The Flight from Reality: The Domestication of Socialism; C. Carson

Dr. Carson is Professor of American History at Grove City College, Pennsylvania. Among his earlier writings in THE FREEMAN were his series on The Fateful Turn and The Ameri can Tradition, both of which are now avail able as books. The flight from reality had pro ceeded far enough that many men could begin to take seriously vi sions which their counterparts in other times would have readily recognized as impractical fancies. But the intellectual· position from which such recognition would oc cur had largely been cut away. The disciplinary role of philoso29 30 THE FREEMAN August phy had been lost, in the main, with the break from metaphysics, the downgrading of reason, and the attempt to root philosophy in empirical data. The vision of uto pia provided a destination for man in the future. For many thinkers, time had been cut loose from its framework in eternity, cause dis joined from effect, man severed from his past experience, and a widening gulf separated thought from the wisdom of the past. A new pseudo philosophy - pragma tism - had been set forth to pro vide a method of operation into a future which was to be wholly different from the past. A new conception of reality had emerged to replace the old, a "reality" made up of change, society, and psyche.

A new conception of creativity held out the promise that man could and did create his own reality. These developments had impli cations for all of life, but, above all, they made ameliorative re form appear to be possible and provided the intellectual frame work for the concerted and per sistent efforts of reformers to make over man and society with the power of the state. The notion that society can be so reconstruct ed is called meliorism. But there is more to the matter than that. The belief that society, and men, can be reconstructed does not, of itself, imply any particular direc tion that should be taken in ac complishing this transformation. Yet anyone familiar with melioris tic efforts in this century should be able to see that there has been one direction to reform. Melio rism and reform have not been neutral concepts; they have been loaded with ideas which have bent the thoughts of the men who held them in a particular direction.· Re form has been informed by ideol ogy.

Indeed, one ideology has domin ated reformist thought in this century. That ideology should be known by its generic name, so cialism, though a variety of names are frequently employed. There have been attempts to restrict the meaning of socialism to the de scription of those programs for pu blic (i. e. governmental) owner ship of the means of production and distribution of goods. For example, the American College Dictionary defines socialism as "a theory or system of social organi zation which advocates the vest ing of the ownership and control of the means of production, capi tal, land, etc. in the community as a whole." But such a definition is far too restrictive. It sacrifices accuracy for precision and hamp ers rather than enables in the identification of actual socialists. It conforms neither to the etymol1965 THE DOMESTICATION OF SOCIALISM 31 ogy of the word nor to. the origin of the ideas nor to the facts of socialist advocacy.

More accurately, then, socialism should be used to describe the doctrines of those who, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, #lw~¥~ ~4~kin~ !t (!omplQtQ tra.ns formation of the economic and moral basis of society by the sub stitution of the social for individ ual control and of social for in dividualistic forces in the organ ization of life and work." Richard T. Ely claimed that socialism is "a principle which regulates so cial and economic life according to the needs of society as a whole.... "1 This gets much closer to the heart of the matter. So cialists conceive of society as an organism, as a being in and of itself, capable of acting to bring about certain ends. The aim of the socialists is to bring about the control by society of the eco nomic and social life, and their claim is that this will result in greatly improved well-being for all. The key word is control. There are, and have been, dogmatic so cialists who insist that this must be effected by the vesting of ownership in the "public." But many others have professed not to care who holds the title to prop1 Richard T. Ely, Socialism (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1894), p. 5.

erty so long as society has the control of it. Evolution or Revolution? The only distinction among so cialists which has much empirical content is that between evolution ary and revolutionary socialism. And this is a distinction as to the means to be employed, not as to the ends to be achieved. Virtually all socialists, at least the earlier ones, have been aware that so cialism would bring about a revo lution in the lives of the people who adopted it. Some have thought, however, that this change could be brought about gradually, that it would not have to be a chieved by violent means. Others have believed that a violent take over would be necessary, and they are known as revolutionary social ists. Those socialists who are known as communists, and who claim discipleship to Karl Marx, have been the most vociferous ad vocates of revolutionary socialism, though there have been other rev olutionary movements. It seems to me, however, that all of modern so cialism stems more or less from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

