Another important cause would be in operation. Socialism is spreading anti-religious and atheistic doctrines, loosing men and women from their moral restraints. With dishonesty thus increasing, acceptors of bribes would not only be more common in the Marxian state, but the average number of their offences would increase; for since opportunities of collecting large single sums would be rarer than at present, owing to abolition of the capitalist system and the small amount of wealth possessed by individuals, dishonest politicians would naturally endeavor to enrich themselves by granting corrupt favors to a larger number of people. The reader himself can picture the condition of affairs in the Socialist state when large numbers of its citizens were its declared enemies because of a vast and hopeless system of political corruption.
The Socialist state would contain many persons who by soapbox orators and revolutionary authors were led to believe that police, soldiers and courts would disappear. These persons would be greatly discontented when the Socialist government still hedged them in by retaining the old system for the preservation of law and order, or, as in Russia, greatly increased the restraint on their liberty by means of immense numbers of Red Guards, heavily armed and noted for cruelty. Or if these were taken away, the state would feel the enmity of all its better citizens who realized the need for guardians, police, soldiers and courts, to protect them from the crimes of the lawless.
Under the Socialist regime there would be atheists, fighting as in Russia, Mexico, France, Italy and Portugal for the propagation of their doctrines, while in opposition to them would be millions of believers, defending themselves from the attacks of the enemies of G.o.d. Any concession granted by the state to one of these parties would arouse the enmity of the other.
So, too, there would be a rapidly growing faction in favor of free-love, as well as one opposed to it, and as each party would be extremely powerful, and use every effort to defeat its opponents, there would be great strife and discontent.
The Socialists in power in Europe, whether "moderate" or extremely radical, have made millions of enemies by imprisonments, executions, suppression of free speech, the gagging of the press, the withholding food, etc. Would these things happen in our country if the Reds gained control?
There is every reason to believe that the Socialist Government would become exceedingly unpopular here as in Russia, owing to a great increase in crime; for to say nothing of the criminal offences occasioned by the prevalent discontent of the citizens, the atheistical and anti-religious doctrines of the Revolutionists, by continuing to undermine the faith of the people in the existence of G.o.d and by leading them to disbelieve in the rewards of heaven and the punishments of h.e.l.l, would very seriously interfere with the beneficent effects of several of the most excellent preventives of crime.
With discontent, jealousy and crime reigning supreme in the state from its very birth, many who had hoped for the success of Socialism would become utterly disgusted with its absolute failure and would long for the re-establishment of the old order. As the leaders of the Marxian movement now make the most extravagant promises concerning perfections of their prospective state, their government, should it come, would suffer the hatred of all who discovered that they had been cruelly deceived.
We must remember, too, that the very persons who would discover that they had been deceived by their Socialist teachers would be the very same people who are now taught by the same teachers to find fault with everything under the sun. It would, therefore, be a terrible day for the new state when the embittered rank and file of the Revolutionary Party fully realized the total failure of Socialism. The Socialist state would then have millions of enemies, recruited from the Socialist Party itself, as well as from the ranks of those who had always opposed Socialism.
Not alone would these enemies be far more numerous than those who oppose our present form of government, but their wrath and anger, wrought to fever heat by the many causes we have enumerated, as well as by the mistakes of the Marxian rulers, would urge them to commit deeds of violence that have never yet been conceived even by the "bomb squad" of the revolutionary I. W. W. Rebellion against the new government would be the order of the day, and the Socialist state would not long endure. It would crumble to pieces, and the poor workingman, in the midst of anarchy and the total destruction of industry, would deeply regret having listened to the crazed imaginations of silver-tongued fanatics.
Lincoln Eyre"s cables from Russia, received by the "New York World" when this book was in type, more than corroborate the picture drawn in this chapter of the "perils to workingmen" from any attempt to put the economic fallacies of Socialism into practice. In the first place, according to Eyre"s cable of February 26, 1920, printed in the "World"
of February 28, 1920, all the blood and violence inflicted on Russia have failed to establish real Communism there. Through courtesy of the "World" we give, in part, Eyre"s statement as to this, from the cable just mentioned:
"In wartime France, England or Germany no man could obtain for love or money more than a specified maximum of food, fuel or the household requirements. In wartime revolutionary Russia, ruled by a communist dictatorship, any man with enough thousand ruble notes can buy all the food and warmth he desires. Throughout the war dwellers in London, Paris or Berlin affected by war conditions (and that meant practically everybody) were freed of paying rent by a moratorium. Residents of Moscow and Petrograd are still obliged to pay rent and at a higher figure than in pre-war days. These two incontrovertible facts are evidence that an all-powerful Bolshevik in the Communist Government has in two years installed a lesser measure of Communism in actual practice than existed in the belligerent European countries during the war years. To my mind this is one of the severest, albeit the most rarely mentioned, indictments of the Bolsheviks" vast communistic programme, since it reveals their impotency to attain their initial aim--the abolition of cla.s.ses."
