""Many in the army have already accomplished their military task but they cannot be demobilized as yet. Now that they have been released from their military duties, they must fight against economic ruin and against hunger; they must work to obtain fuel, peat and other heat-producing products; they must take part in building, in clearing the lines of snow, in repairing roads, building sheds, grinding flour, etc.
""We have already organized several of these armies and they have been allotted their tasks. One army must obtain foodstuffs for the workmen of the districts in which it was formerly stationed and it also will cut wood, cart it to the railways and repair engines.
Another army will help in the laying down of railway lines for the transport of crude oil. A third labor army will be used in repairing agricultural implements and machines, and, in the spring, will take part in the working of the land....
""Trade unions must register qualified workmen in the villages.
Only in those localities where trade union methods are inadequate other methods must be introduced, in particular that of compulsion, because labor conscription gives the state the right to tell the qualified workmen who is employed on some unimportant work in his village, "You are obliged to leave your present employment and go to Sormovo or Kolomna, because there your work is required."
""Labor conscription means that the qualified workmen who leave the army must proceed to places where they are required, where their presence is necessary to the economic system of the country. We must feed these workmen and guarantee them the minimum food ration.""
No doubt these "qualified workmen" are what we call "skilled workmen."
Here we have, in its naked reality, the "deliverance" from "wage-slavery" which the crazy Socialists of all schools have so long been preaching to the laboring freemen of America. How would the millions of labor"s n.o.blemen in the American Federation of Labor like to see Debs, Hillquit and Victor L. Berger cracking the whip over them after the fashion of Lenine, Trotzky and Zinovieff in Russia?
Notice the "capitalistic" language of Trotzky: "_We_"--the tyrannical, exploiting drones in the Kremlin--"must feed these workmen and guarantee them the _minimum_ food ration." Do not the "workmen" produce the food?
Then why do they not take it and cut the throats of these drones? Is not this the Socialist doctrine we are taught by our American theorists, who froth at the mouth over the alleged "wage-slavery" of American workmen who rear intelligent families in comfortable homes and maintain the independence and self-initiative of American freemen?
In the eleventh place, we notice that the workmen of Russia, as a reward for complete slavery under military conscription and courts martial tribunals, are guaranteed nothing but this "minimum food ration" and a possibility of being able to buy enough additional food out of their wages to postpone starvation. The last-mentioned possibility is described for us by Lincoln Eyre in his cable in the "New York World" of February 27, 1920, where, it must be remembered, he is speaking of the most-favored workmen, in the big cities. He says:
"n.o.body in Russia relying wholly upon "Sovietsky" food--food handed out through official agencies--gets enough to eat except soldiers, a small percentage of heavy workers and high Soviet officials. Ordinary factory workers seldom receive as much as 60 per cent of their alimentary requirements through the Government. The remainder they must buy at fantastically high prices from speculators. And though they themselves, in collaboration with central dictatorship, fix their own wages, they never earn enough to cover the swift-climbing cost of living. If this is the plight of the workers, that is, of the ruling cla.s.s, the ghastliness of the situation confronting the less favored elements of the population may well be imagined."
Is it in irony that Eyre speaks of these "workers" as "the ruling cla.s.s"? What are the real workmen in Russia but victims of this cruel experiment of tyrannizing Socialist "intellectuals"?
We remark next, in the twelfth place, that the Soviet system of food distribution, wholly unequal and thus anti-communistic, has resulted in dividing the Russians into eight cla.s.ses, each category having a special card defining its special ration. The account of this is given by Lincoln Eyre in a cable dated March 9, 1920, and published in the "New York World" of March 10, 1920, from which we take two sentences:
"The commissariat of food control has gradually built up no less than eight distinct cla.s.ses.... Special cards also are provided for children from one, two to five and from five to sixteen. It will be seen that this totals eight distinct varieties of card."
The affect of these distinctions may be gathered from the following instance given in the article just cited:
"In the month of November there was distributed by the Petrograd Soviet altogether 13,631,480 pounds of bread.... Had all the bread been divided evenly among the whole population, each person would have had about one-half a pound a a day, whereas, in fact, one category got much less than that amount daily and the third category none at all."
