized for the profit of those 
who work at it 

The functionaries, recruiting their numbers at their 
own discretion, without the intervention of any authority, 
would operate at their own pleasure the administrative 
services, which would become the administrations of the 
persons interested. 

The Government would fail in all its duties if it did 
not combat such doctrines. If one can imagine a system 
where the laborers would be proprietors of the factory 
— and all those who have tried to start co-operatives of 
production know what enormous difficulties stand in the 
way of applying this very seductive idea — it is contrary 
to every conception of the State to turn over the Admin- 
istration to the functionary, for here the function is not 
created for the greatest profit of him who exercises it, 
but solely for the service of the nation, in the general 
interest 

The syndicalism of functionaries, as certain persons 
understand it, reverses this conception, the only ad- 
missible one, of the public function; no one can admit 
it without desiring the ruin of the country. 1 



1 Projet de loi No. 121, p. 8. 



198 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

As to this we have to say that if what is called 
the "syndicalism of functionaries/' although it is 
really a question of the syndicalism of workers 
who are not functionaries, had such aims and 
tended to such consequences, the socialists would 
not be the last to oppose it. We do not desire 
the railroad for the railroad men or the postoffice 
for the postmen, any more than the mine for the 
miners or weaving for the weavers. To use a 
phrase of M. Briand, we admit that the public 
domain and machinery are "instituted for the 
benefit of all, and not for the special use of those 
to whom they are entrusted." x 

Also there should be no question of allowing 
the State workers to "operate at their own pleas- 
ure" the railroads, the posts, the telegraphs or 
the telephones. They should have, in our opinion, 
the right to organize freely for the defense of 
their common interests, but we do not propose to 
sacrifice the general interests to these special 
interests, and we repeat emphatically that the 
manager of a national industry, if he found him- 
self confronted with excessive demands, would 
have not only the right but the duty to oppose 



i Chamber of Deputies, session of 1910, No. 126. BUI OB 
the status of railway employees, p. 5. 



THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 199 

them energetically in the name of that general 
interest.* 

In short, the type toward which, in our view, 
the organization of the socialized industries 
should evolve, is not the "co-operative of produc- 
tion," whose members, being associated only with 
each other, are associated against every one else, 
but the co-operative of consumption, in which the 
final decision belongs not to the employees but 
to the general assembly of the co-operators. 

In the great co-operative which the railway 
system is, or ought to be, for example, all the 
citizens, consumers of transportation, are repre- 
sented by the manager of the system, and he must 
direct the enterprise, with the collaboration of the 
workers, just as in our socialist co-operatives the 
manager elected by the general assembly, and 
holding his powers of management from it, 
directs the enterprise with the collaboration of 
the working force of laborers and employees. 
But if, in either case, the directing power must 
come from the consumers, from the collectivity, 
then the collectivity or the consumers, of whom 
the working force constitute a part, ought to be 
model employers, and the first example which 

* Understand that we are here working on the hypothesis 
of a democratic State, in which the rights of the workers in 
national industries would be fully protected, without at- 
tempting for the moment to forecast what might be a socialist 
system of collective labor. 



200 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

this collective employer should give to other 
employers, is to recognize the full and complete 
liberty of those whom it employs to associate 
themselves for the defense of their common 
interests. 

True, the further objection is urged, that the 
industry of the railroads — or of the posts, tele- 
graphs or telephones — is not a mere industry 
like the others, but is a "public service," the 
interruption of which has the most serious 
consequences for the community, and that for 
this reason, nothing could be more dangerous 
than to recognize for the workers employed in 
these branches of industry the "right to organ- 
ize," because the right to organize had for its 
logical complement the "right to strike." It is 
for this reason that in 1898, in the Belgian Cham- 
ber, M. Bergerem, Minister of Justice, refused 
to grant legal recognition to such trade unions as 
might be organized among workers in public 
industries: in his view, the trade union was un- 
thinkable without the right to strike; now, con- 
siderations of principle and of public interest are, 
he held, are opposed to the recognition of such a 
right for State employees. 

This argument, moreover, is not admitted by 
the present Government. In the discussions of 
its proposed laws relating to associations organ- 



THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 201 

ized among the employees of the C. P. T. T\, it 

declares the contrary : 

The union, it says, has been regarded too exclusively 
as a school for strikes. It is true that the strike can 
not be made effective without an organization of the 
laborers, but the latter may exist without producing the 
former, and the trade union may, to the great profit of 
the laborers, devote itself to a different mission from 
that of preparing for or provoking conflict. 