At any rate, they advanced mo~t of the notions which later social ists, of all varieties, have advo cated. Socialism acquired a bad repu tat ion early in its career, if it ever 32 THE FREEMAN August had a good one. After the abortive revolutions of 1848, advocates of socialism lived on the fringes of society. The workers of the world did not rush to unite behind them. The dire predictions of Marx did not come about, except in the heated imaginations of such men as accepted his words as a kind of gospel. Socialist parties made very poor showings in elections. Many of the ideas of socialists could be, and were, readily re futed. Electorates in the latter part of the nineteenth century usually rejected socialist programs with great alacrity. This was em phatically so in the United States. Yet by the 1960's socialist ideas had come to prevail, to a greater or lesser extent, almost every where in the world, including the United States. How had this turn of events come about? In two ways mainly (and they correspond to the revolutionary-evolutionary approach) : one way may be sum marized as the conspiracy-coup d' etat-violence method of gaining political power; the other has been by the propagation of ideas by intellectuals and the gradual in trusion of the attendant programs into the political action of com munities. The conspiracy-coup d'etat-violence approach has gen erally been used in the East, the other in the West.

In the early twentieth century, the flight from reality became, or began to become, very nearly iden tical with the advancement of so cialism. Much of the rest of the story will deal with how socialism was intruded into American polit ical activities. The first step in this process was the domestication of socialism. It must be kept in mind that no avowedly socialist party has ever got more than a small fraction of the vote in the United States. To the extent that socialism has gained sway, then, it has been by the adoption of so cialist programs by the older par ties and the championing of these reforms by intellectuals and poli ticians who avoided the socialist label. It will be my task to show that this is precisely what hap pened. Laying the Groundwork Most people in the United States, so far as such things can be determined, have never accept ed the bizarre formulations of the thought leaders in the nineteenth century of the flight from reality or of socialism. It is likely most men would consider Nietzsche's conception of creativity by a Sup erman as so much nonsense, and Marx's fulminations as the prod uct of a demented mind. At least, they would, and did, until they were acclimated to them in much milder formulations.

1965 THE DOMESTICATION OF SOCIALISM 33 A part of the task of acclimatiz ing people to these ideas was ac complished by the domestication of socialism, the making of it more palatable by sloughing off the name, by particularizing it, by "moderate" statements of premises, and so on. A goodly number of people undoubtedly contributed to this work. Reform was made to appear much more desirable, even necessary, by the efforts of the muckrakers. Various and sundry theorists .had begun to make some impact with their ideas. There is a considerable body of literature which could be categorized as the domestication of socialism in the United States. But for the sake of brevity and unity this account will be largely restricted to three books by three men. They are Herbert Croly's The Promise of American Life (1909), Walter E. Weyl's The New Democracy (1912), and Wal ter Lippmann's Drift and Mastery (1914). They were aU Americans, were believed to have been some what influential, founded The New Republic as a joint venture, and shared some common presupposi tions and aims.

Crofy, Weyl, and Lippmann Croly's book was much more influential than the others, by all accounts. It is supposed to have influenced Theodore Roosevelt in the formulation of the New Na tionalism and to have· been a ma jor seminal work for progressiv ism. A recent writer has noted: Croly's reputation, however, rested on more than his purported impact on Roosevelt. Men whose own thought first took shape during the progressive period have strongly praised the publicist's contribution. Lippmann called his former associ ate "the first important political philosopher who appeared in Amer ica in the twentieth century"; Alvin Johnson grants Croly "the palm of the leadership in the philosophy of the progressive movement" ... , while Felix Frankfurter credits him with "the most powerful single con tribution to progressive thinking."2 Croly's work is both the most lengthy and the most thorough of the three books. It may well be that The Promise of American Life should be ranked as the most thorough "Fabian tract" ever written. Weyl's book is much blunter, less polished, and some what more to the point. Lippmann had already developed his ponder ous style of presenting a combina tion of urbanities and inanities as if they were profound. He had already developed the ability, too, to roll with the punch, to ap parently accept the devastating criticisms of his position, even to 2 Charles Forcey, The Crossroads 0/ Liberalism (New York: Oxford Univer sity Press, 1961), pp. 5-6.