In the thirteenth place, we note that the Russian Socialist tyrants give the workmen, in exchange for their labor, pieces of paper run off from printing presses which seem almost to have solved the problem of perpetual motion. The workmen are wise if they spend this fiat money daily for whatever it will bring in food, for its value will collapse utterly when the dictatorship bursts, leaving the country financially prostrate, without credit or means of exchange. This is one of the greatest bunco games ever practiced upon workingmen. Eyre describes it in a cable dated March 3, 1920, and published in the "New York World" of March 4, 1920, from which we quote:
"In "the Socialist Federative Republic of Soviets of Russia," to give the Bolshevik land its official t.i.tle, no mention has been made of finance. The reason for this is simple. There is no finance, in the European or American sense of the word, in present Russia. The Soviet Government pays its own people what it has to pay in paper money, of which it prints unlimited quant.i.ties. Being determined eventually to abolish money altogether in favor of Communistic exchange of products, it is not worried about depreciation in the value of its currency. It possesses about 1,000,000,000 rubles--the exact amount is kept very secret--in gold, with which it intends to pay for goods purchased abroad until it can establish a system of barter with foreign commercial interests. From the capitalistic viewpoint its budgetary expenditures are chaotic, but in Communistic eyes they are both sane and logical."
Only to minds financially insane or criminally degenerate could such a system seem "sane and logical." Their carefully kept store of gold shows that the Bolshevist dictators are not insane but criminal. They understand their game, which is that of bunco-steering to "exploit"
labor on the largest scale the world has ever seen. Honest paper money is a promise to pay, for value received, in gold, silver or good merchandise. If this form is used by these frauds, it is with the deliberate intention of repudiation, the possibility of payment being also destroyed by the floods of the stuff turned out. If the paper given is not a promise to pay, it is circulated simply through the tyranny of men who by threat of punishment or starvation force workingmen to exchange a day"s labor for a bit of food and a piece of paper. In either case the labor exploiters in the Kremlin exact from Russia"s workingmen, in exchange for a little food and a wad of paper, a genuine value, the product of hard labor, which these get-rich-quick Wallingfords can turn into gold, or exchange with the world for anything they want. All that Russian workingmen get is semi-starvation and the temporary delusion, conveyed to them in fine speeches, that they are "in the game," whereas they are only its dupes.
The worthless character of the paper money, which the workmen nevertheless have to take and spend to keep soul and body together, is shown by the fact that the peasants refuse it. In his cable printed in the "New York World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says that "the peasant twenty miles outside of Moscow ... has more food than he can eat, more clothes than he can wear," yet "refuses to sell his products for money except that proportion of them that he is compelled to turn over to the Soviets at a fixed price. In private trading," Eyre continues, "he will take in exchange for his foodstuffs only manufactured articles, clothing and other things he needs." Thus the peasant is fortunate in that he lives on land where he can at least raise enough to eat; whereas the "proletarian," in whose behalf the Socialists pretend to have made the Russian revolution, is most of all victimized by it.
The reason why the Bolshevist dictators are now conscripting Russian labor seems evident. These pick-pockets have finished exploiting the Russian aristocracy and "bourgeoisie," squeezed them dry, and squandered what they stole. The only game left to them now is to exploit labor to the limit and appropriate the profits.
Two other features of this thimble-rigging arrangement complete the exposure of the most inhuman scheme to exploit labor which the world has seen for centuries. One of these shows us, in the fourteenth place, that the rascals Lenine and Trotzky, are actually inviting "foreign capital"
to form a partnership with them in their exploitation of Russian labor, under promise to turn over to this outside "capital" a good share of the "profits" to be wrung by labor conscription out of the sweat of Russia"s brow.
The invitation to "foreign capital" to join hands with the Bolshevist dictatorship, under promise of good profits and guarantees of security was made by both Lenine and Trotzky through interviews granted to Lincoln Eyre. Through courtesy of the "New York World" we have quoted the propositions of these "friends" of Russian labor near the close of Chapter XV of this book, as the reader doubtless remembers, and we merely recall the facts here to put them in line with the other features of Bolshevist labor oppression which we have just been considering. Who could have imagined that within a little more than two years after beginning their barbarous Socialist experiment with Russian industries the brazen dictatorship would be urging "foreign capital" to join in a scheme to squeeze both a domestic and a foreign profit out of the toil of Russian workingmen conscripted by Socialist task-masters and held in wage-slavery under fear of death by court martial?