It is however beyond doubt that, if the Belgian 
government refuses to its employees the freedom 
to organize, if it imposes on their trade unions 
the system of preliminary permission, if it takes 
in their case all sorts of precautions of which 
the effect, if not the intention, is to obstruct their 
normal development, it is largely because it fears 
that strong associations would be tempted to re- 
sort some day to the strike, for securing the 
triumph of their demands. 

Moreover, we should not be expressing our 
whole thought if we did not admit that, in fact, 
freedom to organize has as its corollary the right 
to resort to the strike. So we should oppose with 
all our strength any laws of exception which 
might tend, as regards the workers in socialized 
industries, to erect the fact of striking into a 
crime. 

But doea it follow that under the present 
system of common law, the collectivity finds itself 



202 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

without defense against State employees — rail- 
road men or postmen for example — who might 
try to abuse the fact of their being indispensable 
to exercise, by concerted cessation from work, an 
unjustifiable pressure on the government? 

Here again, a comparison with the co-opera- 
tives will help make our meaning clear. It may 
happen and it does happen that conflicts arise 
between the managers of a co-operative — even 
socialist — and the members of the working force. 
These conflicts, indeed, are relatively rare. At- 
tempts are made on both sides to prevent them, 
or if they break out, to settle them, in a spirit of 
broad conciliation. But if they persist, what is 
the situation? The employees, who generally 
belong to the union of their trade, go on strike. 
That is their unquestioned right. Only, the man- 
agers of the co-operative, backed by their general 
assembly, have the right to fill the places of the 
strikers, and naturally this means of defense is 
more effective in proportion as the conditions of 
employment are more favorable to the workers. 

Now, what happens at present in our co- 
operatives is an image of what happens, or would 
happen, in a democratic State, remember we are 
not saying in a Socialist State, in which the work- 
ers in socialized industries would fully enjoy the 
right of association and of combination. They 



THE AUTONOMY QF THE WORKING FORCE 203 

would, it is true, constitute a veritable power. 
They would be in a position to obtain, through 
the organization of labor, all reforms compatible 
with good service and with the resources of the 
community. They would cease to be as today the 
servants of an authoritarian and despotic bu- 
reaucracy. But if they yielded to the temptation 
to abuse their strength, if after doing everything 
to make the resort to a strike useless and unjusti- 
fiable — by assuring its workers a legal status, 
representation, an effective share in the manage- 
ment — if the collectivity were obliged by them 
to defend itself, nothing would be more legiti- 
mate, and at the same time more effective than 
to use against the strikers the right belonging to 
the head of every enterprise : the right to employ 
them no longer. 

It would in fact be necessary to adopt syste- 
matically the one-sidedness of certain syndicalists, 
and be totally incapable of comprehending the 
viewpoint of those "on the other side of the 
fence," not to recognize that at a given moment 
the responsible head of a public service, having 
to defend the general interests of the community^ 
might stand disarmed before a strike of his em- 
ployees. But, as M. Millerand points out, in his 
report on Briand's proposed law against the right 
to strike for workers in public services, it is not 



204 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

necessary for that reason to attack the right to 

organize, nor to make striking a crime. 

Whatever may be, moreover, the penalties that 
may be imagined, ... it is self-evident that 
these penalties are always less serious than the civil 
remedy with which the strikers may be punished, 
namely dismissal. The administration of a railway 
system, obliged to assure service to the public, re- 
sponsible morally and financially for the manage- 
ment, has, it scarcely need be said, the formal right 
to dismiss any workers who have voluntarily left 
their jobs. It may be merciful, when the hour 
arrives to forget, but if the workers propose justly 
to preserve their liberty of action, it can be only 
on condition of assuming responsibility for what 
they do. 

We certainly should not agree with M. Mil- 
lerand when he regards the State's use of its 
legitimate defense against excessive or extrav- 
agant demands as a punishment, a civil penalty. 
-We~ keep his words merely to show that the 
recognition of the right of State workers to 
strike does not leave the State disarmed against 
combinations hostile to the general interest. But 
need we add, in the conflicts which have arisen 
for several years past, in France, in Holland, in 
Italy and elsewhere, it was not the general inter- 
est which caused them, but the interests of the 
ruling classes, and we should decidedly have been 
on the side of the strikers. 



