SOCIALISM AND MEDIOCRITY

In these piping times of peace when the body politic is afflicted with socialism, bolshevism, and other cutaneous disorders, it is a pleasing and a profitable task to reread Socialistic Fallacies, by M. Yves Guyot, who for years has been a determined and consistent opponent of the bleak and dismal “science” and the author of a number of books on the subject. Luckily for those who can’t read French, Socialistic Fallacies has been translated and should prove a manual to combat and confute the sophistries of socialism with the writer’s arsenal of arguments. M. Guyot has been a deputy, a municipal councillor, minister of public works. He advocated the revision of the Dreyfus case, and he was political editor of Le Siècle (1892-1903). He is also editor of Journal des Economistes (since 1909) and editor of L’Agence Economique et Financières (since 1911). He has written much about the great war and its causes (also translated) and kindred themes. Therefore a man who knows what he is talking about.

In his drastic attack on socialistic fallacies he thus concludes: “There are three words which socialism must erase from the façades of our public buildings, the three words of the republican motto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Liberty, because socialism is a rule of tyranny; equality, because it is a rule of class; fraternity, because its policy is that of class war.” M. Guyot might have quoted Napoleon, a realist, a cynic in politics, for he knew its seamy side, who said: “Tell men they are equal and they won’t bother about liberty.” And in this matter men may change, mankind never.

Socialism, that word of so many meanings, has itself become meaningless. Guyot shows us each variety, analyzes its particular fallacy, and though not a victim to the craze for statistics, he furnishes many pages of figures to match those of his adversaries. He attacks Karl Marx on his weakest flank, and, incidentally, proves him not to have been a proletarian, but the son-in-law of a Prussian Junker. The selfishness of Marx, his tyrannical behavior, his unphilosophical wrath when opposed by two such intellectual giants as Bakunine and Lassalle; his jealous attitude toward Ferdinand Lassalle, especially after his tragic death, are all well known. These traits do not reveal a man overflowing with true brotherly love. Able, but frequently unscrupulous, men amuse the idle and attract the multitude—such are the leaders of the cause which has made such headway in Germany, adds Guyot, whose words in the light of contemporaneous history are positively prophetic. These leaders are plagiarists, with some variations, of all the communist romances originally inspired by Plato. Their greatest pundits, Marx and Engels, have built up their theories upon a sentence of Saint-Simon and three phrases of Ricardo’s. Our author gives these examples: “German socialism is derived from two sources: (1) The French doctrine of Saint-Simon, ‘The way to grow rich is to make others work for one,’ which in Proudhon’s mouth becomes ‘the exploitation of man by man.’ (2) Three formulas of Ricardo, viz.: (a) labor is the measure of value; (b) the price of labor is that which provides the laborer in general with the means of subsistence, and of perpetuating his species without either increase or diminution; (c) profits decrease in proportion as wages increase.” Formula (b) became the “iron law of wages” enunciated by Lassalle. Inverted dogmatism all these stale subterfuges.

The French doctrines and Ricardo’s three formulas were transformed into the theory of Rodbertus, “the normal time of labor,” and the “surplus labor” theory of Karl Marx and Engels. Guyot calmly demonstrates the fallacies of these sonorous assumptions. He asks the whereabouts of the Utopias of Fourier, of Cabet, of Louis Blanc’s organization of labor, or of Proudhon’s bank of exchange—that Proudhon who has been permanently saddled with Brissot’s famous phrase: “Property is theft.” (Philosophical Examination of Property and Theft, 1780.) No Socialist has succeeded in explaining the conditions for the production, the remuneration, and the distribution of capital in a collectivist system. No Socialist has succeeded in determining the motives for action which an individual would obey. When pressed for an answer, they allege that human nature shall be metamorphosed, but that the individual remains a constant quantity! Rank materialism all this, and absolutely without vision.

Socialism is a hierarchy on a military basis imported from Germany. Karl Marx did not concern himself with the incentives to action which are to be placed before men in communistic society, and his followers carefully evade the question. When they do attempt to deal with it, they fall into grotesque errors, as did the late French leader, Jaurès. Kautsky asks how the workman is to be made to take an interest in his work, and he can find no incentive other than the force of habit. Like mechanical toys, men will do the same thing every day because they did it the day before. This is merely teaching tricks to animals, the organization of reflex action causing the individual mechanically to do to-morrow what he did yesterday. Nor is this a discovery of scientific socialism; the organizers of churches, of armies, discovered the trait long ago, employing it as a means of discipline under the sanctions of allurement and coercion; allurement, by preferments, decorations, and honorary distinction; coercion, by means of more or less cruel and rigorous punishments. Bebel declared that “a man who will not work has not the right to eat.” This is being condemned to death by starvation; and a man who does less work than, in the opinion of the executive, he ought to do, shall be put upon a restricted diet; so, after all, the collectivist ideal ends in servile labor. To replace a king or a president there will be an “executive,” which means several instead of one tyrant. Good old King Log is always a better ruler than King Stork. For one thing, he is not so voracious as the ferociously hungry feathered biped. Socialism, then, is only one more strait-jacket to torture the individual.

It may be said that man is ready for every form of sacrifice save one: nowhere and at no time has he been found to labor voluntarily and constantly from a disinterested love for others. Man is only compelled to productive labor by necessity, by the fear of punishment, or by suitable remuneration. The Socialists of to-day, like those of former times, constantly denounce the waste of competition. Competition involves losses, but biological evolution, as well as humanity, proves that they are largely compensated by gain. Furthermore, there is no question of abolishing competition in socialistic conceptions; the question is merely one of the substitution of political for economic competition. If economic competition leads to waste, and claims its victims, it is none the less productive. Political competition has secured enormous plunder to great conquerors, such as Alexander, Cæsar, Tamerlane, and Napoleon; it always destroys more wealth than it confers upon the victor. The Socialist formulates a theory of robbery and calls it “restitution to the disinherited.” Disinherited by whom? Disinherited of what? Let them produce their title-deeds! They call it expropriation, but that is a misnomer; what they set out to practise is confiscation. Georges Bernard says that “socialism will be a régime of authority.” On this point Guyot grimly agrees with him. In reality it will be the most oppressive spiritual and material system ever invented by man.

