SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT SOCIALISM

BY

JOHN BATES CLARK

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AT
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge 1914

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY THE REGENTS OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published April 1914

SOCIAL JUSTICE
WITHOUT SOCIALISM

It is currently reported that the late King Edward once said, "We are all Socialists, now": and if the term "Socialism" meant to-day what His Majesty probably meant by it, many of us could truthfully make a similar statement. Without any doubt, we could do so if we attached to the term the meaning which it had when it was first invented. It came into use in the thirties of the last century, and expressed a certain disappointment over the result of political reform. The bill which gave more men the right to vote did not give them higher wages. The conditions of labor were deplorable before the Reform Bill was passed and they continued to be so for some time afterwards. A merely political change, therefore, was not all that was wanted, and it was necessary to carry democracy into a social sphere in order to improve the condition of the poorer classes. The term "Socialism," therefore, was chosen to describe a play of forces that would act in this way on society itself, and was an excellent term for describing this right and just tendency. The name was quickly adopted by those with whose practical plans most of us do not agree; but its original idea was democracy carried into business, and at present that is the dominant tendency of all successful parties. For six months we have been living under what may be called "triumphant democracy," not because the Democratic Party has beaten its rivals and come into control of the Government, but for a much deeper reason, namely, that a democracy carried into industrial life is the dominating principle of every political body that can hope for success. Every party must show by its action that it values the man more than the dollar. To this extent we are all democrats and wish the Government to act for the people as well as to be controlled by the people.

When we differ, it is in deciding on the means to carry out our common purpose; and here we differ very widely. Some would use the power of the State to correct and improve our system of industry, and these constitute a party of reform. Others would abolish that system and substitute something untried. For private capital they would put public capital and for private management, public management—either in the whole field of industry or in that great part of it where large capital rules. These are Socialists in the modern and current sense of the term.

One difference of view which was formerly very sharp is now scarcely traceable. Every one knows that we must invoke the aid of the State in order to make industry what it should be. The rule that would bid the State keep its hands off the entire field of business, the extreme laissez-faire policy once dominant in literature and thought, now finds few persons bold enough to