34 THE FREEMAN August joining in with the chorus of the critics, all the while maintaining the substance of his position in tact. He was a pragmatist, along with the other two men, and this made it easy for him to pursue his goal-by a new path when he found the course he was following blocked. The Art of Persuasion There is one difficulty in my thesis that these three men were domesticating socialism, and there is no reason why it should not be made explicit. The difficulty is this. In order for them to have been domesticating socialism, they must have been socialists. Yet it was essential to their task that they not be avowed socialists. At any rate, Croly and Weyl were not avowed socialists, and by 1914 Lippmann had abandoned his con nection with socialist parties. Thus, there appears to be a prob lem of proving that they were so cialists. Actually, however, the above overstates-the problem. Whether they were socialists or not, these men were advancing socialist ideas and programs. Whether they were intending to "domesticate social ism" or not is irrelevant; my point is that the way in which they were presenting the ideas had that effect. It should be made clear that this is not an examination into the motives of these men. There is no concern here with whether they were sincere or not, whether they were surreptitiously advanc ing a movement or not, or whether they were good or evil men or not.

This is not an attempt to judge them; it is an effort to describe what they did. The point is that Croly, Weyl, and Lippmann were advocating ideas and programs drawn from the socialist ideology, and that they presented them in a light so that they would be least disturb ing to the accepted beliefs of Americans. Let us first examine a few quotations which indicate the socialistic tenor of the pro posals of these men. The first is from Herbert CroIy, and the con text from which it comes is a dis cussion of the necessity of re stricting freedom: Efficient regulation there must be; and it must be regulation which will strike, not at the symptoms of the evil, but at its roots. The existing concentration of wealth and finan cial power in the hands of a few ir responsible men is the inevitable outcome of the chaotic individualism of our political and economic organi zation .... The inference which fol lows may be disagreeable, but it is not to be escaped. In becoming re sponsible for the subordination of the individual to the demand of a dominant and constructive national 1965 THE DOMESTICATION OF SOCIALISM 35 purpose, the American state will in effect be making itself responsible for a morally and socially desirable distribution of wealth."3 At one point, Croly candidly ad mits that in certain senses his program is socialistic. He says that it is socialistic "in case so cialism cannot be divorced from the use, wherever necessary, of the political organization in all its forms to realize the proposed dem ocratic purpose."4 Weyl said, "To-day no democ racy is possible in America except a socialized democracy, which con ceives of society as a whole and not as a more or less adventitious assemblage of myriads of individ uals~"5 Moreover, In the socialized democracy to wards which we are moving . . .

taxes [will] conform more or less to the ability of each to pay; but the engine of taxation . . . will be used to accomplish great social ends, among which will be the more equal distribution of wealth and income. The state will tax to improve edu cation, health, recreation, communi cation. . . . The government of the nation, in the hands of the people, will establish its unquestioned sov ereignty over the industry of the 3 Herbert Croly, The Promise of Amer ican Life, Cushing Strout, intro. (New York: Capricorn Books, 1964), p. 23. 4 Ibid., p. 209. 5 Walter E. Weyl, The New Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1912), p. 162. nation, so largely in the hands of individuals. 6 Walter Lippmann is not easy to pin down, yet the socialist ideas are there. Quite often he obscures them as prediction, as in the fol lowing: "Now the time may come, I am inclined to think it is sure to come, when the government will be operating the basic indus tries, railroads, mines, and so forth. It will be possible then to finance government enterprise out of the profits of its industries, to eliminate interest, and substitute collective saving."7 Sometimes, however, he prescribes directly, as in the following call for all-out planning: It means tha t you have to do a great variety of things to industry, invent new ones to do, and keep on doing them. You have to make a sur vey of the natural resources of the country. On the basis of that survey you must draw up a national plan for their development. You must eliminate waste in mining, you must conserve the forests so that their fertility is not impaired, so that stream flow is regulated, and the waterpower of the country made available. 8 6 Ibid., pp. 163-64.

7 Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mast ery, William E. Leuchtenburg, intro. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, A Spectrum Book, 1961), p. 70. S Ibid., p. 98.

