Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by A. M. Simons, Part II: The Capitalist System

Quote Mother Jones, Coming of the Lord, Cnc Pst p6, July 23, 1902 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 18, 1903
“Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by Editor Algie M. Simons

From the International Socialist Review of January 1903:

Bishop Spalding and Socialism.*
[by A. M. Simons]
—————

[Part II of II]

Again, in [Bishop Spalding’s] recognition of the class character of our present law, he comes very close to Socialism. Speaking of punishment for crime, he says:

The delinquents who are incarcerated are chiefly the poor, who had they money to pay the fines would escape punishment. The heaviest punishment is inflicted on the most helpless, and frequently on the least guilty; and thus the morally weak, the victims of unfortunate environments, are degraded, hardened, and made habitual offenders.

I do not wish to push the matter too far and to ascribe too great a comprehension of or favorable attitude towards Socialism on the part of Bishop Spalding. But on page 58 we see some thing that reads very like a description of the rise of proletarian class consciousness. He says:

The laborers, who in proportion as their minds have been awakened, have become conscious of the hardships and limitations to which they are subject, feel this more keenly than any other class, and hence they have formed in numerable organizations to protect their rights and promote their interests.

Finally, we would seldom find a harsher indictment against the capitalist system than is to be found on pages 173 and 174:

The political and social conditions which involve the physical deterioration and the mental and moral degradation of multitudes are barbarous, and unless they are improved must lead to the ruin of the State. From this point of view, which is the only true point of view, our present economic and commercial systems are subversive of civilization. They sacrifice men to money; wisdom and virtue to cheap production and the amassing of capital. They foster greed in the stronger and hate in the weaker. They drive the nations to competitive struggles which are as cruel as war, and in the final results more disastrous; for their tendency is to make the rich vulgar and heartless, and the poor reckless and vicious. As stratagems and lies are considered lawful in war, so in the warfare of commercial competition opinion leans to the view that whatever may be done with impunity is right. The adulteration of food and drink, the watering of stocks, the bribing of legislators, the crushing of weaker concerns, the enforced idleness of thousands, who are thereby driven to despair and starvation, are not looked upon as lying within the domain of morals, any more than the shooting of a man in battle is considered a question of morality. The degradation and ruin of innumerable individuals are implications of the law of competition, just as in the struggle for existence there is a world-crushing and destruction of the weak by the strong.

When we come to the objections we find that many of them have already been answered by the Bishop himself in the statements already quoted and that others arise from misconception. He begins with an attack upon the economics of Karl Marx, and, as seems to be the almost invariable rule of such writers, the first thing of which he falls foul is the labor value theory, in which he imputes to Marx a position which the latter never dreamed of taking. On pages 21 and 22 he says:

The fallacy of the Socialist assumption lies in attributing to labor a value of its own, independently of the worth of its product. The labor spent in doing useless things has no value; at least no social value. He who makes what nobody wants has his labor for his pains. The question is not what amount of labor an object has cost, but what service can it render?

But, as has already been pointed out by the Chicago Socialist, Marx really anticipated this very objection in Capital, and specifically states that he does not mean anything of the kind. In Section I of Chapter I of Capital, Marx says:

Lastly, nothing can have value without being an object of utility. If a thing is useless, so is the labor contained in it; the labor does not count as labor, and therefore has no value.

In speaking of this objection it might be well to say that perhaps the most complete explanation of the necessity of utility as an essential of socially valuable labor is to be found in Marx’s Capital, the only book of which it is most frequently alleged that it denies this position.

We next come across the old familiar objection that you must change human nature. On page 13 we learn that “a prerequisite to all effective and desirable social transformations is a corresponding change in the character of both the masses and their rulers and employers.” We could easily set against this the quotation already given, where Bishop Spalding has shown that “events make men.”

Although he has already told us that labor created capital, he now finds a new origin for capital by falling back on the long-exposed fallacious theory that capital is also “the result of abstinence from consumption.” Marx pointed out years ago that if capital came from the abstinence of anybody it was the abstinence of the laborer from the full product of his toil.

On page 165 capital becomes “largely stored ability.” We do not know whether Bishop Spalding or the Rev. Hillis first evolved this remarkable definition. But again we can leave it to Marx or almost any other Socialist writer to show that Socialists have always included ability, which is but another name for skilled labor, as a part of labor, and it would be difficult for either Bishop Spalding or the Rev. Hillis to attempt to justify the separation of ability from labor.

Next we meet our old friend the enemy in the objection that Socialism would crush out individuality. Here again we simply turn Bishop Spalding against his own words, which we have already quoted, showing how thoroughly capitalism itself crushes out individuality. He tells several times that what is needed is men, not measures. Against this we can place his statements that “events made the men” and let Spalding answer Spalding.

Finally he winds up with the argument, which is as old as human society and human principles, that economic laws which are immutable make it impossible that wages should rise above a given point or that wealth should be so distributed as to make all men rich. This is simply his ipse dixit, against which we can oppose the thousands of volumes now written by the ablest minds of this age, pointing out that the powers of production to-day are so great as to make it easily possible for all physical necessities at least, of all mankind to be easily satisfied.

On the whole, Socialists may well advise the reading of Bishop Spalding’s book, especially if a little time is spent in pointing out how often one page answers another and explaining the one or two complete misunderstandings of the Socialist problem.

A. M. Simons

* Socialism and Labor and Other Arguments. Rt. Rev. J. L.. Spalding, Bishop of Peoria. A. C. McClurg & Co. Cloth, 223 pp. 80 cents net

[Photograph and emphasis added.]