University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV
THE NEED FOR THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE WORKING CLASS

EVERY individual member of the working class cherishes the hope of rising into a higher social sphere which will guarantee to him a better and less restricted existence. The workman's ideal is to become a petty bourgeois. [217] To noninitiates and to superficial observers the working-class members of the socialist parties seem always to be petty bourgeois. The proletariat has not been able to emancipate itself psychically from the social environment in which it lives. For example, the German worker, as his wages have increased, has acquired the disease which is in the blood of the German petty bourgeoisie, the club-mania. In every large town, and not a few small ones, there is a swarm of working-class societies: gymnastic clubs, choral societies, dramatic societies; even smokers' clubs, bowling clubs, rowing clubs, athletic clubs—all sorts of associations whose essentially petty bourgeois character is not destroyed by the fact that they sail under socialist colors. A bowling club remains a bowling club even if it assumes the pompous name of "Sons of Freedom Bowling Club."

Just as little as the bourgeoisie can the socialist workers be regarded as a great homogeneous gray mass, although this consideration does not modify the fact that since proletarians all live by the sale of their only commodity, labour, the organized socialist workers are, at least in theory, conscious of their own unity in their common opposition to the owners of the means of production and to the governmental representatives of these. Yet it cannot be denied that the actual system of manufacture which unites under the same roof all the different categories of workers employed in a modern establishment for the production of railway-carriages, for instance, does not serve to overthrow the barriers which separate the various subclasses of workers. [218] Nor is it less true, looking at the matter from the other side, that there exists among the workers the sense of a need for differentiation which will readily escape those who do not come in personal contact with them. The kind of work, the rate of wages, differences of race and climate, produce numerous shades of difference alike in the mode of life and in the tastes of the workers. As early as 1860 it was said: “Entre ouvriers il y a des catégories et un classement aristocratique. Les imprimeurs prennent la tête; les chiffonniers, les vidangeurs, les égoutiers ferment la marche.” [219] Between the compositor and the casual labourer in the same country there exist differences in respect of culture and of social and economic status more pronounced than those between the compositor in one country and the small manufacturer in another. [220] The discrepancy between the different categories of workers is plainly displayed even in the trade-union movement. We know, for example, that the policy of the compositors' unions in Germany, France, and Italy differs from that of the other unions, and also from that of the Socialist Party, exhibiting a tendency towards the right, being more opportunist and more accommodating. In Germany, the compositors' union has for its president a Rexhauser, and in France a Keufer. We observe, too, in the conduct of the diamond-workers in Holland and in Belgium the same unsocialistic, unproletarian, and particularist tendencies. The aristocratic element of the working class, the best paid, those who approximate most closely to the bourgeoisie, pursue tactics of their own. In the active work of the labour movement, the division of the organized masses into different social strata is often plainly manifest. Working-class history abounds in examples showing how certain fractions or categories of the proletariat have, under the influence of interests peculiar to their sub-class, detached themselves from the great army of labour and made common cause with the bourgeoisie. Thus it happens, generally speaking, that the workers in armaments factories have little sympathy with anti-militarist views. At the London congress of the Independent Labor Party in 1910, the Woolwich delegate, largely representing the view of the employees at Woolwich arsenal, expressed strong dissent from the opinion of those delegates who had brought forward a resolution in favor of a restriction of armaments and of compulsory arbitration in international disputes. [221] Again, the check which was sustained at Venice by the general strike of protest against the Tripolitan campaign was due to the opposition of a section of the arsenal workers. [222] The very fact that the cessation of work on May 1st is but a partial demonstration renders it possible to divide the workers into two classes. One consists of those who thanks to better conditions of life and other favorable circumstances “can allow themselves the luxury” of celebrating the 1st of May; the other comprises those who by poverty or ill-fortune are compelled to remain at work. [223]

