Proletarian and Petit-Bourgeois.
Marxian Socialism predicates the formation of what is called the proletarian class. The process of the organization and development of that class is, in fact, the most striking phenomenon of the present industrial age, for on its organization and development depend the break up of the existing system, and the substitution for it, as a successor, of another industrial system, which for want of a better name is called socialism.
The term socialism at the present time has two distinct concepts, the one standing for the process by which the proletariat develops its political and industrial independence of the existing capitalistic regime, and the other a more or less hazy objective, which is sometimes called socialism and often the co-operative commonwealth.
We may ignore this latter as being a sort of apocalyptic vision.
How is the proletariat to obtain the supremacy?
According to Marx by the operation of two distinct processes—one, the growth of the proletariat itself, the rise and progress of class consciousness, with all the industrial and political manifestations flowing therefrom; the other, the automatic process of capitalism which necessitates ever more involved and complex industrial machinery, the coming into being, the development and the perpetuation of combinations.
This process of necessity implies the extinction of very large numbers of small competing capitalists, industrialists, and merchants, who formed the backbone of the present system in its earlier stages.
There can be no real doubt as to the correctness of the Marxian predictions with respect to capitalistic development, for we have now unquestionably the greater capitalism with all the legal and political problems which it involves. As a counterpart also we see the decline in importance of the smaller capitalism which in its turn has in all modern communities given rise to certain very distinct and easily differentiated political manifestations.
The question thereon occurs: Is the Marxian theory of the rise of a revolutionary proletariat correct?
Unless this can be shown the whole of the revolutionary theory topples, at least as far as the socialist propaganda is concerned.
So we are brought to an examination of the proletariat itself and to a somewhat close analysis of its component parts, that we may the better appreciate the substantial power which it actually possesses, with a view of determining its possible effectiveness in a revolutionary struggle.
It will be observed that the term "revolutionary" is used in the broadest possible sense and is not confined to those physical manifestations and ebullitions which are generally the concomitants and transitory expressions of politico-social movements but which are not to be confused with the movements themselves.
The Marxian classification broadly and very satisfactorily divides modern industrial communities into three broad sections—the greater and dominant capitalism, which is practically in control; the smaller capitalism which has lost control but which stubbornly and incessantly maintains the fight against the greater capitalism, and the proletariat which is practically, so far, a negligible quantity.
The Marxian theory predicates the destruction of the petit bourgeois and the forcible thrusting of that somewhat unpleasant individual into the pit of proletarianism whence he is to come forth as an avenging angel and to repay his sufferings at the hands of the greater capitalism by the destruction of the latter.
But here we encounter somewhat of a check for the beaten petit bourgeois does not to any extent take sides with the proletarian and does not furnish that leadership and brains to the proletarian movement which it was confidently expected that he would. On the other hand, the later decades have been marked by the growth of what is called "the new middle class" which is not revolutionary. Indeed, the whole Bernstein controversy which has occupied so much space and generated so much heat rests precisely on this undeniable fact.
If we look at the matter from a practical and concrete standpoint it is easily understood why this is so.
When a trust takes over the field of an industry it disposes of its opponents two ways. It buys them out and takes the best brains of the smaller industry into its own service, the rest it annihilates by sheer force of economic superiority. It is obviously true that the more vigorous portion of the petite-bourgeoisie thus assimilated by the trust does not become revolutionary. On the contrary, its interests are henceforth identified with the interests of the trust of which it has become employee.
Economically, the smaller capitalist has been crushed out by this process, he has become a proletarian in receipt of a salary. Obviously he cannot be generally described as a capitalist large or small, and, according to the Marxian idea, he ought to be ranged with the proletarian class, but, as a matter of fact, he is no proletarian. He becomes a good servant of his new master, he accepts the political views of his new master as a good servant should, and he is not to be reckoned as a force with the revolution but as a distinct acquisition to the power of his destroyer.
Besides this, large numbers of the middle class are shareholders in the greater capitalist concerns. The Pennsylvania R. R. has twenty-five thousand shareholders and the steel trust an even greater number. In fact, the capital of the great trusts rests largely upon the subscribed capital of middle-class stockholders. It is clear that the economic interests of these people are not with any other than the greater capitalism into which they have become merged.
The small fish swallowed is transformed into part of the shark, and the petit-bourgeois losing his economic identity is absorbed in the Nirvana of the greater capitalism.
With respect to the beaten small bourgeois, he does not count. There is no revolutionary effectiveness in a beaten class, and the defeated small tradesman either sinks into oblivion, buried in the slums, the cemeteries of the unfit, or perambulates the earth an uneasy ghost entirely out of place in society and tampering with reactionary politics, in the ranks of the Roosevelt pseudo-progressives or playing with the Socialist Party.
