It is amusing to see how cock-sure our average Socialist is in predicting the downfall of capitalism and the uplifting of labor. I am reading the Seligman-Wilshire debate in Wilshire’s Magazine for March, in which Mr. Wilshire says:

We can, if we wish, naturalize our industries step by step and gradually take in everything and have a complete industrial democracy in one year . . . if we say that we want it done, and know that we want it, why, we can have it as soon as we please.

But what will it be? He calls it a political democracy—an industrial democracy, and says:

We, the people of the United States, will say that this country belongs to us, and that we will determine our own officers as we choose and when we choose.

But the politicians also say this. Again:

Today the Morgans, the Rockefellers, the owners of the country are its real rulers. The men who govern this country are not the puppets we see in the senate or congress or in the presidential chair. The rulers are the men at the head of the great trust and railroads.

Continuing he says:

What we Socialists wish to do is to make Wall Street our Washington; to make Mr. Morgan, Mr. Vanderbilt and Mr. Rockefeller hold elective offices, and then we will control our officials at Washington. Wall Street controls Washington, we propose to control Wall Street.

Yes, but why should not these servants (?) be real rulers as they are now out of office? Mr. Wilshire would make the power behind the throne the throne itself. And this, ye Gods! for the purpose of controling them. He cannot see that his industrial democracy would contain the same element that causes all the trouble with capitalism. The delegated sovereign power and his centralized democracy would develop an oligarchy, and we should have the Roman empire re-enacted, as his opponent claimed. Mr. Seligman said:

Learn what collective ownership means under an autocratic rule. . . About the only difference would be that the Roman empire would be replaced by our board of aldermen.

Mr. Wilshire has a wonderful idea of politics—Socialist politics—that can do almost anything. He says:

There can be but one solution and that is the abolition of the competitive wage system, and we can only abolish it by having public ownership of the means of production. . . Socialism in its entirety is an absolute inevitability. We can have it, by voting for the Socialist party whenever we please.

All the people have to do is to elect a Socialist president, a Socialist congress, and presto!—paradise appears.

In connection with all political Socialists he assumes that it is only a question of time,—and a very short time,—when monopoly will control everything, that is, all means of production, and the wonderful increase of machinery will enable capital to produce much faster than consumption is creating an unemployed problem. He says:

When this great unemployed problem comes upon us, and it will appear within the next five years, I think, the capitalist is simply bound to discover a solution for it or give up his capital. If he cannot employ the people of the United States, if he cannot provide a means of feeding them, then we are bound to change the existing social system.

The problem with Wilshire is simply to employ the people, or find some method of feeding them; thus capitalism would drift into a benevolent feudalism and a bureaucracy would be established. In either case slavery would result. This idea that a crisis is approaching; that a great unemployed problem is soon to confront society which will demand some governing power to control and regulate it, or, as Mr. Wilshire says, change the existing social system, is the result of a superficial view of things. They see large fortunes multiplying—the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and these things makes a great stir. But when the Socialist gets off his high horse and directs his scrutiny to the sub-order of industry, he discovers another force gathering head. Individual initiative in the realm of self-help and self-reliance. He says:

The root of all our trouble exists in our competitive wage system.

But I would say it was in our dependence upon the wage system. It is unnecessary when the laboring poor will learn to cooperate to supply their needs—instead of the markets—will learn the lesson of self-help and self-reliance, the doom of monopoly will be pronounced.

I imagine the great financial crisis Mr. Wilshire is looking for as a result of producing far more than we can possibly consume with our competitive wage system will never materialize, and his one solution—the public ownership of the means of production will never be applied. There is, I believe, an undercurrent even in the ranks of political Socialism carrying them back to the principle of self-activity instead of dependence upon systems. Prof. O. L. Triggs says in the same magazine:

Industrial democracy can never be established on the basis of a political system. . . . The strength of labor lies in its unions and federations, which are federations of men and not governments of laws. . . The next step after industrial feudalism is industrial democracy. This means that industries will be conducted by and for the people, and this means of course that production will be carried on not for the sake of production or for that power which wealth secures, but for the sake of the people. . . Voluntary individual cooperation is, I believe, the ultimate form of industrial democracy. . . Industrial freedom means the privilege of self-control in respect to one’s work.

All of which is directly opposed to the philosophy of Mr. Wilshire. His idea, and it is generally entertained by Socialists, is, that industrial freedom must be obtained by a political system. In other words, freedom is to be reached by a system of slavery. There never was a greater mistake. Freedom and government are diametrically opposed. If liberty has advanced it has been in spite of government. Liberty as a factor in evolution has made itself felt in political and religious circles. But it enters to destroy them; and its method is division, disunion, and decentralization. Mr. Wilshire would reverse this by centralizing and strengthening this principle of authority called government. I am glad to believe that many if not most of the leaders of Socialist thought sanction politics only as a sort of an advance agent, that their real [4] work will be to do away with politics. Of course they are bound to be terribly disappointed, and I hope they may see the fallacy of the idea before it is too late to undo their mistaken work. Cooperation for which they long is only possible under freedom. Voluntary cooperation is unthinkable under government. Prof. Triggs says, Industrial freedom, like religious and political freedom, depends for its effectiveness upon character and capacity in the individual. Let our leaders of thought for the advancement of man turn from politics that destroys character and capacity, and teach the principle of self-activity, self-help, and self-reliance, that production may be carried on not for the sake of that power which wealth secures, but for the sake of the people.

A. LeRoy Loubal