CHAPTER IV 

SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 

From the mass of facts which have been set 
forth, the conclusion develops that the State- 
employer is not everywhere the same thing, and 
that, even now, under the pressure of the necessi- 
ties of industrial management, the national or 
municipal enterprises tend, more and more, to 
differentiate themselves from the State, organ of 
authority. 

There is a wide interval, for example, between 
the purely fiscal alcohol monopoly which existed 
in Russia before the suppression of vodka, and 
the organization, largely autonomous, of the fed- 
eral railways in Switzerland. In both cases, cer- 
tainly, we have to do with the capitalist State, 
employing and exploiting wage-workers; but in 
Switzerland, as we have seen, its management is 
concerned above all with the general interest ; in 
Russia, on the contrary, the monopoly had no 
other aim than to contribute for the ever growing 
needs of the army and the navy. 

This was explicitly stated in a speech delivered 
before the Imperial Council, in January, 1914, 
205 



206 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

by Count de Witte, the originator of that 

institution. 

The monopoly, he declared, had been originally 
introduced to fight alcoholism; it was intended to 
give the people a pure brandy and to regulate its 
sale; at the same time the Government organized 
anti-alcoholic district committees, charged to com- 
bat drunkenness by propaganda through libraries, 
Sunday-schools, theaters, etc. Now the monopoly 
serves for an altogether different end, and its original 
character is perverted; it is a gigantic pump, ad- 
mirably planned, which sucks up all the resources of 
the country; all the efforts of the Government tend 
only to increase the intake of this pump, and the 
vodka monopoly furnishes nearly half the resources 
of our budget. Since the war began, the receipts 
of the monopoly have increased by five hundred 
million roubles, and today exceed a billion roubles. 
Under these conditions, the anti-alcoholic com- 
mittees are reduced to powerlessness, and any 
struggle against the abuse of alcohol has become 
impossible, since, from the fiscal point of view, the 
Government can only congratulate itself on the 
increase of the receipts of the monopoly. 

It goes without saying that, under these con- 
ditions, exploitation by the State is an unmixed 
evil. Any one who is a socialist, or even a demo- 
crat, must be hostile to it. Perhaps, in the old 
empire of the Czars, we should have considered 
that, all in all, the State railways presented more 
advantages than disadvantages ; but as for fiscal 
monopolies, we should certainly have agreed with 
Guesde in admitting that such institutions, far 



SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 207 

from being advantageous to the workers, were a 
formidable instrument for exploiting and op- 
pressing them. Therefore, as he says in his 
pamphlet on Public Services and Socialism: 
"rather than to work for their extension, there is 
reason to attack those which already exist, and 
which constitute so many obstacles in the way of 
proletarian organization and action/ 9 

But Guesde, as we have seen, goes further. 
He generalizes his opposition to State industries. 
He formulates it in absolute terms. He declares 
that, within the structure of the present society, 
"public services present, for the socialist party 
and its objectives, nothing but dangers." He 
admits only one attitude for the socialists toward 
enterprises for the statization of monopolized 
enterprises : 

"The revolution first, that is to say, the political 
and economic expropriation of the capitalist 
class; public services afterwards, because, after 
the fusion of the classes into one only — that of 
the producers — really public services will be 
possible/' 

That is not, moreover, an isolated opinion. To 
read the Communist Manifesto, it seems indeed 
that Marx and Engels were equally of the opinion 
that the statization of certain industries was ad- 



208 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

missible only after the proletarian conquest of 
power. 

Kautsky likewise, in his little book "The Social 
Revolution," without being as clear as Guesde in 
this regard, seems also to defer to the morrow of 
the revolution the nationalization or socialization 
of the monopolized industries. 

When there was talk in Prussia of the pur- 
chase of the mines by the government, he devoted 
several articles in the Neue Zeit to opposing such 
propositions. 

Nevertheless, neither in his writings nor in 
those of Marx and Engels do we find that tren- 
chant formula that we have quoted from Guesde : 
"The revolution first, ... the public serv- 
ices afterwards." 