36 THE FREEMAN August These quotations, however their authors hedged them about, do indicate that the books in question were informed by socialism. They are, however, among the more radical statements to be found in the books. In the main, the writers stick to the task of domesticating socialism, rather than to setting forth their assumptions. Let us examine now some of the means by which this is done. Gradualism First, the authors of these books were devotees of gradual ism, and were themselves propos ing the next steps in a movement toward what can be discerned as the goal of socialism. In their gradualism, they were following the path of the English Fabians who had been at work some years already. The Fabian Society, named after the Roman general, Fabi us, who fought indirectly by harassment rather than directly, was organized in 1884. Sidney Webb, a leading figure in the So ciety and movemen t, explained their conclusions this way: In the present Socialist movement these two streams are united: advo cates of social reconstruction have learnt the lesson of Democracy, and know that it is through the slow and gradual turning of the popular mind to new principles that social reor ganization bit by bit comes .... Socialists ... realize that important organic changes can only be (1 ) democratic ... ; (2) gradual ... ; (3) not regarded as immoral by the mass of the people . . .; and (4) in this country at any rate, constitu tional and peacefu1. 9 Whether Croly, Weyl, and Lipp mann were consciously socialists or not, they were certainly con sciously gradualists. Croly makes his gradualism explicit in the f 01 lowing prescription for taking over the railroads (all the while adopting a pose of objectivity about it which relieves him of responsibility for advocating it) : In the existing condition of eco nomic development and of public opinion, the man who believes in the ultimate necessity of government ownership of railroad road-beds and terminals must be content to wait and to watch. The most that he can do for the present is to use any op ening which the course of railroad development affords, for the asser tion of his ideas; and if he is right, he will gradually be able to work out, in relation to the economic situation of the railroads, some practical method of realizing the ultimate pur pose.l O He suggests that the end might be 9 Sidney Webb, "Socialism, Fusion of Democracy and Cooperation" in J. Sal wyn Schapiro, Movements of Social Dis sent in Modern Europe (Princeton: D.

Van Nostrand, 1962), p. 16l. 10 Croly, Ope cit., p. 377.

1965 THE DOMESTICATION OF SOCIALISM 37 achieved by the extension of gov ernment credit to the railroads, followed by a "gradual. system of appropriation." Weyl left no doubt about his gradualism either. He declared "that the surest method of prog ress is to take one step after an other. The first step, often un contested (because it is only one step) , leads inevitably to others."ll He gives an example of what he means, in connection with govern mental acquisition of rich mineral lands. "If the nation .could ap proach the owners of these· lands with the sword of a gentle tax in the one hand and the olive branch of a fair purchase price in the other, there would soon be no fear of any monopoly of our mineral resources."12 Although Lippmann substituted prediction for outright prescrip tion, he envisioned a gradual trans formation in America. "Private property will melt away; its func tions will be taken over by the salaried men who direct them, by government commissions, by developing labor unions. The stockholders depri ved of their property rights are being trans formed into money-Ienders."13 11 Weyl, Ope cit., pp. 265-66.

12 Ibid., p. 266. Apparently, he meant by monopoly the private ownership of mineral resources. 13 Lippmann, Ope cit., p. 49. A Fa~ade of Conservatism The grad ual approach to social transformation, these writers saw, had the advantages of lessening resistance, of avoiding shock, and of giving the appearance of con tin uity within the society. The latter two advantages take on the added gloss of appearing to be conservative. That is, they indi cate a concern with conserving much within the existing frame work while the framework itself is being fundamentally altered. Indeed, one of the least under stood of the methods of Fabian socialism, if the term may be used generically, is the fa~ade of con servatism which socialists frequent ly adopt. On the face of it, con serva tism and the radical altera tion of society are at opposite poles of the political spectrum. Yet gradualists have quite often not only reduced the distance be tween them, so far as could be readily discerned, but also have managed actually to convince some people that theirs is the conserva tive position. It turns out upon examination, of course, that what they want to do is to preserve the material achievements of modern civilization while destroying or replacing the spiritual base, knowl edge, and arrangements upon which they are built. But then, that is why socialists can be described as on a flight from reality.

38 THE FREEMAN August liThe Great Society" One of the best examples of a socialist book which embodied the conservative fa~ade was written not by an American but an Eng lishman. Graham Wallas was the author, and the book was The Great Society (1914), a name which has cropped up lately. There is no difficulty in placing Wallas ideologically; he was one of the original founders of the Fabian Society. Moreover, some slight dis cussion of the method of the book in the present discussion is in order because Wallas influenced Lippmann when he was at Har vard in 1910 as a visiting lecturer, and dedicated'The Great Society to Lippmann. One might suppose from the title of the book that it is utopian, that it is a prescription for some thing to be achieved in the future. Yet such is not the case. The Great Society already existed (in 1914), according to Wallas, at least in the highly industrialized countries of the West. The Great Society, Wallas said, had resulted from technological innovations.