In the second place, not alone has there been failure to destroy capitalism and equalize possessions, but new cla.s.s distinctions and "new aristocracies" have arisen. We quote Eyre on this point from the same issue of the "World," February 28, 1920:
"While capitalism in the larger sense of the term has been destroyed, together with private ownership on a large scale, capital continues to be acc.u.mulated and to make its influence felt.
One man may still possess more than another in worldly goods and receive higher pay for his work. Equality of material possessions is as non-existent in the Russian social republic as it is in the American "bourgeois" republic. Hence there are coming into existence new groupings of Russian population, new lines of economic demarcation, new forms of social standing and of wealth.
The beginning of two new aristocracies are detectable. One is found in the governmental hierarchy, the other in the ever-increasing speculator cla.s.s.... The Soviets ... cannot do without the speculators (which means all persons engaged in private trading)."
Thirdly, "Communist" Russia already has her "ruling cla.s.s," as privileged and as distinctly marked off from the ordinary day-laborer as in any "bourgeois" republic. We quote Eyre as to this from the same article:
"Governmental aristocracy has its boots imbedded in the Kremlin, that ancient Moscow citadel.... In Soviet Russia today one speaks of the Kremlin as one spoke of Versailles in the magnificent days of Louis XIV.... Only the most eminent commissaries of the people and a few other Soviet stars of the first magnitude are domiciled there in the grandiose palaces that once housed the most famous figures of Muscovite history.
"Protected behind numerous barriers of bayonets and machine guns, the Bolshevik chieftains have made this barbarically gorgeous nesting place of Oriental autocracy the throbbing nerve centre of world revolution.... And from its frowning gates they sally forth in their high power limousines on affairs of state even as the Czars in their day went forth to superintend the administration of their colossal heritage.
"Bolshevism"s upper ten are in the Kremlin. The lesser lights of the Bolshevik aristocracy must content themselves with quarters in the "Soviet houses," which were the city"s leading hotels, and are now nationalized habitations reserved for prominent Soviet officials. These buildings, like the Kremlin, are better heated and generally cared for than most other domiciles and the food served in them is slightly more abundant. Sentries guard the doors to prevent unauthorized visitors from gaining admission....
"The fact that some individuals ride to the opera in limousines while the rest walk is necessarily productive of cla.s.s division.
Already there is a slang term for the former--the proletarian bourgeoisie, they are called."
The observant reader will also have gathered from the extract just given that, fourthly, the "ruling cla.s.s" of Communist Russia is much more distrustful of the "common people" than any cla.s.s in the United States, Great Britain or France would think of being. Thus the lords and lordlings of the "proletarian dictatorship" barricade themselves in "citadels," behind "barriers of bayonets and machine guns," while "sentries guard the doors" to keep out "visitors." What would we poor "bourgeois" Americans think if our wealthier inhabitants and public officials kept "common citizens" out of range by such a display of infantry and artillery?
Fifthly, despite all the gush about a "workingmen"s" republic in Russia, that country is now absolutely helpless under the yoke of the most absolute autocracy the world has seen in a long while. As to this we quote Lincoln Eyre"s cable, dated February 25, 1920, and published in the "New York World" of February 27, 1920. Eyre says:
"Lenine ... and Trotzky ... wield a more absolute power than any Czar.... They are the only really strong men detectable among the Bolsheviki or anywhere else in Russia. That their strength is greater than ever is demonstrated by the amazing program for the militarization of labor that they have just entered upon; a programme which when first proposed aroused the Communist Party"s instant antagonism, but which in a few days the dictators easily persuaded their disciples to support."
We shall return to this astounding conscription of labor a little further on. It is referred to here merely to show who actually does the "ruling" in the widely advertised "labor" government of Russia. Eyre continues:
"There is iron law and order all over Russia, neither anarchy nor chaos being visible.... With the recent abolition of the death penalty the Red terror, long since bleached to pale pink, came to a definite end. Such is the omnipotence of the Soviets that it is no longer necessary for them to terrorize their opponents into obedience."
Thus horrible butcheries are no longer necessary because no one longer dares to resist. All liberty, all self-government, all self-initiative have been crushed in the iron vise of dictated policy. This is the case, as Eyre says, "twenty-seven months after the social revolution gripped the nation in a clutch of steel that never has been relaxed since." Is not such mental, moral and spiritual death a greater calamity than physical death?