If such a program of socialist action were to 
be taken literally, it would be necessary, so long 
as the proletariat is not in power, for its delegates 
in the legislative assemblies to declare against 
state ownership, even in the democratic countries 
where the autonomy of the public services as 
against the State-power is not an empty word. 
And in fact, if practice has tempered this rigor 
to some extent, there is nevertheless an unde- 
niable tendency, in Guesde and those who follow 
him, to be hostile to the extension of government 
industries, within the present State. 



SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 209 

It will be remembered, for example, that, con- 
trary to the opinion of the majority of the parlia- 
mentary socialists, they opposed energetically the 
redemption of the West State Railway. 

We thus confront not a purely theoretical con- 
troversy, but a divergence of views which shows 
itself, and may show itself at any moment, in the 
field of immediate action. Let us then sum up 
the arguments which Guesde formerly used 
against the "possibilists," and see what validity 
they have, when invoked against the policy of 
extension of the "public services" under their 
present form. 

Guesde maintained, it will be remembered : 

i. That the nationalisation of private indus- 
tries by the capitalist State is not socialism, and 
has nothing to do with socialism. 

2. That far from simplifying the expropriat- 
ing task of the proletariat, by already realizing a 
certain amount of public property, it presents 
only dangers for the workers, because it fortifies 
the enemy, the capitalist class, and enfeebles 
the working class, the movement of which it 
paralyzes. 

On the first of these affirmations, we agree. 
Even that one of all the State industries which 
differs most from the type of police-State admin- 
istrations, that of the federal railways of Switzer- 



210 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

land, is much more nearly related to a great 
capitalist corporation than to the co-operative 
organization of production under a socialist 
regime. 

From the point of view of distribution, it is 
founded on the wage system, save for the rule 
of paying its laborers a little better .wages than 
those of private industry. 

From the point of view of the organization of 
labor, it differs not at all, or slightly, from capital- 
ist enterprises; the workers have no part in the 
management ; they have no voice in the control ; 
they are not represented in the general directo- 
rate nor in the council of administration ; and if 
they are allowed the right to organize freely, 
their unions have no more favorable position as 
against the managers and directors of the admin- 
istration than the unions of private industry have 
as against the other employers. 

But, it will doubtless be said, from the point 
of view of property at least, the national railway 
administration is collectivism, since the system 
and the material belong to the "nation." 

The truth is that they belong to the State, and 
that this State is, despite its democratic forms, a 1 
class State. 

Now, as Guesde points out, "the private indus- 
tries, when taken over by the present State, do 



SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 211 

not lose their character of capitalist property, 
that is to say of property from which the working 
class is excluded. From being the property of 
such and such a capitalist, that is to say from 
being property benefiting exclusively x or y, they 
become property of the whole capitalist class, 
without distinction of x, y or z. But that is all ! 
As for the proletarian collectivity, as for the 
society of wage-workers, it profits no more from 
statized machinery than from individualized 
machinery." * 

We can not fail to note, however, that here 
again certain affirmations if made too absolutely 
might become incorrect. Between the capitalist 
State, founded on the exclusive domination of 
one class, and the proletarian State, aiming at 
the abolition of classes, there are many inter- 
mediate stages. 

One could not refuse to see, without closing 
his eyes to reality, that if the fiscal property of 
the Prussian State or of the Empire of the late 
Czar is a "property from which the working class 
is excluded," the postal, telegraph and railway 
systems in Switzerland and France, as well as 
most municipal industries, can not be considered 
purely and simply as "property of the whole 
capitalist class." They certainly belong to a class 

1 Soclalisme et Services publics, p. 30. 



212 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

State, but within that class State, or upon that 
class State, the proletariat has an influence which 
it does not possess in more backward countries. 

Moreover these are, above all, questions of 
definition. 

It is not so with this other question, of vital 
importance as regards socialist policy: the ques- 
tion of determining whether the extension of 
State industries is of a nature to facilitate, or 
rather, on the contrary, to make more difficult 
the transformation of capitalist property, state 
or individual into social property. 

According as one adopts, in fact, one or the 
other of these contradictory opinions, one should 
favor or oppose the statization of certain indus- 
tries, railroads, mines, etc., while the structure of 
present society remains. 

The socialists hostile to any statization under 
the capitalist system raise two principal argu- 
ments: on the one hand, the existence of the 
public services fortifies the enemy, by diminish- 
ing the liberties of the working class; on the 
other hand it increases directly the bourgeois 
forces, because "the more industries, the bour- 
geois State includes, the more individuals it at- 
taches to itself and interests in its preservation, 
even including only those who, favored by better 



SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 213 

pay or a higher station, must fear any change as 
a leap into the unknown." 

