HAS SOCIALISM ANY FUTURE?

...Or will the trend to collectivism, reinforced by the growth of population and the diminution of natural resources, force on us a kind of collectivism which can not be described either as socialism or as capitalism in anything like their original meanings...

...It is in important respects a perversion of Marx's teachings...

...The answer will depend, broadly, upon democratic socialism's success in developing a program to deal comprehensively with the following problems: Can prosperity be continued— and this means annual increases in production—if we win universal controlled disarmament and thus end the monstrous business of maintaining employment by the economic wastes of the cold war...

...Observation and experience through the following tumultuous years have made me still more insistent in denying automatic salvation through collectivism, and in urging the value of diversities in ownership and management...

...Socialism will have to explore more adequately its own dogmas and improve its practice of democratic control...

...For example, former Representative Andrew Biemiller of Wisconsin often made excellent radio speeches in support of the Truman health-insurance proposals...

...I think we shall continue to have two major parties wtih greater differences within each of them than, on the average, there are between them...

...I have at times wished that we could acquire a new vocabulary to describe our politico-economic system and to clarify our differences of opinion about it...

...I denied that the working class was, automatically, a Messiah...

...Both would recognize some of the phrases we use in controversy...

...The welfare state cannot support itself primarily by increasing incentives to private profit makers...

...Today the emergence of the welfare state, in America and in Brtiain, satisfies the immediate elementary demands of the public...

...By 1945 Senator Robert Taft—Mr...

...New problems, or old problems acquiring new dimensions, are steadily emerging: the great growth of population...

...And the Congressional Record for January 26, 1954, gave the following official 1952 budget figures on government aid to three of Galbraith's countervailing powers: agriculture, $463 million...

...The weakness of avowed and organized socialism here and the stridency of American insistence on "capitalism" are great handicaps to an understanding of America—and to acceptance of American leadership for democracy— among the potentially progressive forces in almost all foreign lands...

...Hence, in the field of electoral action, the Party will foe negligible in this campaign, whatever the future may offer...

...They repudiate the one party state and advocate civil liberties which Socialists have honorably protected when they have been in power in the English-speaking and Scandinavian nations...

...Among Mr...

...the defense of personal liberty, and attainment of equality not only between races but in the economic sphere...

...Has democratic socialism, no longer accurately described as Marxist, any definite contribution (as distinct, let us say, from an avowedly non-socialist Americans-for-Democratic-Action liberalism) in shaping the American future...

...There must be conscious planning for the common good which cannot be calculated by double entry bookkeeping...

...It made its nominations as a "symbol" of devotion to its true faith...

...Today our worst failures in adequate expenditure are in roads, schools, and public health...

...Thomas books are "The Test of Freedom and "A Socialist's Faith...

...Republican himself—was proposing federal aid for housing...

...There are already so many interventions of government in our economic process that a successful business economist privately insists the only genuine practitioners of free enterprise are small boys playing marbles for keeps...

...business, $1,041 million...

...In Asia, socialism, not by any means as Marxist as some of its protagonists believe, is the people's best hope against communist totalitarianism or a reactionary feudalism or capitalism...

...The present liberal tendency is to believe that we can gain socialist objectives by denying socialist intentions...

...suggests that the great corporations—one of Galbraith's countervailing forces— may be acquiring, for good or evil, a conscience or a soul in their use of power...

...But at least as far back as my first Presidential campaign I said that what the government ought to own depended upon various factors, including who owned the government...

...But in mid-century, oil millionaire H. L. Hunt allegedly makes $50 million a year and manages to hang on to a surprising amount, thanks to loopholes in the law and the government's generosity in computing depreciation of oil wells, a natural resource which ought to be no man's private property...

...In a world where there is bound to be increasingly centralized control and ownership, it will be very important whether such increases are accepted reluctantly under pressure or are conceived as measures essential to the good life...

...The I.W.W...

...It is a matter of record that at its height the pragmatic "liberalism" of the New Deal failed to do this...

...I cite Eastman's double standard as symptomatic of our general confusion of definitions, whether of socialism, capitalism, or free enterprise...

...In his 20th Century Capitalist Revolution, A. A. Berle, Jr...

...A purely pragmatic "do the next thing" approach to these problems will be increasingly inadequate...