In the fifteenth place, we have the dreadful fact that Russian labor is enslaved by a Socialist autocracy not for the sake of promoting peace but for the sake of promoting war. In our last chapter we quoted the statements of Zinovieff to Lincoln Eyre that the Third Internationale would never give up its purpose to make the whole world Bolshevist. Eyre also found the belief general in Russia that so long as the Socialists retain power, any peace made by them with the outside world will only be a short truce in which to prepare for another war. He says, in his cable printed in the "New York World" of February 27, 1920:
"All, Bolsheviki included, feel that as long as the Soviets remain in power in Russia and Bolshevism does not spread to other lands, peace cannot be more than a truce in the international cla.s.s warfare."
Again, in his cable printed in the "New York World" of March 4, 1920, Lincoln Eyre says:
"The Red Army"s victories against Kolchak, Yudenitch and Denikine are in themselves paradoxical, in that they serve to increase the Russian need for peace.... Every advance recorded in Siberia or the Crimea brings the front line further from the base and complicates the task of supplying munitions, food and equipment. Thus it becomes increasingly evident to all Russians, whatever their political leanings may be, that Russia must have peace in order to survive economically. And yet--another paradox--all feel that any peace established now between Soviet authority and Governments of the bourgeois and democratics cannot be more than a brief truce because Socialism and capitalism cannot abide side by side, and because neither can be suppressed without warfare. The Bolshevik faith in the ultimate appearance of a world revolution has not waned, but their hope of its speedy coming has lessened considerably."
Who but the long-suffering Russians would endure the hopeless fate imposed by Socialism on Russian labor? The workingmen were conscripted by Trotzky"s armies. They won victories, but these have not freed them.
Returning from the front they are conscripted for labor armies, to work as they fought, under military discipline, subject to court martial and death if they rebel. Yet this military toil will not free them. They slave under the pistols of the commissaries only to get themselves economically equipped for a new war against their "capitalistic"
neighbors, and in this war the workingman, if he can still walk, will be conscripted to go to the front again. Should he survive this, must he begin the same round over again?
But why not strike against this slavery? Russian labor does not dare to strike. Tender-hearted Socialism has made the labor strike a crime in Russia. Says Lincoln Eyre, in a cable dated March 11, 1920, and printed in the "New York World" of March 13, 1920:
"The unions, of course, lost their former princ.i.p.al weapon--the strike. Today any body of workers that would venture out on strike would be considered, to quote President Melnitchansky of the Moscow unions, as traitors to their Socialist fatherland and as such would doubtless be shot."
With this utter collapse of Socialist theories and professions in Bolshevikiland, we need not wonder that, according to a cable in the "New York Times" of March 2, 1920, the French National Socialist Congress adjourned at Strasbourg, March 1, 1920, "after voting down by more than 2 to 1 a motion to ally the Socialists of France with Lenine and Trotzky." According to the same cable, "The pleaders for the Third Internationale, formed at Moscow, were answered by the reply that the beautiful doctrines enunciated there had been thrown aside by Lenine and Trotzky and that any one who believed in real Socialism would be a fool to get behind the leaders of Soviet Russia."
Is it now in order for our American Bolshevists, Gene Debs, Morris Hillquit (_alias_ Hilkovitz) and Vic Berger, solemnly to inform us that Russian Bolshevism never was Socialism, nor anything like it, but only a base counterfeit? And will they also inform us that Lenine and Trotzky are unprincipled adventurers and cold-blooded blackguards who have hidden behind the mask of Socialism to blackjack a great people and filch a wealth they never did a day"s work to acc.u.mulate?
When our American wavers of the Red Flag try to hide their shipwrecked theories behind a repudiation of Bolshevikiland, we shall have to remind them of their many, many utterances jubilantly a.s.suring us that "Bolshevism is Socialism in practice." A specimen will do, taken from one of the books published by the Jewish Socialist Federation of America, a "part of the Socialist Party" of the United States piloted by Debs, Hilkovitz and Berger, which we quote as cited on page 34 of the "Outline of the Evidence Taken Before the Judiciary Committee" of the New York a.s.sembly:
"Bolshevism is not a new Socialist theory, but the practical carrying out in life of the old Socialist theory.