That those are very strong arguments against 
statization, no one denies. They are even so 
strong that one must approve the social democ- 
racy for being hostile to them in countries where 
the State, the police- State, has remained what it 
was at the epoch when Marx and Engels wrote 
the Communist Manifesto. But these arguments 
become less decisive in democratic countries 
where the working class is no longer, politically, 
a negligible quantity, and where the State, organ 
of management, is differentiated more or less 
completely from the State, organ of authority. 

This enables us to understand that in France, 
in Italy, in England, in Switzerland and in Bel- 
gium, for example, the socialists or a majority of 
the socialists are more favorable to the statization 
(or the municipalization) of certain private in- 
dustries. 

Does this mean that they are ignorant of the 
disadvantages or the dangers that statization may 
offer? Not at all. No one denies, as a matter 
of fact, that if the employees and laborers of the 
State enjoy (from the point of view of security 
of employment, for example) certain advantages 
that the workers in private industry do not have, 
these very advantages generally result in making 



214 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

them more timorous, more pliable in their rela- 
tions with the government, more inclined to 
expect from favor, and not from their own effort, 
any new improvements in their condition. 

On the other hand, and for the same reasons, 
their freedom to organize, in most countries, is 
singularly limited. The authorities bargain with 
them over the right of association; they are 
denied the right to strike ; they are called to the 
colors, in case of a dispute, to compel them to 
work; all the weight of the State-power hangs 
over them. 

Under these conditions, one may ask how it is 
possible that, in spite of everything, most social- 
ists continue to demand, even now, extensions of 
the domain of the State. 

To understand such an attitude, it must, first 
of all, be kept in sight that if the State workers 
are less free and less independent in their bearing 
than the workers of private industry, or rather 
than most of the workers of private industry, 
that depends much more on the nature of their 
work and the services that they render, than on 
the fact that they have the State for an employer. 

In France, for example, where the laborers of 
the railway companies enjoy (as regards pensions 
and stability of employment) the same advan- 
tages as those of the State, we do not observe 



SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 215 

that they are more independent in their bearing. 
It is rather the contrary that is true. And 
in a general way, in all great enterprises whose 
structure approaches, by its concentration and 
bureaucratization, that of the State enterprises, 
the psychology of the workers tends to be the 
same. 

On the other hand, when it is a question of 
"public services," such as railroads, the capitalist 
State, even when it is not at the same time the 
employing State, resorts to the same methods 
against the company workers who go on strike 
as against its own workers. 

In both cases they invoke the necessities of 
public safety, and M. Briand, on occasion, ap- 
plied military discipline to the workers of the 
Northern Railway Company just as he did to 
those of the Western State Railway. 

From the view-point of disadvantages there- 
fore, it seems that there would be no great differ- 
ence between enterprises of the same nature, 
according to whether they are operated by the 
State or by capitalist companies. But, on the 
other hand, (in democratic countries, be it under- 
stood) the employees of the State have, for 
improving their conditions of work and of living, 
certain means of action that the workers of pri- 
vate industry have not, at least not to the same 



216 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

degree. Far more easily than the latter they 
may, by their political action, obtain a minimum 
wage, more complete insurance institutions, etc. 
Let us hasten to add however that here again 
the difference is not great, when we compare the 
state industries with others like the coal and the 
textile industry, the workers in which, very 
numerous and concentrated in certain regions, 
have at their disposal from this fact a consid- 
erable political influence. But if, to be exact, 
from the point of view of the workers, the 
advantages and disadvantages of State exploita- 
tion tend to balance each other, it is necessary to 
take account of the following considerations in 
favor of operation by the State : 

1. Advantages which, in certain industries at 
least, it presents from the point of view of the 
general interest; 

2. Transformations, ever more radical, which 
can and must be accomplished, in the direction 
of separation between the State, organ of au- 
thority, and the State, organ of management. 

Let us suppose, for example, that, the property 
in the mines of Sarre remaining collective, the 
Prussian State ceases to be a class State on which 
the proletariat exercises no influence. Its insti- 
tutions are democratized. The working class, 
without being ready as yet to take political power, 



SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 217 

exercises an increasing pressure on the Govern- 
ment. 

Is it not evident that fundamental reforms 
might be and ought to be introduced into the 
organization of the industry? 