...Has an American capitalism—persistently describing itself as a kind of free enterprise (which it is not)—the intelligence and vitality steadily to increase production and improve the welfare state...

...Such experiences suggest that most Americans think either that socialism's past success makes it no longer necessary, or that it is a live, partially hidden, but effective force preparing destruction for "the American way of life...

...The conduct of government under these conditions has become enormously expensive, even if one overlooks our major expenditures on the cold war...

...but in winning they have invigorated and reformed capitalism rather than established socialism...

...It is rather surprising therefore that in my fairly extensive travels I am almost never greeted as a failure...

...President Eisenhower's honest dislike of creeping socialism is largely responsible for the mess in the inspection and distribution of the Salk vaccine...

...But it is not true that Leninist communism is the inevitable and correct interpretation of Marxism, or that it is derived wholly from Marxism...

...But in that enclave organized labor has become strong enough to win the first stages of a guaranteed annual wage—a revolutionary change from labor's role as a commodity to which the genuine free enterprise, laissez-faire economy consigned it...

...Free enterprise, more accurately the laissez-faire economy, described fairly well the American system in the first decade of this century, despite tariffs and the growth of trusts...

...The Chicago convention of the American Socialist Party this summer was a lively affair...

...This fact might give some encouragment to the Marxist as proof of a delayed but certain concentration of power in an owning class—except for the fact that Berle also predicts that in twenty years 35 per cent of the ownership of big business may, at present rates of increase, be lodged in labor welfare and pension funds, a development to give pause to a Marxist and to strengthen what has been called trade-union capitalism...

...Even Lenin, following Marx, insisted that the goal was so brotherly a society that it could live well on the principle "from every man according to his ability, to every man according to his needs...

...This is demonstrated by such documents as the Socialist International's Declaration on Aims and Tasks, and the socialist platforms in Britain, the Scandinavian countries, and Western Germany, as well as in America...

...I am by no means suggesting unilateral disarmament...

...So far this success has tended only to widen the gap between the economic rewards of different classes of workers...

...Certainly the history of the movements and theories called socialist justify those of us who urge a re-examination and restatement of socialist doctrine while clinging nevertheless to the word...

...Our present division of the national income can't possibly be justified in terms of differences in discipline, skills, or the relative danger and discomfort of jobs...

...the decline in farm income...

...even the most radical of us never dared suggest federal aid...

...that while man may be variously motivated, his social well-being depends upon emphasis on mutual aid rather than competitive strife...

...It adopted a good platform and nominated again those dedicated socialist propagandists, Darlington Hoopes of Reading, Pa., and Samuel H. Friedman of New York City, for President and Vice-President...

...The immensely increased cost of effective campaigning in this television era, the mounting difficulties of getting on the ballot in 48 states, and above all the attitude of labor and the voters generally, condemn minor parties to unusual impotence in this campaign...

...But I am anxious that it be of the right sort...

...Other fellow citizens, in less amiable vein, hold me largely responsible for a socialism—creeping or walking—which they believe is essentially more dangerous than communism, to which it leads...

...I have become even more firmly convinced that, at least in America, a desirable and viable socialism must be urged as a fulfillment of democracy rather than the victory of a more or less mythical class-conscious proletariat...

...Socialism and capitalism have different meanings in Asia and America...

...I To say this is not, as Eastman and others have claimed, so to modify socialism as in effect to repudiate it...

...But I was never surer that the spirit of democratic socialism is essential to the development of a viable democracy—that is, a fellowship of free men—in a society which will master for life and not death the extraordinary forces now at man's disposal...

...Only a year ago there was an angry fluttering in certain suburban dovecotes because a school had invited me to make the commencement address...

...Even if, by an indefinite continuation of the arms race or some equivalent government expenditure, the present level of employment and prosperity can be maintained, other problems will become increasingly urgent...

...But its philosophy is essential unless we are to consider the welfare state as a mere device for assuaging the wounds inflicted in the basic struggle for power and profit by giant corporations...

...Tomorrow, the common good must be consciously sought...

...What its success may be I do not predict...

...It will take time, even in Britain, for this doctrine to be worked out...

...In 1900 Andrew Carnegie made $23 million and paid no income tax...

