Socialism

In this growth of world Socialism, the United States signifi cantly lag behind. The American Socialist Party is still politically an impotent group, and the trade unions still reject all attempts to draw them into organized political activity on party lines. Amer ican economic conditions are still markedly individualistic, and American wages and opportunities, for the minority of skilled workers, good enough to hold back any strong development of a Socialist movement. Europe, with its far more homogenous work ing class and its far more limited ability to give the workman, under capitalism, an opportunity of bettering his position, is in a different situation, and all over Europe, except in the areas temporarily dominated by Fascism and analogous movements, Socialism continues to gain ground.

Socialist Policy.

The distinction between Socialism, as rep resented by the various Socialist and Labour Parties of Europe and the New World, and Communism, as represented by the Russians and the minority groups in other countries, is one of tactics and strategy rather than of objective. Communism is indeed only Socialism pursued by revolutionary means and mak ing its revolutionary method a canon of faith. Communists, like other Socialists, believe in the collective control and ownership of the vital means of production, and seek to achieve, through State action, the co-ordinated control of the economic forces of society. They differ from other Socialists in believing that this control can be secured, and its use in the interests of the workers ensured, only by revolutionary action leading to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the creation of a new proletarian State as the instrument of change. The existing States and parliaments, which the orthodox Socialists seek to capture and use as the agents of social transformation, the Communists denounce as purely capitalist institutions, which must be forcibly overthrown before the constructive work of Socialism can even begin. This doctrine, derived from Marx's Communist manifesto of 1848, is forcibly developed by Lenin in his book, The State and Revolu tion (1917), which gives the clearest account of the underlying political theories of the Communist Party. It follows from this view that the orthodox Socialists, who seek to use the existing in stitutions of State and parliament as the agents of gradual social ization, are regarded by Communists as the worst enemies of the workers, and denounced with a vigour far exceeding that which is meted out to the defenders of capitalist society.

Apart from this fundamental cleavage, Socialist ideas have undergone considerable transformation in recent years. All schools

of Socialists still urge the transference of large-scale industry from private to public ownership; but mere State Socialism, or nationalization of the old type, is no longer a satisfying conception to Socialists of any school. Partly under Guild Social ist influence, and partly as a result of changes in the economic situation, all Socialist programmes now insist that the Socialist State must create special economic organs for the administration of industries under public control, and that the workers must be given some participation in the management of these services. For example, whereas before the war the British miners urged merely the nationalization of the coal industry by its transference to a State department, they now, in conjunction with the Labour Party, propose that it should be administered by a representative commission, and its policy co-ordinated with that of allied services by an expert power and transport board holding a largely inde pendent position. Similarly, the French unions have put forward a new plan of "industrial nationalization," and the problem of "workers' control" has appeared largely in German schemes of socialization since the war. Guild Socialism, influential during and after the war in drawing attention to these problems of the con trol of industry, appears now to have made its distinctive contri bution to Socialist thought and policy, and to have become merged in the general body of revised Socialist doctrine.

The war and its aftermath have everywhere brought Socialism far nearer to the tests of practical experience and responsibility. Naturally, under these conditions, difficulties are more clearly seen, new problems come to the front, and differences previously latent tend to become more pronounced. It would take a bold man to prophecy what will be the outcome of the present disputes between Communists and orthodox Socialists. It may be that the need for unity in pursuit of economic ends will, in the long run, reunite the warring factions in the European movement, and com pel them to arrive at some basis of political agreement. For the existence of two contending working-class parties, each claiming to stand for Socialism, but seeking its end by distinctive means, has manifest disadvantages for the workers, especially if the quar rel is pushed into the industrial field, and results in a disruption of trade unionism in accordance with the political cleavage. This situation has not arisen in Great Britain in any grave form; but where it has arisen, as in France and Germany, it has weakened trade unionism even more seriously than political Socialism.