1. The operation would cease to have a fiscal 
character, and it would be the same with the 
other public industries, except those adapted by 
their nature to provide profits for the Treasury, 
like the monopolies of alcohol and tobacco. 

2. The industrial State ought, far more than 
today, to have an organization quite apart from 
the government-State ; centralization is one of the 
characteristics of authority; decentralization is 
one of the necessities of management. 

3. Industrial managemnet would no longer 
belong to functionaries delegated by the Govern- 
ment, and having wage-workers under their 
orders, but to the entire body of workers, organ- 
ized into public corporations. 

Certainly, before these radical transformations 
will take effect or even can take effect, time and 
efforts will be needed. 

But from today the whole labor movement, 
political as well as economic, tends to this final 
result. 

The war has interrupted this movement. It 



218 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

will be resumed with greater force when the war 
is over. 

Already, in all the countries where universal 
suffrage does not yet exist, the people are de- 
manding it as the price of their sacrifices, and 
are thus preparing for the conquest of the public 
powers by the proletariat. 

On the day after the war we shall witness a 
powerful effort of the workers to take away from 
the financial powers the monopolies to which the 
war will have given birth; and thus we shall 
march toward the collective appropriation of the 
principal means of production and exchange. 

Industrial union activity, rendered more iiitense 
by the after-war difficulties, will create, within 
the entrails of bourgeois society, the organs of 
the future society, the public corporations which 
will operate the socialized industries of the 
future. 

Finally, the resumption of international rela- 
tions among the workers, the development of 
the society of nations, the formidable reaction 
of peace against war, will tend progressively to 
restrain the functions of the Government- State, 
at the same time that the progress of collectivism 
will multiply the functions of the industrial State. 

Thus, little by little, through an immense addi- 
tion of individual and collective efforts, the way 



SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 219 

is preparing for the passage from present society 
to the new system, which a pioneer comrade, 
Victor Considerant, described long ago in his 
"Destinee sociale" : 

"The States thus transformed will be nothing 
but managing committees, named by associations 
more or less numerous, and invested with the 
confidence of those who have chosen them. There 
is no more government having soldiers and police- 
men under its orders ; there is no more despotism 
nor usurpation possible, — something that nations 
will always have to fear, so long as they are 
obliged to manufacture sabres." 



CHAPTER V 

SOCIALISM AND STATISM 

As we reach the close of tjiis study, we believe 
we have shown what differentiates statism from 
socialism. 

Statism is the otganization of social labor by 
the State, by the Government. Socialism is the 
organization of social labor by the workers, 
grouped in public associations. 

Of these two systems, the realization of the 
former would be conceivable without any essen- 
tial change in the present relations between the 
classes. 

Thus in the industries or in the countries most 
advanced in capitalist concentration, we see cap- 
tains of industry or statesmen, whom no one 
would suspect of any weakness for socialism, 
admit that at a given moment the statization of 
the principal industries is coming. 

Read again, for example, the very interesting 
interview with M. Kirdorf, president of the Coal 
Syndicate, in "Rhin et Westphalie" of Huret. 

As M. Kirdorf pleaded for the monopoly, 
maintaining that it had to be organized under 
220 



SOCIALISM AND STATISM 221 

penalty of ruin for the coal industry, his inter- 
viewer suggested that an intermediate solution 
remained possible; the State, in view of the 
alternative of monopoly or of the ruin of the 
mining industry, putting its hands on the con- 
cessions and operating them on its own account. 
And M. Kirdorf replied : 

That is just what it is' trying to do! It already 
possesses coal mines in the basin of the Saar and in 
Silesia, and even rich potash mines. It thinks only 
of buying new ones. M. Thyssen has sold to it in 
our basin his concessions of Gladbach and Waltrop 
which produce 800,000 to 900,000 tons, and in a few 
years the Prussian State may be a part of the Syndi- 
cate. Understand, its aim is, in the first place, to 
make money, for the mines pay. But it is also 
interested in controlling prices, and in using its 
influence, if opportunity arises, to lower them, to the 
government's advantage. It is thus that the Prussian 
State, essentially conservative, puts itself into oppo- 
sition to the national capitalism. 

