Why I Am
Opposed to Socialism
Original Papers by
Leading Men and Women
EDWARD SILVIN
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
U.S.A.
Copyright, 1913
By EDWARD SILVIN
INDEX TO AUTHORS
The gentle reader, who is inclined to say why he is opposed to Socialism, is cordially invited to contribute his thoughts to the future editions of this little book.
Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
Eggert, Charles Augustus. (Author and College Professor.)
I am opposed to Socialism, first, because it is not an inductively obtained system, but an "ism" that postulates qualities in the individuality of a nation which no nation, or community even, has yet developed to a sufficiently high state to make this "ism" fit to be seriously tried.
Second: Much of what Socialism teaches will be put to the test by society anyhow, for society is based on interest, on financial considerations, and it has been found very long ago, that co-operation cheapens products, while steadying employment.
Third: As a working system Socialism is based on the limited intellectual powers of a large number of people who will not receive systematic instruction, or cannot. Any large school shows how large the proportion of children is who must eventually be, as adults, members of this number, and, by exercising their right to vote for their officers and leaders, will make a scientific and economical management exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Tried on a limited scale it amounts only to co-operation—different from Socialism.
Fourth: The existing system is based on the rewards held out to individual effort, thus furnishing leaders who, by accumulating capital through self-denial, great moderation in the pursuit of pleasure, and strenuous work, will be eventually enabled to establish large combinations, factories, corporations of all sorts, which, as history and daily experience prove, pay even the unintelligent laborers higher wages and furnish them more security than they could possibly have obtained if left to themselves as Socialistic organizations. In order to obtain the best results, however, a protective tariff must keep out undue foreign competition.
Fifth: Differences of opinion on these points can be settled satisfactorily only by a close and careful study of the history of business, and the leading Socialists, Marx, etc., have been shown to be palpably and grievously incapable of such study.
Sixth: Socialism would lead to governmental art, science and literature, that is to say to the counterfeit of real art, science, and literature. It would be the rule of the unintelligent and largely of the demagogues (for such would stand a better chance than the honest and thoughtful, for election to offices).
Seventh: Socialism could not be established (as an "ism") except by robbery. Good men would not lend themselves to such business.
Mencken, Henry Louis. (Author of "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche," editor of The Players' Ibsen, part-author with Robert Rives LaMonte of "Men vs. the Man." Member of the editorial staff of the Baltimore Evening Sun.)
I am opposed to Socialism because, in general, it means a vain and costly attack upon the immutable natural law that the strong shall have advantage over the weak. I do not defend that law as perfect, nor do I even maintain that it is just. If I had the world to make over I should probably try to find something to take its place, something measurably less wasteful and cruel. But the world is as it is and the law is as it is. Say what you will against it, you must at least admit that it works, that it tends to destroy the botched and useless, that it places a premium upon enterprise and courage, that it makes for health and strength, that it is the most powerful of all agents of human progress. Would brotherhood, supposing it to be achieved, do as well? I doubt it. Brotherhood would help the soft man, the clinging man, the stupid man. But would it help the alert and resourceful man? Answer for yourself. Isn't it a fact that difficulties make daring, that effort makes efficiency? Do not functions develop by use? Does the cell act or react?
Meanwhile, I grant all schemes of brotherhood one indubitable merit. Socialism shares it with Christianity. It is this: that they are eternally impossible of carrying out, that men cannot actually live them. The Beatitudes, after 2,000 years, are still mere poetry. No human fiat will ever repeal the law of natural selection. No rebellion of slaves will ever break down that great barrier which separates slaves from masters.
Brown, Mrs. M. McClellan. (Lecturer and Reformer.)
I am opposed to Socialism—
First: Because it is unnatural. Men are born free, but far from being equal in competency mentally, morally, or spiritually to use with advantage to self or others, the proceeds of earth, or the elements, or labor; even under the same civil, social, and educational opportunities (often in the same family) some are incompetent to make ends meet.
Second: Because it is impracticable, unjust, and detrimental to development and ennoblement of the human race, which is the manifest object of human creation.
Third: Because it destroys the ultimate power of individuality, which is the unit of State organization and social protection. The individual is the axis of reality in all the objective changes for human uplift.
Fourth: Because the Spirit of God is the humanizing power in the world, given to individual spirits as a complete fact, large or small, but personal in dynamic currents of bodily gifts as varied as the offices of the human organs.