The developments from these had drawn people together in inter dependence upon one another, not only nationally but internationally. But - and this was the problem with which he purported to deal there were centripetal as well as centrifugal forces within the Great Society. The centripetal forces threatened to dissolve the society. Wallas said, "But even if the forces of cohesion and dissolu tion remain as evenly balanced as they are now, our prospects are dark enough. The human material of our social machinery will con Unue to disintegrate just at the points where strength is· most ur gently required." To support this statement he supplied a catalogue of the evils within society which any socialist might be expected to give. In order to preserve the Great Society he held that a great reorganization would have to oc cur. In short, he had made it ap pear that social transformation was necessary for conservative reasons.

This theme crops up in the works under consideration. Writ ing before Wallas's book appeared, Croly said: "In its deepest as pect ... the social problem is the problem of preventing such divi sions [the divisions supposedly caused by specialization] from dis solving the society into which they enter - of keeping such a highly differentiated society fundament ally sound and whole."14 Lippmann argued from similar premises for the development of powerful labor unions. He maintained that indus trial peace would be a by-product of powerful unions. "You will 14 Croly, Ope cit., p. 139.

1965 THE DOMESTICATION OF SOCIALISM 39 meet in ... powerful unions," he said, "what radical labor leaders call conservatism." On the other hand, "It is the weak unions, the unorganized and shifting work ers, who talk sabotage and flare up into a hundred little popgun rebellions."15 'The moral is clear: Support the growth of strong unions in order to maintain peace and conserve social stability. Giving Historical Setting to the Need for Reform A considerable portion of Cro ly's work was devoted to fitting the need for reform into the American tradition. A part of his book is historical in character. His position is that there was an implicit promise in American de velopment over the years, that Americans had developed demo cratic institutions, that they had developed a national spirit, that they had at one time effected unity among the peoples. However, "the changes which have been taking, place in industrial and political and social conditions have all tended to impair the consistency of feeling characteristic' of the first phase of American national democracy."16 That is, according to him, industrialism had pro duced deep divisions within so ciety. "Grave inequalities of power 15 Lippmann, Ope cit., p. 61.

16 Croly, Ope cit., p. 138. and deeplying differences of pur pose have developed in relation of the several primary American ac tivities. The millionaire, the 'Boss,' the union laborer, and the lawyer, have all taken advan tage of the loose American politi cal organization to promote some what unscrupulously their own in terests .... "17 This situation was unwholesome, he thought. "But a democracy cannot dispense with the solidarity which it imparted to American life, and in one way or another such solidarity must be restored. "18 Some clues to the means for the restoration of "solidarity" could be found in American history. Alexander Hamilton had a vision of using the government to ad vance national well-being. But Hamilton had been antidemo cratic, and had promulgated too narrow a program, at least for twentieth century conditions. Thomas· Jefferson had contributed to the development of democratic sentiment, but he had been in dividualistic, not nationalistic.

Croly drew his conclusion: "The best that can be said on be half of this traditional American system of political ideas is that it contained the germ of better things. The combination of Fed eralism and Republicanism 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., p. 139.

40 THE FREEMAN August pointed in the direction of a con structive formula."19 So too, the Whigs had a national vision, but they were unable fully to articu late it. Croly was setting the stage with this historical exposition for of fering his solution, and at the same time making it appear that he was joining his solution to a course which Americans had been groping toward for a long time. The solution was for Americans to "restore" their lost or threat ened unity by the acceptance of a social ideal. They were to find a national purpose, and they were to move toward the fulfillment of that purpose, or "promise," demo cratically. Thus, Croly was able to associate two ideas - national ism and democracy-which had good connotations to Americans with his program for social re construction. It should be noted that all three writers salted down their social programs with liberal sprinklings of references to "de mocracy" throughout, a practice which has long since become ha bitual, if not compulsive, with re formers.

Alterations Proposed But the attempt to make their programs appear conservative and traditional by these writers should not be overemphasized. Croly went 19 Ibid., p. 51. much further in this regard than did the others. All of them, how ever, were fairly explicit in point ing out that they were proposing alterations in the American sys tem. Even Croly said, The better future, which Ameri cans propose to build is nothing if not an idea which must in certain essential respects emancipate them from their past. American history contains much matter for pride and congratulation, and much matter for regret and humiliation. On the whole . . . , it has throughout been made better than it was by the vision of a better future; and the American of to-day and tomorrow must remain true to that traditional vision. He must be prepared to sacrifice to that traditional vision even the tradi tional American ways of realizing it. 2o Weyl left no doubt about his view of the centerpiece of the American tradition, the Constitu tion. He said, "Our newer democ racy demands, not that the peo ple forever conform to a rigid, hard-changing Constitution, but that the Constitution change to conform to the people. The Con stitution of the United States is the political wisdom of a dead America."21 Lippmann was even more emphatic, and much more general, in his repudiation of tra20 Ibid., p. 5.

