Part 44

The rapid growth of the European labor movement worried the autocrats and imperialists. Bismarck suppressed it; the Russian police tortured it. Despite all of the efforts to check it or to crush it, the revolutionary movement in Europe gained force. The speeches and writings of the leaders were directed against the capitalist system, and the rank and file of the workers, rendered sharply class conscious by the traditions of class rule, responded to the appeal by organizing new forms of protest.

The first revolutionary wave of the twentieth century broke in Russia in 1905. The Russian Revolution of 1917 destroyed the old régime and replaced it first by a moderate or liberal and then by a radical communist control. Like all of the proletarian movements in Europe the Russian revolutionary movement was directed against "capitalism" and "imperialism" and despite the fact that there was no considerable development of the capitalist system in Russia, its imperial organization was so thoroughgoing, and the imperial attitude toward the working class had been so brutally revealed during the revolutionary demonstrations in 1905, that the people reacted with a true Slavic intensity against the despotism that they knew, which was that of an autocratic, feudal master-class.

The international doctrines of the new Russian régime were expressed in the phrase "no forcible annexations, no punitive indemnities, the free development of all peoples." The keynote of its internal policy is contained in Section 16 of the Russian Constitution, which makes work the duty of every citizen of the Republic and proclaims as the motto of the new government the doctrine, "He that will not work neither shall he eat." The franchise is restricted. Only workers (including housekeepers) are permitted to vote. Profiteers and exploiters are specifically denied the right to vote or to hold office. Resources are nationalized together with the financial and industrial machinery of Russia. The Bill of Rights contained in the first section of the Russian Constitution is a pronouncement in favor of the liberty of the workers from every form of exploitation and economic oppression.

The Russian revolution was directed against capitalism in Russia and against imperialism everywhere. This dramatic assault upon capitalist imperialism centered the eyes of the world upon Russia, making her experiment the outstanding feature of a period during which the workers were striving to realize the possibilities of a more abundant life for the masses of mankind.

2. Outlawing Bolshevism

Capitalist diplomats were wary of the Kerensky régime because they did not feel certain how far the Russian people intended to go. The triumph of the Bolsheviki made the issue unmistakably clear. There could be no peace between Bolshevism and capitalism. From that day forward it was a struggle to determine which of the two economic systems should survive.

During the years 1918 and 1919 the capitalist world organized one of the most effective advertising campaigns that has ever been staged. Every shred of evidence that, by any stretch of the imagination, could be distorted into an attack upon the Bolshevist régime, was scattered broadcast over the world. Where evidence was lacking, rumor and innuendo were employed. The leading newspapers and magazines, prominent statesmen, educators, clergymen, scientists and public men in every walk of life went out of their way to denounce the Russian experiment in very much the same manner that the propertied interests of Europe had denounced the French experiment during the years that followed 1789.

All of the great imperialist governments had at their disposal a vast machinery for the purveying of information--false or true as the case might demand. This public machinery like the machinery of private capitalism was turned against Bolshevism. The capitalist governments went farther by backing with money and supplies the counter revolutionary forces under Yudenich, Denekine, Seminoff, and Kolchak. Allied expeditions were landed on the soil of European and Asiatic Russia "to free the Russian people from the clutches of the Bolsheviki." A blockade was declared in which the Germans were invited to join (after the signing of the armistice), and the whole capitalist world united to starve into submission the men, women and children of revolutionary Russia.

No event of recent times, not even the holy war against the autocracy of militarist Germany, had created such a unanimity of action among the Western nations. Bolshevism threatened the very existence of capitalism and as such its destruction became the first task of the capitalist world.

The collapse of the capitalist efforts to destroy socialist Russia reflects the power of a new idea over the ancient form. The Allied expeditions into Russia met with hostility instead of welcome. The counter-revolutionary forces were overwhelmed by the red army. The buffer states made peace. The Allied soldiers mutinied when called upon to take part in a war against the forces of revolutionary Russia. "Holy Russia" became holy Russia indeed--recognized and respected by the proletarian forces throughout Europe.

3. The New Europe

Russia is the dramatic center of the European movement against capitalist imperialism, but the movement is not confined to Russia. Its activities are extended into every important country on the continent.

Since March, 1917, when the first revolution occurred in Russia, absolute monarchy and divine, kingly rights have practically disappeared from Europe. Before the Russian Revolution, four-fifths of the people of Europe were under the sway of monarchs who exercised dictatorial power over the domestic and foreign affairs of their respective nations. Within two years, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs were driven from the thrones of Germany, of Austria and of Russia. Other rulers of lesser importance followed in their wake, until to-day, the old feudal power that held the political control over most of Europe in 1914 has practically disappeared.

This is the obvious thing--a revolution in the form of political government--the kind of revolution with which history usually deals.

But there is another revolution proceeding in Europe, far more important because more fundamental--the economic and social revolution; the change in the form of breadwinning; the change in the relation between a man and the tools that he uses to earn his livelihood.