Fifth: Because civilization is the fruit of developed individual consciousness in a concrete, unsharable experience of free personality which makes the vital push for progress in the world; even a social consciousness so-called, must turn on the axis of the individual.
Sixth: Because the only historic and scientific demonstration of Socialism is original barbarism. Set the pot in the midst of the group and let each use his paw.
McConnell, Francis J. (Bishop of Methodist Episcopal Church, Denver, Colorado.)
I am opposed to Socialism because it goes farther than is necessary. The real reforms for which Socialism stands are very important, but I think these can be secured without accepting the extreme puttings of Socialistic doctrine. Within the past twenty-five years we have reached many of the results of the Socialistic programme and yet without adopting extreme Socialism.
Benington, Arthur. (Journalist.)
I am opposed to Socialism because I believe that the State was made for man, not man for the
Because every one of the infinite number of projects of Socialism tends to discourage individual effort; hence, in a really Socialistic State there would be no incentive to achievement in art, literature, science, discovery, etc. The dull level of mediocrity would prevail; stagnation would take the place of progress.
Because the leading Socialists and all the Socialist newspapers I have ever seen attack religion.
Because Socialism would abolish the home and make the State responsible for the bringing up of children. The result of this would be to substitute a breeding farm for matrimony. Love—which cannot be abolished—would have no place in the scheme of things; it would struggle against institutions, either secretly in spite of them and contrary to them, or openly in rebellion. This is true not only of sex love, but of parental and filial love.
Because it is contrary to all the principles upon which the United States of America have won success in the world. It is an exotic importation from lands in which liberty is stifled, brought here by persons who do not understand American institutions, taken up as a fad by a few dreamers.
Because men always cease to be Socialists as soon as they have won success in life; suggesting that Socialism is merely a vague expression of the discontent of some, the disappointment of others.
Clark, John Bates. (Professor of political economy and author.)
I am opposed to Socialism because it would soon impoverish workers. The income to be divided would be smaller than is supposed by advocates of Socialism, and it would grow smaller per capita as the number of workers increased.
Raymond, George Lansing. (Author and University Professor.)
I am opposed to Socialism because I think it founded on a misconception of the requirements of human nature; and this, mainly, for three reasons:
First: A great many people will not practice diligence and thrift, unless stimulated to do so by a possibility of obtaining, possessing and using something that they can call their own. This is something that Socialism theoretically, and so far as it has been applied, practically, would deny them.
Second: A great many will not work at all, when their only inducement is that others wish them to work, or need their help. Socialism, if established, would be obliged—merely to secure support for the community—to force such people to work against their own wills. This would inevitably involve the re-establishment of a system of human slavery.
Third: All a man's mental and moral development in this world—to say nothing of what may come after death—needs training. According to a law apparently divine, but certainly human, this training, whether in home, school, business or society, is imparted by means of discipline. The discipline is mainly derived from the circumstances of life in which one finds himself placed, and, in such cases, is always accompanied by dissatisfaction with one's alloted place, and by actual suffering. The Socialist aims to escape from this dissatisfaction and suffering by making a change in his circumstances—such a change, for instance, as would make a king a servant, or make all men kings or servants. But history and experience show that kings, whose friends die, courtiers flatter, and enemies trick, are no more free from the sufferings attendant upon discipline than are servants. The truth seems to be that to occupy a different position in life means merely to be placed in a different part of the same apparently divine and certainly social machine which—as some have faith to believe—is at work grinding out of the coarse grain of humanity what shall, some day, prove to be its fine flour. One who has the wisdom to apply this theory to life, will, in no position that a man can fill, feel either too haughty or too humiliated to sympathize with everybody, and to do his best everywhere to alleviate suffering, lessen oppression, equalize opportunity, enthrone justice, and prove himself, in every sense of the term, a fellow-man. The result upon individual consciousness and conscience of this attitude of mind is the most important of any that can be exerted in order to secure human welfare. It differs from Socialism in being derived—as Socialism is not—from a recognition of the exact and entire truth—a truth that includes, both that which is material and spiritual, philosophical and religious.
Ellis, Horace. (President Vincennes University.)