Really, this new middle class did not enter into the calculation of Marx. It could not have done so, for the economic facts of his time did not allow of such an anticipation.
He wrote in a milieu of which the dominant note was the petite-bourgeoisie, the philistines of the early Victorian era.
The great concerns were only just beginning to raise their heads above the welter of the competitive chaos. The mass of the workers, denominated proletarians, had no political representation, and had not even learned to organize trade unions on any effective scale, indeed, they were only just beginning to develop rudimentary forms of these organizations. Marx could see—and surely that is credit enough for one man—that the greater capitalism was the next order of the day, and that the proletarian class must remain as the only effective class with which a revolution could be made.
As a generalization the conclusion is correct. It remains practically unassailable in spite of the vehemence of the attacks made by the Revisionists, but it ignores a whole intermediary period through which we are passing at the present time. It leaves out of consideration the work of the petite-bourgeoisie in the political and social world; it does not take into consideration the tremendous efforts put forth by that class in antagonism to the dominant capitalism, efforts which are distinctly reactionary, though apparently progressive, and still less does it recognize the unexpected vulgarization of the socialist party by the same petite-bourgeoisie.
The British Reform Acts as well as the development of liberalism in Europe placed the old world on a practical level with the new as regards the influence of the petite-bourgeoisie. In Europe the old aristrocracy was more and more forced to make common cause with the capitalistic magnates and both landed and moneyed aristocracy, forgetting their old differences, were driven into the same fold.
The non-existence of those differences in the United States made the progress of the latter country in the direction of economic concentration more easy and the vastly greater opportunities afforded to the individual to prosper economically for a long time obscured the issue between the petite-bourgeoisie and the dominant class.
In Europe the process of bourgeois development was retarded by the complications of the fight for liberalism. On the continent that fight is still going on, though involved with the introduction of social ameliorative tendencies on a scale unknown to the liberalism of Great Britain until very recent times. But as time went on and as the inability of the small bourgeois to maintain a position on the economic field became more and more obvious, he was obliged to turn his attention from laissez faire of which he had formerly been the exponent to the very antithesis of liberalism, to-wit: state interference.
Thereupon he began to view with some complacency the socialist platform which by its denial of laissez faire and its demand for interference with those capitalistic activities which at the beginning had been the very basis of liberalism, served to offer some relief from the pressure to which he was subjected.
But it will be observed that the small bourgeois did not turn his attention to the socialism of Marx with its proclamation of the class struggle and its insistence upon the triumph of the proletarian. That would never have done. The petit-bourgeois was by no means anxious to become a proletarian. On the contrary, his grievance was that he was likely to become one under the pressure of the great capitalism.
Thus he sought a remedy in State Socialism, or collectivism and the Fabian Society of Great Britain became his exponent. He favored attacks upon rent, profit and interest above certain amounts, inheritance taxes, and heavy land and income taxes, extension of government works, and greater governmental control of franchises, and finally a form of collectivism which contemplated the expropriation of the private owners of the so-called public utilities.
This last form of public ownership was triumphantly heralded as socialism and a propaganda was set on foot by which the political fortunes of the petite-bourgeoisie came to be linked with those of certain sections of the working class.
As a matter of fact the prevailing influence in the socialist parties has therefore been not proletarian but petit bourgeois. Even the membership has borne the mark of the small trader though somewhat of a transformation is now taking place, but by far the most influential men in the socialist movement are not members of the working class, a very curious state of things in a movement which according to its founders rests primarily upon a proletarian base.
In proof of this an analysis of the membership of the Socialist Party in the United States published in the Socialist Party Official Bulletin for April, 1909, shows the following figures: Laborers, 20 per cent; craftsmen, 41 per cent; transportation, 5 per cent; farmers, 17 per cent; commerce, 9 per cent; professional, 5 per cent; housewives, 3 per cent.
Eliminating the 3 per cent credited to housewives, it gives 77 per cent non-proletarian as against 20 per cent proletarian in the membership of the Socialist Party itself, in which the proletarian elements might be considered to be the determining factors. It is clear that so far from the Socialist Party being a proletarian party, it is hardly a working class party, even, for the laborers and craftsmen combined only give 61 per cent as against the balance obviously and distinctly petit bourgeois.
It will be seen later, moreover, that the term working class by no means necessarily implies the term proletarian.
In fact the Socialist Party is just a rallying ground for the discontented petit-bourgeois and working class to coalesce. It is a cave of Adullam, as Robert Lowe would have called it, merely that.
It is very obvious that in this borderland we find but scant traces of that proletarianism which is to redeem the world.