May-Day Matters
MAY-DAY MATTERS WHATEVER in the way of revolutionary demon-strations May Day is fated to bring, the symbolism of the date itself is firmly established. It is curious enough that this festival,...
...But some of the criticisms it incorporates are both pertinent and interesting to very many...
...We need group intelligence and initiative...
...Experience has helped to solidify this attitude...
...The triumphs achieved by Socialism have been identified with municipal government...
...If the usurpation of all productive energy by the state is manifestly "unreal" (for such a matter as "initiative" can only be individual) it is likewise futile to hold that collective activity is out of place...
...Sponsored largely by immigrant groups, it has never evoked a more than emotional leadership...
...The appeal of men like Eugene V. Debs reposed on no impressive knowledge of economic or financial conditions...
...He and his fellows have all been something like incarnations of the tragedy of the dispossessed-martyrs at best, posers in poverty at their worst...
...If there is anything in which the average American has no confidence, it is government ownership and management...
...On the whole, it was a fair-weather philosophy which came near to assuming that the sun shines all the time and that the breeze never changes into a wind...
...Ability, initiative and beneficent charity would then be combined and made applicable to specific problems...
...Even the habit of entertaining Utopias is in disrepute...
...It is worth noting, however, that these developments have no sequel...
...What America needs could easily be deduced from a picture of what Catholics might, ideally, contribute to the national life...
...Debs as a genuinely impressive tribute...
...So long as the index of property distribution remains even remotely like what it now is, the chances in favor of a local Lenin are nil...
...Bolshevism in this country is either an importation or an intellectual hobby...
...If a series of parades and demonstrations, however unbecomingly motivated, does fix collective attention upon social injustices and weaknesses, the effect will be Marian in the most genuine sense...
...Beyond that, the discovery of international "economic solidarity," in the sense referred to previously, implies that a nation will have to act as a unit in ventures of trade and finance...
...Even Mr...
...The extent to which sound philosophy-or let us say boldly, the Church-opposes socializing activities is sometimes misunderstood...
...If all this has weakened our confidence in theories, it has also threatened to dissipate social hope and with that, energy...
...The one great theorist of reform to have appeared in this country is Henry George, and he was manifestly cool to the Socialists...
...Modern economic consciousness seems to have passed through a change comparable with that induced centuries ago by Copernican theories and the speculations of Bruno...
...And the decision of the American Federation of Labor to keep aloof from politics needs to be considered as the worker's preference for leaders of the Gompers and Mitchell stamp...
...But we also need collective intelligence and initiative...
...Thomas's platform is revealed, therefore, as something too anaemic for one group and too unorthodox for another...
...The kind of production economics doled out during recent years by such writers as Julius Klein has been subjected to severe practical criticism...
...Such a picture is, of course, only an ideal...
...It did not confront honestly the problem of the machine as an instrumentality which can decrease employment faster than it can increase market outlets...
...There is, of course, one way in which the two things can be associated...
...The greatest boon we as a nation could receive would be an accession of individual initiative to corporate enterprise...
...Subsequent to the showing in New York, even Mr...
...It is generally recognized that, even for this country, standards of living tend to reach the universal level...
...We in this country have, therefore, a tradition and a population hardly affected by Socialistic points of view...
...Hoover could, therefore, foster an agency for farm relief which, in the old days, would have seemed quite socialistic...
...It is a curious fact that organized Socialism, which in the United States dates from 1888, has left the nation almost absolutely cold...
...Nevertheless this remark is admirably true...
...The problems created by public utilities are likewise being dealt with in a way which seems to prognosticate eventual civic control of a kind that might now well seem drastic...
...If the wage earned by a man is not sufficient to insure his status as a human being able to exercise his essential prerogatives, conscience inveighs against that injustice...
...Economically, however, the Church insists only upon the preservation of a minimum of temporal equality...
...But to what else can we look for a greater guarantee of success...
...On the other hand, the era of pleasant prosperity assumptions is definitely closed...
...A total vote of 900,000 was regarded by Mr...
...Something of theory could be translated into action...
...Elsewhere Socialistic spokesmen have gained influence enough to threaten the vitality of bosses and machines...
...and, conversely, European endeavors to "discriminate" against automobiles made in the United States depresses a basic industry and so affects the entire financial outlook...
...Ideologies of the state which attribute to it moral authority, or which suppress the rights of the individual, are of course untenable...
...In New York last year Norman Thomas polled 175,000 votes after a campaign devoted to explaining how Gotham's business could be managed efficiently...
...The discovery of the vastness and mechanical rigidity of the universe seemed, then, to dwarf the position and destiny of man, who lost the sense of his own sovereign importance in the shadow of nature's bulk...
...Today our insight into interlocking world-wide economic dependencies tends to make any local social advancement appear exceedingly precarious...
...It is curious enough that this festival, marked in all the old calendars of Christendom for Our Lady, should now be starred by the protagonists of class war...
...Hoover, that leadership is a great requisite...
...The suggestion that Washington should conduct the railroad business would, if advanced, ruin even the Republican party...
...Liberal doctrines sponsored by Milwaukee Germans of a decade ago won that city for the "reform program" sponsored by Victor Berger...
...It is an unmitigated platitude to assert, with Mr...
...But it is at least open to argument whether the responsibility for that wage rests primarily with some other individual or is collective...
...And "reasonable" is, fundamentally, equivalent to "real...
...Discovery of oil in north Germany, or of gold in Canada, may change the world's balance sheet overnight...
...Conversely the effectiveness of the Communist appeal to working-men out of jobs must be greatly discounted...
...And it may well be that, under existing conditions, nothing more is possible...
...Briefly speaking, one may assert without much fear that any state function which is reasonable is also moral...
...This would not be simply another pronouncement or resolution, but the organization of a new order of prominent and experienced men-a twentieth-century knighthood of Saint John-who would voluntarily dedicate themselves to the nation's welfare...
...There is no room for the mere intellectual at the helm...
...Some time previously a group of militant reform protagonists had gone their own way into the Communist Labor party...
...And it may be legitimate to conclude that the nearer America can come to the fulfilment of such a dream, the surer it will be to a guarantee of its belief in equality and justice...
...But the general tendency is unfortunately to focus opinion upon a theory rather than upon a solution...
...The lace-making towns of France are plunged into fear by an increase in the American tariff rate on their product...
...There is left the old appeal of socialistic principles-used here not in the sense of party manifestos but in the sense of socialized industrial projects-to the modern citizen...
...The hollow-headed politician is an out-of-date drug...
...It is clear once again that the national welfare involves all sorts of hard work...
...Where is the organization which today would attempt anything like that amazing Paraguayan republic which Rene Fulop-Miller has recently described so well in these pages...
...While the drift toward economic realism is pronounced in the United States today-in the sense that facts are being studied and understood-there is little purposiveness in our point of view...
...Thomas flirted with the idea of changing the party name in order to win the allegiance of those who frowned on anything remotely associated with Marxism...
Vol. 11 • April 1930 • No. 26