Socialist action has a depressing effect on all fixed capital, and, he continues, “in order to carry on a policy of preserving the political equilibrium, of giving a few bones to the demagogues to gnaw, concessions are made to the policy of spoliation.” What, then, remains of socialism when we come to close quarters with it? And what are the prospects of this spoliation and tyranny? The socialistic party cannot balance up a governmental majority without destroying government itself, for it cannot admit that government fulfils the minimum of its duties (this was written before 1914). When a strike breaks out the intention of the strikers is that security of person and property shall not be guaranteed. Socialist policy represents contempt for law, and all men, whether rich or poor, have an interest in liberty, security, and justice, as the private interest of each individual is bound up with these common blessings. But Socialists despise them all. “The socialism of Karl Marx’s disciples betrays a long apprenticeship to servitude,” declares M. Reinach.

A law, the object of which is to protect each man’s property, is supported by all who possess anything, and where is the man in advanced societies who is incapable of being robbed because he possesses nothing?

A law of spoliation may be passed and carried into effect, but in the event of its results becoming permanent it runs the risk of destroying the government which has assumed the responsibility of it. Socialist policy is a permanent menace to the liberty and security of citizens, and, therefore, cannot be the policy of any government, the primary duty of which is to exact respect for internal and external security. If it fail therein it dissolves and is replaced by anarchy; and, inasmuch as every one has a horror of that condition, which betrays itself by the oppression of violent men banded together solely by their appetites, an appeal is made to a strong government and to a man with a strong grip, and then the risk is incurred of relapsing into all the disgraces and disasters of Cæsarism. In several sections of this admirable work, M. Guyot scrutinizes the various Utopias from Plato to Proudhon: Sir Thomas More, the Kingdom of the Incas, Campanella, the Jesuits in Paraguay, Moselly, Robert Owen, Fourier, the American Phalanx, the Oneida Community, Cabet, the Icarians, and other unsuccessful experimenters. Utopia is always within sight, but never reached. It is, in the charming parlance of the hour, a pipe-dream; these Utopias always cut their throats to spite their thirst. And precisely where socialism was expected to be a buffer against world wars, it dismally failed.

From time to time the everlasting busybody asks himself why a plea for mediocrity is not a fitting theme to interest ambitious essayists. Supermen and supper-rogues have been done to the death in print, yet few words are accorded to the garden variety of the human plant. Instead we are keyed to the loftiest pitch; exaggeration is a national neurosis. We are all professional altruists, and, as every one knows, altruism is the art of making our neighbor unhappy because of our oppressive happiness. And yet not a word for mediocrity, which is the backbone of our nation, the staple of its political, artistic, and literary productions. Not a word for the man in the street, whose collective opinion—King Opinion, the most despotic of tyrants—rules us, whose vote counts heavier than the vote of the “exceptional” being perched on the house-top. (A majority of exalted souls would turn America into a wilderness.) And all because the excellent word “mediocrity” is become debased in meaning. At one time it stood for the golden mean, for a happy equilibrium of forces, moral and physical. It spelled happiness to its possessor—we refer to the mediocre temperament—and if a man had enough money to keep the wolf from the door he was content. That is the precise word—content; to be contented is a gift of the gods. But to us nowadays it means that you are merely commonplace, without social ambitions, without intellectual eminence. And this is not well.

Notwithstanding the fact that we are a united nation of over one hundred millions of people, we are each in his own fashion endeavoring to escape the imputation of mediocrity. Alas! in vain. Number is mediocrity. We think and drink to order, vote as we are bidden by our wives, and wear the clothes given us by destroyers of sartorial taste. Wherefore, then, this mad desire to be exceptional? Whence this optimism that shudders in the presence of genuine art and espouses the vulgar because it better agrees with fat nerves? Let us acknowledge the truth. It is because, happily for us, we are all mediocre; because genius is not a normal condition of humanity, and that talent is much less rare than our national vanity admits. However, let us pluck up courage. The future—which is said by some to belong to socialism—will work out the problem of mediocrity, especially if socialism is involved; mediocrity and socialism are not poles asunder. Concrete houses filled with people who will eat, drink, and think alike will cover the land. Everything will be of concrete, even our political opinions. In his concrete Capitol a concrete President will devise concrete laws. Art, music, and literature will be so concrete that our native Gradgrinds, hungry for hard facts, will be ravished into the seventh concrete heaven. Made a law, mediocrity will do away with our present mortifying doubts, deceptions, and pretensions. O Happy Time! And this coming age of concrete, wherein all must walk and look alike, is it not a dream compared with which Dante’s Inferno would be a Garden of Armida?

Said a great poet-philosopher: “And many a man has gone into the desert and suffered from thirst with the camels rather than sit about the cistern with dirty camel drivers.” No wonder William James wrote that “the whole atmosphere of present-day Utopian literature tastes mawkish and dish-watery to people who still keep a sense of life’s more bitter flavors.” And how much more that is insipid and mawkish will follow under socialistic regimentation! “Is it not the chief disgrace in the world not to be a unit; to be reckoned one character; not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundreds of thousands, of the party, of the section to which we belong, and our opinion predicted geographically as the North or the South?” These words were not uttered by a Socialist; they emanated from the crystal-clear intellect of our greatest Individualist, Ralph Waldo Emerson.