...Now it is a bit like an orchestra which has played its score and has no other good tune in hand...

...Only they are not aided by tariffs, parity payments, subsidies, or guarantees pf collective bargaining...

...the gradual exhaustion of natural resources...

...This is even truer of American socialism, which never achieved the political power of British socialism or the affection of labor...

...What future, then, for "free enterprise," or for socialism as a theory and a movement...

...In our day this requires planning in which the state—not as a god over men, but as their servant—must play a mighty part...

...The political situation, since the emergence of the welfare state and the success of powerful unions, makes the role of minority parties less useful and more difficult than ever before...

...Its one valid Utopia is a fellowship of free men and free nations...

...There hasn't been a great change in the distribution of the national income among the more important economic classes...

...Socialists and near socialists are still inclined to shout the old shibboleths and slogans, many of which ill comport with the facts of today's American economy...

...On the whole, ideas and plans originally called socialist have won...

...Here one meets much ambivalence in definition...

...In practical politics, so long as the present prosperity continues, the issues that matter are questions of more or less for this or that group...

...Note Nehru's increasing emphasis on "socialism...

...I certainly admit—rather, I affirm—the existence of economic and social classes and the struggle between them...

...One of the difficulties about socialism's future lies in the doubt about what socialism is...

...It does, however, put on record some of the more striking developments, amounting almost to revolution, since the years before World . War I when the socialist-capitalist controversy first found formal verbal expression...

...I came, I saw, I spoke, and the DAR still lives...

...Military spending has gone far toward guaranteeing approximately full employment at the expense of complete economic waste of diminishing natural resources and human energies...

...There will be no early transformation of the Democratic Party into a de facto moderate socialist party—not so long as the race problem rules the Solid South...

...In this confusion, few are the voices to proclaim that democratic socialism has a future distinct from either the New Deal or communism...

...Max Eastman in The Failure of Socialism—a book more often referred to than read—has a double standard...

...But it would be impossible—and truly undesirable—thus to abandon the legacies of the past...

...It cripples his approach to housing and education as well...

...It is true that Marxism, philosophically materialistic, emphasized class struggle as the road to a classless Utopia...

...As late as 1932, the depth of depression, only the Socialist platform advocated with any clarity the important changes later associated with the New Deal...

...Granting the ethical appeal of a socialism concerned with achieving the conquest of war and poverty in a fellowship of free men, can it have any considerable effect on political and economic action, except perhaps as a kind of leaven in the loaf...

...its economy is more truly described as rigorous state capitalism than as any kind of socialism...

...But when Eastman castigates me, it is on the basis of a precise description of socialism as a doctrine of social salvation by collective ownership achieved through the class struggle...

...Im view 'of its own spirit and record, socialism has a right to modify its older emphases on collectivism by way of state ownership and the class struggle, and to learn from experience in the difficult business of securing freedom, peace, and plenty for men...

...labor, $200 million...

...Granting that we do not have comprehensive socialist planning, our legislators—most of them avowed anti-socialists and believers in free enterprise—have given us a welter of plans, good, bad, and indifferent, to which our great corporations have added their full share...

...To meet the situation we rely heavily on graduated income taxes—the acceptance of which was, for Vivian Kellems and the Minute Women of America, the beginning of socialism...

...Instead I am repeatedly congratulated on having seen the triumph of most of my policies, and credited—contrary to fact—with having said that there was no longer any need for socialist activity...

...If one must accept for American socialism one of Eastman's conflicting definitions—the achievement of collectivism through class struggle— I doubt whether democratic socialism, at least in America, has a future or deserves it...

...I, six times honored by the Party's nomination for President, will keep the sorry distinction of being the most thoroughly defeated candidate in American history...

...It can be, but only if there is a national readiness to tax, spend, and plan for the common good as we now tax, spend, and plan for arms...

...Nor will they be solved by the success of powerful labor unions in getting more and more for themselves...

...and I urged the specific recognition of the interests of men as consumers and human beings— not merely as workers...

...But the Party considers a national campaign of the old sort impossible...

...That doesn't mean that certain sectarian socialist parties and the American Socialist Party are dead...