The need for differentiation is manifested still more clearly when we consider more extended groups of workers. The difference between skilled and unskilled workers is primarily and predominantly economic, and displays itself in a difference of working conditions. As time passes, this difference becomes transformed into a veritable class distinction. The skilled and better paid workers hold aloof from the unskilled and worse paid workers. The former are always organized, while the latter remain “free” labourers; and the fierce economic and social struggles which occur between the two groups constitute one of the most interesting phenomena of modern social history. This struggle, which by the physiologist Angelo Mosso is termed ergomachia, the struggle for the feeding-ground, [224] is waged with ever-increasing intensity. The organized workers demand from the unorganized the strictest solidarity, and insist that the latter should abandon work whenever they themselves are in conflict with the employers. When this demand is not immediately complied with, they insult the unorganized workers by the use of approbrious names which have found a place in scientific terminology. In France, in the days of Louis Philippe, they were called bourmont and ragusa. At the present day they are in Germany termed Streikbrecher; in Italy, krumiri; in England, blacklegs; in America, scabs; in Hainault, gambes de bos; in France, jaunes, renards, or bédouins; in Holland, onderkruipers; and so on. It is incontestable that the grievances of the organized workers against the unorganized are largely justified. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in the working class this ergomachia is not essentially the outcome of differences between the well-disposed workers and the ill-disposed, as masters and men naively believe, of course inverting the roles. For the socialists, in fact, the strikers are always heroes and the strike-breakers are always villains; whilst for the employers the strike-breakers are honest and hardworking fellows, whilst the strikers are idle good-for-nothings. In reality, ergomachia does not consist of a struggle between two categories distinguished by ethical characteristics, but is for the most part a war between the better-paid workers and the poorer strata of the proletariat. The latter, from the economic aspect, consist of those who are still economically unripe for a struggle with the employers to secure higher wages. We often hear the most poverty-stricken workers, conscious of their inferiority, content that their wages are high enough, whilst the better paid and organized workers declare that the unorganized are working at starvation rates. One of the most indefatigable of French socialist women has well said: “On est presque tenté d'excuser les trahisons de ces supplanteurs, quand on a vu, de ses propres yeux vu, tout le tragique du problème des sans-travail en Angleterre. Dans les grands ports du sud ou de l'ouest, on voit rangés, le long d'un mur de quaie, des milliers et des milliers d'affamés, à la figure hâve, grelottants, qui espèrent se faire embaucher comme débardeurs. Il en faut quelques dizaines. Quand les portes s'ouvrent, c'est une terrible ruée, une véritable bataille. Récemment, un de ces hommes, les côtes pressés, mourut étouffé dans la mêlée.” [225] The organized workers, on their side, do not consider themselves obliged to exhibit solidarity towards the unorganized, even when they are all sharing a common poverty during crises of unemployment. The German trades councils often demand that the subsidies which (in accordance with the so-called Strasburg system) are provided in certain large towns from the public funds to render assistance in cases of unemployment, should be reserved for the organized workers, declaring that the unorganized have no claim to assistance. [226]

The more fortunate workers do not only follow their natural inclination to fight by all available means against their less well-to-do comrades, who, by accepting lower wages, threaten the higher standard of life of the organized workers—using in the struggle, as always happens when economic interests conflict, methods which disregard every ethical principle. They also endeavour to hold themselves completely aloof. The union button is often, as it were, a patent of nobility which distinguishes its wearer from the plebs. This happens even when the unorganized workers would like nothing better than to make common cause with the organized. In almost all the larger British and American trade unions there is manifest a tendency to corporatism, to the formation of sharply distinguished working-class aristocracies. [227] The trade unions, having become rich and powerful, no longer seek to enlarge their membership, but endeavour rather to restrict it by imposing a high entrance fee, by demanding a certificate of prolonged apprenticeship, and by other similar means, all deliberately introduced in order to retain certain privileges in their own hands at the expense of other workers following the same occupation. The anti-alien movement is the outcome of the same professional egoism, and is especially conspicuous among the Americans and Australians, who insist upon legislation to forbid the immigration of foreign workers. The trade unions in such cases adopt a frankly “nationalist” policy. In order to keep out the “undesirables” they do not hesitate to appeal for aid to the “class-state,” and they exercise upon the government a pressure which may lead their country to the verge of war with the labour-exporting land. [228] In Europe, too, we may observe, although here to a less degree, the formation within the labour movement of closed groups and coteries (and it is in this that the tendency to oligarchy consist), which arise in direct conflict with the theoretical principles of socialism. The workers employed at the Naples arsenal, who recently demanded of the government that “a third of the new places to be filled should be allotted to the sons of existing employees who are following their fathers' trade,” [229] are in sentiment by no means so remote from the world of our day as might at first be imagined. As has been well said, “la lutte de classe a pour objectif de faire monter la classe inférieure au niveau de la supérieure, c'est ainsi que les révolutions réussissent souvent, non à dèmocratiser les eugéniques, mais à eugéniser les démocrats.” [230]

The policy of social reform, which finds its most definite expression in labour legislation, does not entail the same advantages for all sections of the working class. For example, the law which raises the minimum age of the factory worker will have varying effects according as may vary the power of the labour organizations, the rate of wages, the conditions of the labour market, etc., in the different branches of industry or agriculture. Thus in certain categories of workers the effect of the law will be a transient depression of the standard of life, whilst in other cases it will lead to a permanent elevation in that standard. There results an even greater accentuation of the differentiation which the proletarian groupings already present as the outcome of national, local, and technical differences.

To sum up, it may be affirmed that in the contemporary working class there is already manifest a horizontal stratification. Within the quatrième état we see already the movements of the embryonic cinquième état. One of the greatest dangers to the socialist movement, and one which must not be lightly disregarded as impossible, is that gradually there may come into existence a number of different strata of workers, as the outcome of the influence of a general increase of social wealth, in conjunction with the efforts made by the workers themselves to elevate their standard of life; this may in many cases enable them to secure a position in which, though they may not completely lose the common human feeling of never being able to get enough, from which even millionaires are not altogether exempt, they will become so far personally satisfied as to be gradually estranged from the ardent revolutionary aspirations of the masses towards a social system utterly different from our own — aspirations born of privation. Thus the working class will become severed into two unequal parts, subject to perpetual fluctuations in their respective size.