Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movementWalling, William English
History
Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movement
Walling, William English
Socialism
"It must always be borne in mind that the contest between the State and
the corporate powers is a lasting one.... It must always be remembered
that their attitude throughout is one of hostility to this legislation,
and that if their relation to the law after it is enacted is to be
judged by the attitude towards the Interstate Commerce Law, it will be
one of continued effort to destroy its efficiency and nullify its
provision." Events have shown that he was right in his predictions, and
his idea that the war against monopolies must last until they are
deprived of their dominant position in politics is now widely accepted.
The leading demands of the small capitalists, in so far as they are
independently organized in this new movement, are now for protection, as
buyers, sellers, investors, borrowers, and taxpayers against the
"trusts," railways, and banks. Formerly they invariably took up the
cause of the capitalist competitors and would-be competitors of the
"Interests"--and millionaires and corporations of the second magnitude
were lined up politically with the small capitalists, as, for example,
silver mine owners, manufacturers who wanted free raw material, cheaper
food (with lower wages), and foreign markets at any price,--from
pseudo-reciprocity to war,--importing merchants, competitors of the
trusts, tobacco, beer, and liquor interests bent on decreasing their
taxes, etc.
The great novelty of the "Insurgent" movement is that, in dissociating
itself from Free Silver, Free Trade, and the proposal to _destroy_ the
"trusts," it has succeeded in getting rid of nearly all the "Interests"
that have wrecked previous small capitalist movements. At the same time,
it has all but abandoned the old demagogic talk about representing the
citizen as consumer against the citizen as producer. It frankly avows
its intention to protect the ultimate consumer, not against small
capitalist producers (_e.g._ its opposition to Canadian reciprocity and
cheaper food), but solely against the monopolies. Indeed, the protection
of the ultimate consumer against monopolies is clearly made incidental
to the protection of the small capitalist consumer-producer. The wage
earner consumes few products of the Steel Trust, the farmer and small
manufacturers, many. Nor does the new movement propose to destroy the
"trusts" by free trade even in the articles they produce, but merely to
control prices by lower tariffs. With the abandonment of the last of the
"Interests" and at the same time of the "consumers" that they use as a
cloak, the new movement promises for the first time a fairly independent
and lasting political organization of the smaller capitalists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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