CHAPTER XXXI IS THE WAR DRIVING GOVERNMENTS TO SOCIALISTIC MEASURES? WAR is generally supposed to be wholly destructive. But the world has recently awakened to the fact that was is also constructive-aside from the desirable results which every warring nation believes it will gain by victory. War requires an immense increase of effort, which means a vast amount of new organization by the government, the one organ which represents the nation -or rather claims to represent the nation wholly and does, as a matter of fact, represent it to a greater or less degree. Governments have been forced to undertake innumerable gigantic enterprises in direct connection with their armies. They have been obliged to take over, or to operate, or to reorganize and control, industry after industry. In order to supply these armies they have been compelled to organize a considerable part of the total production of the countries at war. In order to feed the people at home they have been forced, in scarcely smaller measure, to organize the distribution and sale of food. If the process is carried as far in the next eight months as it was in the first eight months of the war, it will hardly be an exaggeration to say that all these nations will be well on the road-for the time being to governmentally operated industry, or collectivism. Socialism is often defined briefly as collective democracy or democratic collectivism. As yet there has been no advance in democracy through the war, nor can any such advance be expected while the war lasts. On the contrary, military organization always has meant and still means the reverse of democracy. But the war has shown that this militarist reaction is much less pronounced in proportion as countries have already advanced toward democracy and had established a firm democratic or semi-democratic foundation when the war broke upon them. So the anti-democratic results of war, while in evidence everywhere, are comparatively mild in England and extreme only in Russia. They are more marked in Austria than in Germany, and more marked in Germany than in France. And, moreover, revolutionary democratic movements have followed all recent wars which became unpopular, as we saw in France in 1871 and in Russia in 1905. It is not probable, then, that any very strong anti-democratic reaction will remain after the war, and it is highly improbable that any such democratic retrogression will take place as to compensate for the present startling progress in collectivism. We are moving, then, in the direction of State Socialism. Nor is this all. For even before the war Germany resorted to an extraordinary increase both of graduated inheritance and income taxes and of taxes on the rise in rental-value of land. The stupendous burdens of the war cannot conceivably be paid in any other way except by the most extraordinary increase of such taxes, which will mean progress toward a radical redistribution of incomes by law. This is no longer State Socialism but Socialism. It is true that the Socialists have not been and will not be chiefly responsible or even largely responsible for any of these policies. But their Socialistic tendency is shown by the fact that the Socialists were every where the first to demand them. They have followed the lines laid down by the Socialists, and if we wish to see where they may lead in the immediate future we cannot do better than to look at the criticisms and the further demands the Socialists are now making. Let us turn, for example, to the German Socialists' programme elaborated a few weeks after the outbreak of the war, let us compare it with what the government has carried out, and note what is still demanded. The German programme was put forth as a demand for the governmental organization of consumption-especially of the food supply. This leads at once to the organization of agricultural production, and, as it will be noted, to other radical steps related to this. GERMAN SOCIALIST DEMANDS (1) Measures for the regulation of production. (b) To make it the duty of farmers to raise specified crops. Immediate planting of waste land with rapidlygrowing edible greenstuffs and vegetables. Organization of cattle and dairy production. (2) Measures for the provision of the means of production. (a) To supply fertilizers and seeds through public institutions and to regulate their use. (b) To provide machinery by means of community organizations to encourage intensive agriculture. (c) To open up woods and moorlands to the public for the production of litter. (3) Measures for securing labor power. (a) Public regulation of employment. (b) Fixing of a minimum wage. (c) Abolition of servant laws and exceptional laws against farm hands. (4) Measures for the use of foodstuffs. The prohibition of the use of potatoes and grain for the production of spirituous liquors, regulation of the production of beer, sugar, and starch, (5) To make it the duty of farmers to sell their products to public institutions (imperial, national, and communal). (6) To fix prices for means of production and products for producers and middlemen. (7) To encourage production of foodstuffs and the regulation of their distribution by communities. (8) The suitable application of these regulations to the fishery, forestry, coal-mining, and chemical industries. The above programme was passed on the 13th of August and was supported by the Federation of Labor Unions as well as the party. In the middle of November, both organizations once more put their programme before the government in the shape of the following demands: (1) The obligation of producers and traders in the means of life, to sell their products to public bodies (imperial, state, and local). (2) Lowering of the maximum prices contained in the order of the Imperial Council of October 28th. (3) Fixing the minimum prices upon all kinds of grain, potatoes, sugar, flour, bread, alcohol, and petroleum for producers and middlemen. (4) Lowering of the supplies for the production of spirits. Limitation of breweries. (5) Abolition of the sugar taxes. (6) The addition of potato meal to flour on the basis of 10 parts by weight to 90 parts of rye flour. (7) Measures against speculation in industrial raw materials. The only one of these policies that Vorwaerts admits was carried out on radical lines was that aiming to prevent speculation in raw materials. The imports and exports of Germany, as well as the labor supply, were much more seriously interfered with than those of England, therefore the government in reorganizing industry for war purposes was forced to more radical measures in order to secure the continued supply of necessary raw materials. We take the following account of these measures from Vorwaerts: Immediately after the outbreak of the war, the military authorities established a central office to assure the supply of raw materials. But since all these raw materials, metals, chemicals, textile materials are also used in many branches of private industry, the Central Raw Material Office was forced to concern itself with the compromise between the interests of the army and those of private industry. The interference in the whole raw material business, therefore, arose wholly from purely military reasons, and only to that degree in which it appeared necessary to the war administration in its own interests. And since a sufficient supply of raw materials is partly dependent on the results of the campaigns, in certain circumstances private use had to be abrogated in favor of use for war purposes. The task fell to the Central Office to turn over the raw materials to the various army contractors. The division among the various contractors was left to the industries concerned, themselves. Each was organized into special associations under the control of the state. The form of organization chosen was a stock company controlled by a State Commissioner with a veto power. Up to the present (March 1st) the following raw material associations and statistical offices were set up: The Combed Wool Association. The Wool for War Purposes Association. The War Metals Association. The Rawhide Association. The War Leather Association. The Linen Statistical Office. The Flax Statistical Office. The Jute Statistical Office. The Horsehair Statistical Office. The further task of the War Raw Material Department consists in the evaluation of confiscated goods. To prevent price speculation, such as were seen at the beginning of the |