M. Kirdorf again states this tendency, seeming 
to find it quite natural, but not approving it. 
Others go farther. 

At the time when Mr. Taft was President of 
the United States, an editor of the Neue Freie 
Presse, who had interviewed him on the question 
of state industries, summarized his opinion as 
follows : 

He is convinced that, if limits are not set to the 
trusts, the American tendency would everywhere 
create complete monopolies, whose economic power 



222 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

would inevitably be so prodigious that the acquisition 
of the enterprises by the State, and consequently 
socialism, would be the necessary result. 1 

Such prophecies, which the socialist press 
reproduced with a little too much complaisance, 
count for much in the strange idea that many 
people, otherwise well intentioned, construct for 
themselves of what the socialist regime would be. 

It is indeed evident that if socialism were 
merely the taking over by the State, under its 
present form, of the monopolized industries, such 
a system would have for the very condition of 
its existence a formidable concentration of gov- 
ernmental power. 

In a lecture at Sion College, February 4, 1914, 
on the "principal currents of contemporary 
thought," the Dean of St. Pauls, the Rev. Mr. 
Inge, said: 

Socialism may be conceived as an omnipotent 
bureaucracy, directed by a small number of capable 
men, of the type of Napoleon or Pierpont Morgan; 
and such men are accustomed to high pay for their 
services. A socialist government might be powerful 
and prosperous, but it would have to rule with a 
rod of iron. 

Is it necessary to repeat that if this were 
socialism, it would have no more energetic oppo- 
nents than the socialists themselves? 

*Hugo Muensterberg; Neue Frele Presse, November 19, 
1911, 



SOCIALISM AND STATISM 223 

Statism thus generalized would maintain the 
wage system, would maintain the authority of 
the employer, would maintain the relations of 
subordination existing between the ruling class 
and the working class. ' 

Socialism, on the contrary, implies a radical, 
essential change in these relations. 

It is not a question of replacing private capital- 
ism by State capitalism, but private capitalism 
and State capitalism by the co-operation of the 
workers, masters of the means of production and 
exchange. And such a transformation, which 
suppresses the distinction between capitalists and 
workers, is nothing less than a revolution. 

This revolution, the social revolution, which 
the Manifesto compares to a geological upheaval, 
to a rising of the lower strata of society, over- 
throwing all the present legal and political super- 
structures, may be sudden or slow, may take the 
classic forms of previous revolutions or, which 
is more probable, may decompose itself into a 
long series of partial struggles, more or less 
bitter, more or less violent ; but on any hypothesis, 
the day when this shall be accomplished, there 
will no longer be anything in common between 
the capitalist State, instrument of the rule of 
the possessing classes, and the new State, the 



224 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

socialist State, organ of management of the 
common interests. 

Today, the State is above all a power of 
coercion, of domination, exercising incidentally 
certain economic or social attributes. In a social- 
ist regime, on the contrary, these attributes would 
become the principal part of its activity. It 
would cease to dominate the workers. It would 
emanate directly from them. It would become 
theirs. It would answer to this famous definition 
of St.-Simon: 

"The aim of the French State is to realize the 
well-being of its members, by peaceful works of 
real utility." 

This passage from the bourgeois State, tran- 
scendent, to the socialist State, immanent, has 
nowhere been better grasped and defined than 
by Anatole France, in a well-known passage of 
"Monsieur Bergeret a Paris" : 

"What is the State?' asked M. Bergeret of 
his daughter, whose comprehensive scholarship 
has marvelously assimilated the quintessence of 
socialist thought. 

"Mile. Bergeret quickly replied: 

"The State, Father, is a woeful, ungracious 
man seated behind a little window. You under- 
stand that we are not anxious to rob ourselves 
for him.' 



SOCIALISM AND STATISM 225 



«<T 



'I understand/ answered M. Bergeret, smil- 
ing. 'I am always inclined to understand, and I 
have wasted precious energies at it. I discover 
at last that there is great force in not under- 
standing. Sometimes that enables one to conquer 
the world. If Napoleon had been as intelligent 
as Spinoza, he would have written four volumes 
in a garret. I understand. But this ungracious 
and woeful man seated behind a little window, — 
you entrust your letters to him, Pauline, that you 
would not entrust to the Tricoche Agency. He 
manages part of your property, and not the 
smallest nor the least valuable part. His face 
looks morose to you. But when he is everything, 
he will no longer be anything* Or rather, he 
will be nothing but ourselves. Annihilated by his 
universality; he will cease to appear meddlesome. 
One is no longer bad, my daughter, when one is 
no longer anybody. The unpleasant thing about 
him today is that he goes about scraping and 
fifing, biting little out of the fat and much out of 
the lean. That makes him unendurable. He is 
greedy. He has needs. In my republic, he will 
be without desires, like the gods. He will have 
everything and he will have nothing. We shall 
not feel him, since he will be shaped to us, 
indistinct from us. He will be as if he were not. 
And when you think that I am sacrificing indi- 