Socialism originally meant to become an effective protest against the tyrannies of all forms of monarchy. If it had succeeded in its ambition we all had been Socialists. But it failed utterly. Its failure may be traced to certain fundamental errors as to the means it should employ to realize its purpose. It presumed that most practices it found in the economic world were inherently bad because they had been employed by heartless men in furthering their individual interests. Socialism denies the accepted maxim relating to competition—in spite of the evidences of history which have fully established the fact that, in every realm of human activity, competition has been one of the mightiest factors for individual, community, national and racial prestige. Socialism would deny to virile, purposeful, masterful leaders of men the privilege of leadership because, forsooth, some such leaders have misused authority reposed in them. In lieu of this practice, it would constitute society at large the rightful leader in all economic matters—because some evidences appear which indicate that society possesses some attributes of stability. Fatal—both of these deductions. There are many thousands of good Socialists, but few substantial economic contentions behind them.
Boyd-Carpenter, William B., B.A., F.R.G.S. (Publicist, Address: Wynstones, Ascot, England.)
The world has always sighed after novelty. Even St. Paul found that the Athenians of old longed to hear some new thing. The craze for novelty, or an increasing curiosity are the symptoms of the decline of a philosophic outlook on life. It is the idea that a change means reform. Now reform can never be a change in the substance, but rather an application, a direct and precise application of a thought-out remedy for a particular and authentic grievance. Nor is innovation a real reform—we have to change our clothes because they are wet, but this does not mean we reform ourselves or our clothes. Woman makes an innovation in the shape of her clothes or her hats—she does not reform her clothes or her hats. But Socialists and syndicalists demand the immediate alteration of the capitalists' system of production—by which they mean, if they mean anything, such a reform as will give to them, as a political party within any State, the power of using the forces, political and capitalistic within the State on behalf of their own section of the community, unless they mean this, they cannot hope to benefit wages and employment. If they do not mean this, they are hoodwinking workingmen and merely are seeking a change, not a reform. Change is impermanent—therefore transitory change is merely the expression of want of tone in the political health of a people. But Socialism and syndicalism by seeking the benefit of the many workers at the expense of the few capitalists, is creating a form of injustice, which in their main doctrines Socialists assert they are hoping to avoid. Injustice to any section of a community is the creation of inequality again in a community. If we cannot reform with equity, let us not reform at all. As we put back the hands
Then again, Socialism has been tried and has always resulted in the re-erection of the capitalist system. The Revolutions of France—1789, 1832, 1848, 1871—all were to usher in the millennium. But France is capitalistic today and amongst the wealthiest nations on the earth. The German Revolution, 1848, or the Spanish Revolution—all began in high hopes of republics to be ruled by Democrats. All these countries have gone back to what the world has tried and found stands best the test of time. Nations, like individuals, are impatient and do damage in fits of temper for which many years of steady care are required to effect the repairs. The world wants more religion in active life and more ostracism of the irreligious. The fear of public disgust is the beginning of ordered honesty. The strength of a public opinion is the poor man's friend. "To complain of the age in which we live; to revile the possessors of power; to lament the past; to conceive wild hopes for the future, are the common dispositions of the vast majority of men." They are also the attributes of laziness and the form of a vulgar levity. A nation must have all classes—grumblers and saints, happy and querulous, in order to make strong men.
Garvin, Lucius Fayette Clark. (Ex-Governor of R.I.)
I am opposed to Socialism because its theory is not proved to my satisfaction. The public ownership of all artificial instruments of production, means that no interest upon capital should go to individuals. This means that the person who builds a boat to let should not own it, and that the payment made by a borrower for its use should not go to the builder, but into the public treasury.
Socialism asserts that if one person catches fifteen fish, another ten, and third but five, they are not each entitled to the proceeds of the sale of his fish. This is in violation of the natural law that the value produced is the just reward of labor.
Land values, being earned by the community, belong to the community; and economic rent should be taken by the community (in lieu of taxation) for public purposes.
The Socialist does not distinguish between the artificial and the natural instruments of production—two things wholly different in kind. He confuses the just return to capital with the unjust return to monopoly.
Long, John Luther. (Author and Playwright.)