Sixthly, the common people, crushed under this experimental Socialist Juggernaut, are starving to death. In the article last cited, in the "World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says:
"The food problem is hideously acute, yet not quite so critical as at the outset of the winter. In Moscow, Petrograd and other industrial centres some 8,000,000 human beings, of whom only a tiny fraction are Bolsheviki, are slowly but surely starving to death.
There are abundant food stocks in the south and east, but they cannot be carried in sufficient quant.i.ty over the semi-paralyzed railroads....
"Trotzky himself defined the industrial situation as a race between economic reconstruction and reversion to savagery."
Seventhly, craving for food is one of the things which make it impossible to shut out the food speculator, whose extortion at least helps to prolong life. As Eyre says:
"City and country food speculation, which the dictatorship thus far confesses its inability to suppress or even control, is fast developing a new capitalist cla.s.s right under the Communists"
noses. One of the most painful sights in Russia is some pale, thin, tottering old woman paying out more than she earns in a week for a few lumps of sugar bought from a well-fed trader from the country in the Sukfarevka, Moscow"s open air market place."
Eighthly, the common people are nearly as cold as they are hungry. In the cable printed in the "World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says:
"Fuel is slightly less scarce than it was two months ago. The lack of heat, however, is helping the food shortage to increase the mortality rate, which is likely to attain 30 per cent in Moscow before spring."
In the ninth place, disease stalks through the land, hand in hand with cold and famine. The article just cited contains the following by Eyre:
"Disease is rampant, and the typhus epidemic in Siberia, where Kolchak left many tens of thousands of victims behind him in his retreat, is spreading swiftly westward. Owing to the absence of medical supplies, the epidemic can be combated only by quarantine."
In the tenth place, "labor" in Russia, the real "working cla.s.s," is conscripted, enslaved under military discipline, and "exploited" under an incredible system of military court martial--a degradation of workingmen by the Socialist tyrants of Russia which no form of modern "capitalism" has dreamed of since human slavery was abolished. On this subject Eyre says, in the "World" of February 27, 1920:
"Four of Trotzky"s sixteen armies have been turned into "labor armies," which means that soldiers fresh from victories on military fronts are being obliged to work, still under military command and discipline, on the "economic front." They are used chiefly for building up the transport system and a.s.suring shipment of food and fuel from the country to the city....
"Labor generally is being militarized to an amazing extent.
Discipline is being imposed upon factory workers by the establishment of special tribunals with powers of courts martial.
Communist commissaries, no longer required at the front, are being detached from their regiments and sent to stimulate production endeavor in industries and railroads."
Is this the kind of thing which Hillquit"s Socialist gang of would-be labor "exploiters" would lure America"s liberty-loving workingmen into by calling them "slaves" in their present dignified situation as self-governed and self-reliant freemen? On December 13, 1919, the presidents and secretaries of the 113 national and international unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor met at Washington, D.
C., with the heads of the four railway brotherhoods and several farmers" organizations, and are to be congratulated for having pa.s.sed the following resolution, which the late information from Russia overwhelmingly vindicates:
"Whereas, the American Federation of Labor is an American inst.i.tution, believing in American principles and ideas, and
"Whereas, an attempt is being made to inject the spirit of Bolshevism and I. W. W."ism into the affairs of the American Federation of Labor, and
"Whereas, the American Federation of Labor is opposed to Bolshevism, I. W. W."ism and the irresponsible leadership which encouraged such a policy, therefore be it
"Resolved, that the conference of representatives of trades unions affiliated with the A. F. of L., and other organizations a.s.sociated in this conference, repudiate and condemn the policy of Bolshevism and I. W. W."ism as being destructive of American ideals and impracticable in application; be it further
"Resolved, that this conference reiterate the action of the conventions of the American Federation of Labor, and the advocacy of the principles of conciliation and voluntary arbitration and collective bargaining."
We cite this here to put the freedom of self-determination, practiced by the great progressive body of American labor, in vivid contrast with the abject slavery which the Socialists of Russia are now imposing upon the labor of that country. Lincoln Eyre"s statement of the labor situation in Russia is confirmed by Trotzky himself, as we learn from the "New York World" of February 28, 1920, as follows:
"London, February 27.--Leon Trotzky, Minister of War of Soviet Russia, addressing the third Russian Congress, held in Moscow January 25 last, outlined the Bolshevist plan for converting the Red Army into an army of labor. According to reports of his speech reaching here he said:
""There is still one way open to the reorganization of national economy--the way of uniting the army and labor and changing the military detachments of the army into detachments of a labor army.