13. Bourgeois Attempts to Absorb the Radical Proletarian Movements.— It could scarcely be supposed that the middle class would sit by and idly contemplate the growth of these threatening proletarian programs and movements without attempting to counteract them — without trying, as one thinker has ex pressed it, "to set a backfire?' Probably the chief instrument which has been used has been state socialism or legislation designed to aid and placate the laboring class, while retaining the essence of the capitalistic system, though it must not be forgotten that much state social ism has been a result of proletarian or land lord attacks upon the middle class. The bour geoisie have hoped to lead the proletariat to trust to the adequacy of the national capitalistic state as an agent for promoting the cause of social reform and the growth of industrial de mocracy. Further, the middle class has con tributed great donations for social relief work and to aid modern scientific philanthropy, in the hope that such measures will both lessen mis ery, and hence the pressure for reform, and will attract the gratitude of those who receive aid. Such benefactions have not been made solely for the reliet of physical privation and suffer ing, but even for the intellectual and recrea tional improvement of the lower classes through libraries, Y. M. C. A. organizations, playgrounds and parks. Then, the more progressive and far-sighted leaders of modern industrialism have developed policies of industrial conciliation designed either to placate the laborers or to get them practically interested in the preservation of the existing order. The best known of such methods are profit-sharing, co-operation, scien tific management and industrial welfare work. Some have even gone so far as to foster the growth of conservative trade-unionism, such as is represented by the American Federation of Labor. Of course, many of the modern capitalists still hold tenaciously with strange fatuity to the attitude of John Bright and de clare for a war to the end with state socialism and industrial democracy. This group can be trusted to decline with rapidity, or, if they show an unexpected tendency to increase, they may safely be left to the tender mercies of syndi calists and I. W. 'W.'s. Finally, a philosophy has been evolved designed to effect a liberal compromise between capitalism and labor, which has received its chief elaboration in France where it is generally spoken of as the doctrine of solidarism. It takes its origin from the doc trines of Comte, the Positivists and Leroux regarding the organic unity of human inter ests. It was further elaborated by the sociolo gists of the Organicist school and has recently been expanded by Leon Bourgeois from the legal point of view; by Charles Gide from the standpoint of the progressive economist; by Emile Durkheim as a profound sociologist in terested in practical social reform; and very recently by the German, Nicolai, from a socio biological point of approach. This doctrine aims at an honest and thoroughgoing attempt to reform the present order, so as to grant essential economic and social justice to the proletariat while retaining the undoubtedly superior directive and inventive ability of capi talistic enterprise. In its practical program it proposes, on the one hand, an extension of remedial social legislation through state social ism, and, on the other, a great extension of the principle of voluntary co-operation. Its adher ents also generally incline toward some consid erable decentralization of the administrative powers and functions of the modern national state. Some members of the group lean rather distinctly toward gild-socialism and the rep resentation of economic groups and interests. All in all, it is the one program of reform which embraces the interests of both capitalists and proletariat and which is, at the same time, sufficiently honest, disinterested and progressive to entitle it to respectful consideration.
14. The Great War and Policies of The World War at some time in the future will probably be regarded by the historian as having constituted a crisis or a dividing line in the history of modern social reform movements, but it is too early to predict just what the nature of the succeeding re form movement will be. It will doubtless be seen by future historians that back of the struggle of nations was what may have been the beginning of the final struggle between the present social and economic classes — a struggle in which landlord and capitalist united against the common enemy in the proletariat. That the
feudal landlord has generally succumbed in the course of the struggle, except in England, is generally conceded. That labor hoped for the equally decisive termination of the modern order of individualistic industrialism is apparent from what is usually taken as the most profound utterance of labor during the war—the report of the sub-committee of the British Labor party on reconstruction. °The individualist system of capitalist production, based on the private own ership and competitive administration of land and capital, with its reckless 'profiteering) and wage-slavery; with its glorification of the un hampered struggle for the means of life and its hypocritical pretense of the 'survival of the fittest' ; with the monstrous inequality of cir cumstances which it produces and the degra dation and brutalization, both moral and spirit ual, resulting therefrom, may, we hope, indeed have received a death blow. With it must go the political system and ideas in which it natu rally found expression.° They expressed the further significant opinion that °what has to be reconstructed after the war is not this or that government department, or this or that piece of social machinery; but society itself.° Further, during the struggle, as a result of the necessity of maintaining the production of necessary munitions at the highest level, ab normal concessions had to be made to labor, a situation which did not tend to make the pro letariat particularly inclined to acquiesce in any later restoration of the social and economic status quo ante bellum. All countries were com pelled to undertake what in times of peace would have been regarded as alarming steps toward complete state socialism. In Russia, the feudal autocracy was overthrown and there followed the first attempt in history to apply Marxian socialism to the reconstruction of a great state. In Germany, the fall of the Junker Krupp alliance paved the way for the triumph of Revisionist socialism in the German political system.
The capitalists did not fail to recognize these various challenges to their very existence as a powerful organized class, nor did they hesi tate to take steps to protect their system. Their most effective program was to make patriotism just as far as possible synonomous with rigid adherence to a belief in the sanctity of the capitalistic system and to brand all expressions of proletarian discontent and all plans for radical social reconstruction as products of dis loyalty or vile enemy propaganda. Radical leaders were assassinated or sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for criticisms of ad ministrative policy of a much milder character than were passed by unnoticed when uttered by political opponents who were members of capitalistic parties. Severe espionage laws were passed, which were little utilized to aid the military department, but were widely made use of to silence expressions of social and economic discontent. The close of the conflict left a serious situation— a proletariat deter mined to end an oppressive social and economic order and an organized effort of capitalists to preserve the system to which they owed their economic resources and political prestige. The solution of this problem is what now faces the world with the coining of peace and this solution is bound to be of infinitely greater significance for the history of modern civiliza tion than the redistribution of national bound aries by the Peace Conference. Whether the adjustment will be made in a peaceful manner through a liberal compromise, in which both parties will concede much, or whether it will be made by violence in a bitter class war which cannot but end in the termination of capitalism in a most unfortunate manner, will depend wholly upon the sagacity and statesmanship of those who will lead in the negotiations. What plans of reconstruction will be most used cannot be foreseen. The problem has called forth a reconsideration of every one of the proposals of the 19th century which have been discussed above, not even excepting a return to the complete individualism of the economic liberals.