226 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

viduals to the State, life to an abstraction, it is 
on the contrary the abstraction that I am sub- 
ordinating to reality ; I am suppressing the State 
by identifying it with all social activity/ " 

We find in these lines, so admirably con- 
densed, the very thought of Marx and Engels. 

In the economic order, as in the political order, 
and, in a general way, in all spheres of collective 
life, socialism is not pro-state, but anti-state. It 
strives to bring about the separation of the State 
from labor, as from religion and from the family. 
It desires, as the final term of this triple evolu- 
tion, the State-power, the State as organ of 
authority, to be reduced, if not to nothing, at 
least to secondary functions of supervision and 
police. Family life escapes from its control. The 
churches are no more than free associations 
grouping citizens according to their philosophic 
or religious affinities. The great co-operative of 
social labor, arrived at the fullness of its au- 
tonomy, administers itself, free from all govern- 
mental interference. 

The realization of this ideal may be more or 
less complete and more or less near. But, under 
penalty of dangerous deviations, the proletariat 
must be penetrated with it. 

We have put ourselves on guard against the 
excesses of a sterile doctrinalism, which would 



SOCIALISM AND STAT ISM 227 

make us reject any State intervention, any resort 
to the State, even to prepare for discarding it. 

We should guard ourselves far more against 
the contrary tendency, which would see in the 
extension of State functions, in the grasp of the 
Government upon the principal industries, the 
final form and the triumph of socialism. 

In an interesting letter which Marx wrote 
in 1873, to oppose the ideas of Bakunin, he 
ridiculed with reason those anti-statists who, for 
fear of consolidating the bourgeois State, avoid 
all practical activity : to limit the hours of labor 
is compromising with the exploiters; to strike 
for higher wages is to recognize the wage system ; 
to demand that the State, whose progress rests on 
the exploitation of the working class, should fur- 
nish elementary education to the children of 
laborers or appoint factory inspectors, is to 
fortify it instead of dissolving and destroying it. 

But it is not against such dangers that warnings 
are needed today. The socialists are in the midst 
of political and social activity. They act on the 
State to constrain it to enact reforms. They are 
demanding, even now, extensions of its domain. 
They are "striving to conquer it, to turn its 
coercive force against capitalism. The all- 
important thing is that this action for the con- 
quest or for the utilisation of the State does not 



228 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE 

prevent the struggle against the State, in so far 
as it is an organ of class rule. 

It is not enough to say that it shall be abolished 
after being conquered, it is necessary to prepare 
for that abolition, in all spheres of social life, 
striving to realize, as against it, the autonomy, 
ever more complete, of individuals or collectivi- 
ties. 

Let the workers, to improve their condition, 
accept or demand from the bourgeois State a 
minimum of protection. Let them prefer to 
capitalist monopolies the State industries, which 
take account, at least to a certain extent, of the 
general interest. Let them strive to maintain, 
after the war, the control that will have been 
established over the principal branches of pro- 
duction and exchange. We are with them. We 
admit all the value of these necessary reforms. 
But it is impossible to repeat often enough, at 
the moment when, everywhere, the progress of 
statism during the war is represented as a partial 
realization of collectivism, — that these reforms, 
to be demanded above all by the socialists, are 
not, properly speaking, socialism. 

They may open the way to it. They may be 
the preparation and the preliminary condition of 
the system of the future. But they might, if 
we do not take care, result in a disastrous lessen- 



SOCIALISM AND STATISM 229 

ing of the liberties of the individual, by a formid- 
able development of the State-power, still in the 
hands of the master classes. 

So we should never forget that, even if the 
principal industries came to be incorporated in 
the collective domain, the system of the future 
would still have to be created by the transforma- 
tion of the State, and that this system can only 
be created by a militant proletariat, penetrated to 
the marrow with the injustice of present social 
conditions, and resolved to conquer, by main 
force, well-being and liberty. 




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