I don't know what you mean by mere "Socialism." I wish I did. I wish you did. But, the deuce of it is that no two persons seem to mean the same thing—or else no one knows what any one means. If it means an honest brotherhood, wherein it is recognized that all are not equal, to the end that those who are more or have more shall help those who are less and have less, I am for it with all my heart. If it means that the vicious shall profit from the just—no. If it means that the loafer shall live without work—no. For that means that some one else—many—must be working in his stead. If Socialism means that genius and idiocy must sleep in the same bed and be equals I am very much against it. We are not all equal. We are not even born equal. No pronunciamento can make us so. And if Socialism of the McNamara and Ettor and Giovannitti sort means to make us so, it might as well quit now as later. It is trying to amalgamate unamalgamables.
Esenwein, Joseph Berg. (Author and Editor Lippincott's Magazine.)
I am opposed to Socialism because, with all its attendant weaknesses in its present unperfected state, competition is the best known stimulus to ambition. Human nature can never be essentially altered by either legislation or a new social system, therefore we shall always need competitive incentives to make us do what we can. Our present system needs decided modification, but it does not need the reversal that Socialism proposes.
Super, Charles William. (Retired College President.)
Socialism is advocated in so many different forms that it is difficult to deal with the term intelligently without prefixing a somewhat lengthy definition. Every government is at present adopting some of the features of the Socialistic creed.
I am opposed to Socialism in so far as it hinders individual initiative and enterprise. No community ever made a great invention, or an important discovery, or created a great work of art, or planned a great enterprise. The first step forward must always be taken, or at least proposed, by some one person. I believe the State should protect those who cannot take care of themselves, especially children, and those who have proved unable to stand the strain of modern economic conditions. Those who are weak should not be left to lie helpless along the path of progress. But I do not believe government has a right to dictate how many hours an adult shall labor, or what wages his employer shall pay him. The men who have done and are still doing great things in the world have not worked a certain number of hours in twenty-four, but all the time. Socialism, to a certain extent at least, puts a premium on inefficiency. It is a serious objection to Socialism that it has proved a failure wherever it has been tried. It is a return to primitive conditions. The prospect of getting something for nothing is a strong incentive to idleness. Most men are naturally lazy. The power of the State to create value is very limited. If it provides an army of officials whose constant and ubiquitous interference with production limits the collective output, they must be paid from the earnings of individuals. This must increase the cost of living. Laws should be passed and enforced to help the weak and restrain the wicked, but they should not put too heavy a clog on those who are by nature qualified to succeed. You cannot promote the prosperity of a community by taxing the strong for the benefit of the weak, either directly or indirectly. The State should be particularly vigilant against giving any encouragement to the lazy, the shiftless and the willfully inefficient.
Krout, Mary Hannah. (Author.)
I am opposed to Socialism because it is impossible and un-philosophical. All the measures advocated by Socialists today—or most of them—were advocated by the French in the Revolution of 1785, with disastrous results.
Hovey, Lewis R. (Editor, The Record, Haverhill, Mass.)
I am opposed to Socialism because it is unscientific, unwise, and would destroy liberty and progress for the human race.
The bed-rock theory of Socialism is that under the present system, wealth and industry concentrates into fewer and fewer hands, that the big fish eat the little fish, and so on until society is confronted with a great proletarian class on the one hand, with nothing but their labor power, and on the other a few very rich plutocrats who own all the means of production and exchange. That this theory is unsound and unscientific is proved in a thousand ways by every blue book of every industrial nation on earth.
The number of wealth-owners in Europe has increased twice as rapidly as population during the past twenty years. In the United States we find that ownership of land, railways, banks, bonds, industrial stocks, etc., have actually increased three or four times as rapidly as the population. For
An investigation by the New York Journal of Commerce, a short while ago, proved that two hundred and thirty-one industrial and railway corporations had ten years ago less than two hundred and thirty thousand owners, but those same companies now have eight hundred and thirty-five thousand owners (round numbers). Like illustrations could be cited to fill pages of this book. This shows that the so-called scientific theory of Marx Socialism is a myth, a dream, an imagination from the brain of Karl Marx. Socialism would be unwise because it would be an attempt to change human nature by economic and political processes. This world has progressed in just that proportion as it has got away from things Socialistic. The imperialistic Socialism of ancient Rome destroyed that greatest of nations; the barbarian Socialism of Peru, with thirty million followers, was destroyed by a handful of Spanish adventurers.