"Bolshevism especially is not a theory. Bolshevism is a method of how to establish Socialism in life.
"Bolshevism is practical Socialism, the Socialism of today, and not of the remote future day."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST RELIGION ABROAD
It is but proper to begin this chapter by conceding that there are many church-going members among those who vote the Marxian ticket--not as an indors.e.m.e.nt of the teachings of international Socialism, but merely as a protest against political corruption and the abuses of capitalism.
Justice, moreover, demands that we acknowledge the existence of a small minority of dues-paying members of the Socialist Party who neither attack religion nor tacitly approve of the atheistic propaganda carried on in the official Marxian press, as well as in the books, pamphlets and magazines on sale not only in the leading Socialist book-stores of America, but even at the National Office of the party in Chicago.
In most countries of Europe, where the war against religion is much more open and widespread than in America, the Socialists are frank in confessing that their movement is atheistic and anti-religious.
In our own country some of the more violent Socialistic enemies of the church admit both in their speeches and in their writings that they would be extremely happy to see the very idea of G.o.d become a matter of ancient history. Christian Socialists of the old Carr faction, who const.i.tute a minority of far less than one per cent of the Socialist Party of the United States, have not only conceded the existence of an atheistic propaganda within the ranks, but have attacked it and utterly failed to suppress it.
Apart from these two cla.s.ses of American Socialists, who admit the existence of a campaign in favor of atheism, most Socialists in our country, because they fear that votes will be lost if our people are convinced of the anti-religious character of the party, steadfastly deny that they are conspiring against religion. Indeed they are quite cunning and crafty in their effort to beguile the unwary. If the person hesitates joining the party, owing to his conviction that nearly all the Socialist leaders have been the enemies of religion, he is informed that it would be just as foolish for him not to be a Revolutionist for this reason, as it would be for one not to become a Republican because Robert Ingersoll did not believe in G.o.d and even propagated atheism.
As the conspirators against religion have, by this plausible argument, involving the name of Ingersoll, removed the prejudices that many persons formerly had against Socialism on account of the atheistic teachings of its leaders, it seems but fitting to give a short refutation of the deceptive argument and to point out the absurdity of the comparison just mentioned.
In the first place, although Robert Ingersoll was an atheist, he never stated that Republicanism was anti-religious. On the other hand, very many of the highest authorities in the Marxian Party, whose extensive knowledge of Socialism justifies our belief that they know but too well the policy of the revolutionary movement, admit that Socialism postulates atheism and war against religious beliefs. Ingersoll, moreover, never attacked religion nor taught atheism with a view to furthering the cause of Republicanism. But a very large number of the Socialists, whether Europeans or Americans, in their endeavor to promote what they consider to be the best interests of their party, have in their books, magazines, pamphlets and papers been waging a relentless war against religion. The atheistical works of Robert Ingersoll were not purchased by the rank and file of the Republican Party for purposes of party propaganda, but the rank and file of the Revolutionary Party spend large sums of money on publications in which their avowed leaders teach atheism as part of the Socialist program. Not content even with this, the members do their utmost to increase the circulation of anti-religious Socialist books, magazines, pamphlets and papers.
Before producing the evidence that will convict the Socialist leaders and the rank and file of the party of openly advocating atheism and hostility to religion, or at least of tacitly approving of such a propaganda, a few words must be said relative to the materialistic conception of history, or of economic determinism, as it is often called. According to this doctrine, which is one of the fundamental teachings of the Socialists, the whole history of mankind, including its political, intellectual and religious development, is nothing more than a process of evolution, the guiding principle of which is the prevailing economic conditions and their resultant cla.s.s struggles. Consequently, the Socialists who believe this doctrine deny the intervention of G.o.d in the development and spread of the Christian religion; for economic determinism teaches that the development of the church is not the work of Divine Providence, but of the economic conditions and cla.s.s struggles of society.
W. D. P. Bliss, the Socialist editor of the "New Encyclopedia of Social Reform," in an article on page 1135 of his work, admits that it is perfectly true that the large majority of avowed Socialists are divorced from recognized religion and the church, and that this leads many of them to extreme radicalism on all questions of ethics, money and the family.