Every one knows, now, that Czars and Kaisers and Emperors did not really control Europe before 1914, except in so far as they yielded to bankers and to business men. The crown and the scepter gave the appearance of power, but behind them were concessions, monopolies, economic preferments, and special privilege. The European revolution that began in 1917 with the Czar, did not stop with kings. It began with them because they were in such plain sight, but when it had finished with them it went right on to the bankers and the business men.

War is destruction, organized and directed by the best brains available. It is merry sport for the organizers and for some of the directors, but like any other destructive agent, it may get out of hand. The War of 1914 was to last for six weeks. It dragged on for five years, and the wars that have grown out of it are still continuing. In the course of those five years, the war destroyed the capitalist system of continental Europe. Patches and shreds of it remained, but they were like the topless, shattered trees on the scarred battle-fields. They were remnants--nothing more. In the first place, the war destroyed the confidence of the people in the capitalist system; in the second place, it smashed up the political machinery of capitalism; in the third place, it weakened or destroyed the economic machinery of capitalism.

Each government, to win the war, lied to its people. They were told that their country was invaded. They were assured that the war would be a short affair. Besides that, there were various reasons given for the struggle--it was a war to end war; it was a war to break the iron ring that was crushing a people; it was a war for liberty; it was a struggle to make the world safe for democracy.

Not a single important promise of the war was fulfilled, save only the promise of victory. Hundreds of millions, aroused to the heights of an exalted idealism, came back to earth only to find themselves betrayed. With less promise and more fulfillment; with at least an appearance of statesmanship; with some respect for the simple moralities of truth-telling, fair-dealing, and common honor, there might have been some chance for the capitalist system to retain the confidence of the peoples of war-torn Europe, even in the face of the Russian Revolution; but each of these things was lacking, and as one worker put it: "I don't know what Bolshevism is, but it couldn't be any worse than what we have now, so I'm for it!"

Such a loss of public confidence would have proved a serious blow to any social system, even were it capable of immediately reëstablishing normal conditions of living among the people. In this case, the same events that destroyed public confidence in the capitalist system, destroyed the system itself.

The old political forms of Europe--the czars, emperors and kaisers, who stood as the visible symbols of established order and civilization, were overthrown during the war. The economic forces--the banks and business men--had used these forms for the promotion of their business enterprises. Capitalism depended on czars and kaisers as a blacksmith depends on his hammer. They were among the tools with which business forged the chains of its power. They were the political side of the capitalist system. While the people accepted them and believed in them, the business interests were able to use these political tools at will. The tools were destroyed in the fierce pressure of war and revolution, and with them went one of the chief assets of the European capitalists.

There was a third breakdown--far more important than the break in the political machinery of the capitalist system--and that was the annihilation of the old economic life.

Economic life is, in its elements, very simple. Raw materials--iron ore, copper, cotton, petroleum, coal and wheat--are converted, by some process of labor, into things that feed, clothe and house people. There are four stages in this process--raw materials; manufacturing; transportation; marketing. If there is a failure in one of the four, all of the rest go wrong, as is very clearly illustrated whenever there is a great miners' or railroad workers' strike, or when there is a failure of a particular crop. During the war, all four of these economic stages went wrong.

Between the years 1914 and 1918 the people of Europe busied themselves with a war that put their economic machine out of the running.

For a hundred years the European nations had been busy building a finely adjusted economic mechanism; population, finance, commerce--all were knit into the same system. This system the war demolished, and the years that have followed the Armistice have not seen it rebuilt in any essential particular, save in Great Britain and in some of the neutral countries.

Not only were the European nations unable to give commodities in exchange for the things they needed but the machinery of finance, by means of which these transactions were formerly facilitated, was crippled almost beyond repair. Under the old system buying and selling were carried on by the use of money, and money ceased to be a stable medium of exchange in Europe. It would be more correct to say that money was no longer taken seriously in many parts of Europe. During the war the European governments printed 75 billions of dollars' worth of paper money. This paper depreciated to a ridiculous extent. Before the war, the franc, the lira, the mark and the crown had about the same value--20 to 23 cents, or about five to a dollar. By 1920 the dollar bought 15 francs; 23 liras; 40 marks, and 250 Austrian crowns. In some of the ready-made countries, constituted under the Treaty or set up by the Allies as a cordon about Russia, hundreds and thousands of crowns could be had for a dollar. Even the pound sterling, which kept its value better than the money of any of the other European combatants, was thirty per cent. below par, when measured in terms of dollars. This situation made it impossible for the nations whose money was at such a heavy discount to purchase supplies from the more fortunate countries. But to make matters even worse, the rate of exchange fluctuated from day to day and from hour to hour so that business transactions could only be negotiated on an immense margin of safety.

Add to this financial dissolution the mountains of debt, the huge interest charges and the oppressive taxes, and the picture of economic ruin is complete.

The old capitalist world, organized on the theory of competition between the business men within each nation, and between the business men of one nation and those of another nation, reached a point where it would no longer work.