The Socialization of railways, the municipal ownership of a street railway, a gas plant or an electric lighting plant, has, as a rule, proved a failure when all the facts are taken into consideration. This wild yell of the Socialists, that labor receives but a small part of the wealth it produces, has no foundation in fact and is but the uncouth and unintelligent expression of minds who were never made for statistical insight or investigation.
The promise of the "full value of your production" is a false promise and known to be such by every intelligent Socialist. The workers today do far less work, with less hours, and yet receive twice as high wages compared fifty years ago. This is due to organization and invention of the few. That is, a small minority of society have organized industry and made economic production possible; "they have made two blades of grass grow where one grew before." The Socialists would reverse this, for it is absolutely certain that under the blighting influence of economic Socialism, production would go down.
Politically, Socialism would destroy liberty. A pure democracy leads straight to despotism. Nothing is more despotic than the bossism of the Socialist parties of the world today, and if ever the nations of the world go to Socialism, they will go to a regime of mob rule directed by a Socialist oligarchy, and then the liberty of man will be absolutely destroyed.
Penrose, Stephen Beasley Linnard. (President, Whitman College.)
I am not in favor of that very attractive theory, Socialism, first, on psychological grounds. It rests upon an unscientific analysis of human interests and motives. It overlooks or undervalues strong tendencies of human nature. It may be called a theory for angels, not for men.
Second, on practical grounds; it cannot work well because it can supply neither sufficient motive nor sufficient machinery to secure efficiency, either in production or distribution.
I applaud the moral impulse which is found in many Socialists, but I do not approve their solution for great economic problems.
Kizer, Edwin Dicken. (College President.)
I am in favor of that which means the correcting of the evils that allow one man to prey upon another when that preying is personal or enters into the effect of the preyer, in combination with conditions to be remedied by economic changes. But the very radical differences manifest among the Socialists themselves, i.e., those who accept Marx, and those who deny him in his main statements; the revolutionist, who insists upon a revolution, by blood, if necessary, and the evolutionist, who looks for a more gradual development, would make me hesitate to cast my lot with such a divided army.
Again I am not quite certain that I am willing to give first place to the forces that the scientific Socialist places as fundamental in the affairs of men. I must also confess to a lingering of the older theory of individualism that constrains me to believe that at least a part (those for example who by brain or circumstance are leaders) of mankind, will be personally regenerated by a high spiritual motive before the Socialist ideal is possible to think of even.
Also, radicalism never reaches in practice what it aims to perform. A little less of the ultimate, with destructive acts that undermine man's faith in his present creation, and a little more of the doing the task before us is what is needed. If Socialism is inevitable, as some think it is, we can neither help nor hinder: evolution of moral and spiritual forces entirely rule the average man out of the contest.
Brazier, Marion Howard. (Journalist and Lecturer.)
I am opposed to Socialism because I do not favor anything likely to develop anarchy. Socialistic agitation tends to promote unrest and discord. If granted my divine right to vote, I might look into it more closely and get another point of view.
Cazalet, Edward Alexander. (President of the Anglo-Russian Literary Society, Imperial Institute, London.)
Socialism has been defined as the name given to schemes for regenerating society by a more equal distribution of property and especially by substituting the principle of association for that of competition.
A great statesman and author, M. de Tocqueville, branded Socialism as an energetic and pernicious appeal to the lower passions of mankind; as a system of which the basis was a thorough mistrust of liberty, a hearty contempt of man individually.
The shrewd and experienced L.A. Thiers in his treatise "De la Propriete," also combats the maxim: "La propriete c'est le vol." He depicted the universal poverty and barbarism that would follow from such notions being adopted.
Robert Owen, the enthusiastic and practical Socialist, was not successful in his colony of New Harmony in United States. The improvement of his workmen's material interests in the New Lanark Mill in Scotland, finally proved a disappointment. (See also "Why I am in Favor of Socialism.")
Purrington, William Archer. (Lawyer and Author.)
I do not know of any practicable scheme of Socialism, or of any satisfactory definition of the term upon which Socialists agree; an accurate definition is the necessary basis of intelligent expression of opinion.
Apparently, Socialists in general believe, or at least preach that the State should own the material and means of production, to the end that all should share what is now enjoyed by the few. I doubt if the proposed means would achieve the desired end. At present the United States Government supplies us with postage stamps. The stamps will not stick.
Socialism will be practicable, if ever, only when