Social Aspects of Industry: A Survey of Labor Problems and Causes of Industrial Unrest

1. Nature of Socialism. -- There are so many different types of socialism that it is difficult to define the movement with any exactness. Only a broad definition is possible. The common essential in all true schools of socialism is the substitution of collective ownership and control of industry for individual initiative and the present competitive system. The profits motive is to be eliminated or reduced in favor of the social service motive. A democratic organization of the workers is to succeed industrial absolutism. Moreover, socialism involves some fundamental changes in the institution of private property. Although permitting property rights in a certain amount of consumption goods, socialism attacks private property rights in land and capital. The cooperative movement would eliminate the individual enterpriser and the singletax movement the landlord, but socialism would eliminate the capitalist also. It differs from communism in that the latter refuses to recognize any property rights whatsoever. Socialism seeks to eliminate property incomes from such sources as inheritance, rent, interest, and profits. Wages would be the only form of income and all incomes would be earned incomes. Socialists differ among themselves on the question of equality or inequality of wages. They generally regard the salaries of brain workers, as well as the wages of manual laborers, as earned incomes.

There are many programs of social reform which are socialistic but which are not socialism, because they do not involve the collective ownership and operation of industry. The defeat of such measures is sometimes accomplished by the use of invective rather than reason. The specter of socialism is paraded through the legislative halls with deadly effect. Moreover, socialism is often confused with other relatively radical movements which are not socialism. We have seen that socialism is not communism. Again, socialism is entirely different from anarchism, although the two movements are sometimes regarded as identical. Anarchism seeks the reduction of governmental functions and the elimination of the political state. This may be done by evolutionary as well as by revolutionary methods. State socialism, on the other hand, seeks the increase of governmental functions, for it proposes that the state own and operate all industries. Socialism does not propose the elimination of religion, the church, or the institution of the family. It is true that cer

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