...John Kenneth Galbraith's description of American capitalism in terms of countervailing forces is helpfully suggestive, but scarcely a definitive statement of philosophy...

...Our present Eisenhower-style welfare state deals with them badly, if at all...

...The common denominator of socialism, from Robert Owen and the French Utopians to today's democratic socialist parties, has not been indiscriminate faith in collectivism and the class struggle...

...So the Union for Democratic Socialism has come into being...

...What has failed, according to this repentant champion of communism, is not only Marxist socialism of NORMAN THOMAS was the Socialist Party's candidate for the Presidency in six campaigns...

...There is no automatic salvation in our collectivism, but we cannot escape its increase...

...could find plenty of workers whose experience led them to believe that workers and employers had nothing in common...

...Not that I repudiate the desirability, or in the long run the inescapability, of further collectivism...

...All of these require government action and over-all planning which will go beyond the present habit of piling one makeshift plan on another because our politicians distrust any comprehensive plan...

...In a recent pamphlet Mark Starr took two long paragraphs of fine print to list government's services to business—many of them outright subsidies...

...In most places it will seek write-in votes...

...But many a liberal or labor group thinks it unwise in these times to take a chance on me as a speaker—especially if the liberal or labor leader was once himself a Socialist a little to the left of Norman Thomas...

...The socialism now operating under the conditions of a welfare state quite clearly cannot operate in the simple "we or they" terms that made sense in Gene Debs' time...

...I insisted on the necessity of democratic controls...

...Twenty years earlier, in 1925, when I first ran for Mayor of New York, we presented what I think was the first plan for municipal housing...

...Rather it has been an insistence that the goal of social organization must consciously be the common good, which cannot be a by-product of men's search for individual profit in an acquisitive society...

...On the day I wrote the first draft of this article the press reported that the New York State Federation of Labor voted unanimously to oppose the public development of hydroelectric power because it would deprive labor of the right to strike and invade what should be a field of private enterprise...

...Wars, hot and cold, forced us to a kind of bastard Keynesianism which ended a depression only ameliorated by the New Deal...

...I have felt that at this period the prime task of socialist education— including re-examination and restatement of socialist doctrine—could be furthered by the organization of a kind of American Fabian Society, expressly disavowing any attempt at electoral action or any discipline over votes of its members...

...Obviously the foregoing is not an ordered description of the American economic system...

...Can it check the present mighty trends toward collectivism, through oligopolies and the state, in behalf of any genuine free enterprise...

...But the enormous increase in total production and great advances in social security by virtue of law and of labor contracts have greatly reduced, but by no means eliminated, the impact of grinding poverty...

...But even these conservative New York labor leaders —whose predecessors as late as 1930 were following Gompers in opposing governmental social security—favor all sorts of further actions by government to strengthen labor and to enlarge the services of the welfare state...

...The Socialist Party and the Social Democratic Federation (united, I hope) must, for the time being, content themselves mostly by emphasizing education and by above-board efforts to influence labor's political committees...

...Our Presidential form of government and our virtually mandatory two-party system impose on American socialists problems of tactics unknown in the European democracies...

...Many of these documents expressly disclaim government ownership of all, or even all the principal, means of production and distribution...

...More recently he has said that 600 of them control 65 per cent of the industrial wealth and production of America...

...It failed to conquer mass unemployment until the outbreak of World War II...

...It would be difficult to say whether Adam Smith or Karl Marx would be more surprised on a visit to America today...

...In my college days, at the beginning of the century, these words had a more specific and generally accepted meaning...

...In living societies, words like socialism, capitalism, Christianity, and democracy inevitably acquire, different emphases and shades of meaning...

...Socialism has been a bulwark against totalitarianism, fascist or communist...

...but whenever I heard him, he wasted precious radio time by repudiating any relationship between his proposals and socialized medicine...

...They specifically support cooperatives and individual ownership and operation of family-size farms...

...every shade, but every man and doctrine tainted by "socialism," from Robert Owen and the French Utopians to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal...

...Thus, Daniel Bell, labor editor of Fortune writing in the New Leader, has described the automotive industry as an enclave in which socialism's most advanced techniques of planning have taken root—all in the name of "free enterprise...

...The Labor party served mankind magnificently by liquidating British imperialism and reconstructing the British economy...