21 Weyl, op. cit., p. 13.

1965 THE DOMESTICATION OF SOCIALISM 41 dition. He subscribed to the view "that we should live not for our fatherland but for our children's land." To do this men have to substitute purpose for tradition: and that is, I believe, the profoundest change that has ever taken place in human his tory. We can no longer treat life as something that has trickled down to us. We have to deal with it delib erately, devise its social organiza tion, alter its tools, formulate its method, educate and control it. In endless ways we put intention where custom has reigned. 22 Necessary Adjustments to Changing Conditions The major justification for so cial reconstruction, then, was not that it was in keeping with the American tradition to do so but that it made necessary by chang ing conditions. Thus, these writers domesticated socialism by making its measures appear to be neces sary adjustments to changed con ditions. These men argued that technological developments, new industrial organizations, the de velopment of a nationwide mar ket, the appearance of class di visions, the existence of poverty, made necessary the alteration of political action to deal with these changes. Perhaps the other two would have agreed wholeheartedly with Weyl, when he said, "It is 22 Lippmann, Ope cit., p. 147.

ideas, born of conditions, which rule the world."23 Indeed, Lipp mann took the position that many of the changes were already oc curring which were reconstructing America, whether it would or not. Croly emphasized the method of the reformer as one in which he grasped the tendencies and rein forced them. These positions indicate a rath er mystifying, or illogical, pen chant of melioristic reformers in the twentieth century. They vacil late between the poles of economic determinism on the one hand and a radical view of "freedom" which allows them to create at will, on the other. Generally speaking, Croly, Weyl, and Lippmann got maximum use from ideas drawn from contradictory positions. The determinist position allows its holder to claim that he is describ ing an inevitable evolution, to as sume a position as a scholar and possibly a scientist rather than an advocate, to avoid responsibility for his advocacy, and to leave the reader with no choice but to ad just to the predicted course of development. On the other hand, the meliorist position allows its holder to talk of social invention, of imagination, of creativity, of a new way which has been discerned, and to appeal subtly to the read er's desire to join him in being 23 Weyl, Ope cit., p. 199.

42 THE FREEMAN August in the forefront of momentous de velopments. In the real world, these are inconsistencies, but on the flight from reality you can have it both ways. Pragmatic Approach Requires No Consistent Principles Finally, the pragmatism of these writers permitted them to offer every sort of reformist idea that has ever been advanced without dogmatically subscribing to any of them. Some indication of the range of ideas which they sub scribed to or advanced should be given. Many of them have since become the assumptions of intel lectuals and some goodly number have been put into practice. In general, Croly, Weyl, and Lipp mann subscribed to the notion that the problem of production had been largely mastered, that the major task ahead was one of distribution. They spoke con fidentlyof "unearned increments," of "social surpluses," and of the "need" to distribute the wealth more equitably. None of these men, however, was an opponent of bigness in business. They con sidered trustbusting an anachro nistic and destructive undertaking.

The problem, as they saw it, was not to break up huge industries but to assure that they were oper ated in the interest of society. To assure this, they advocated govern mental regulation, discrimina tory taxation, and outright owner ship, if necessary. These writers used slightly dif ferent verbiage to describe their broad programs of reconstruction, but Weyl gives the gist of their recommendations in the following: With a government ownership of some industries, with a government regulation of others, with publicity for all (to the extent that publicity is socially desirable), with an en larged power of the community in industry, and with an increased ap propriation by the community of the increasing social surplus and of the growing unearned increment, the progressive socialization of industry will take place. To accomplish these ends the democracy will rely upon the trade-union, the association of consumers, and other industrial agencies. It will, above all, rely upon the sta te.24 Many Reforms Have Been Tried Some of the means to these ends are interesting because they have been employed, but they are no longer so openly avowed. For example, these writers favored the alteration of the Constitution by interpretation. Croly declared that, on the whole, the Constitu tion was an admirable document, "and in most respects it should be left to the ordinary process of 24 Ibid., p. 297.

1965 THE DOMESTICATION OF SOCIALISM 43 gradual amendment by legal con struction. . . ."25 Weyl said, "For the time being, the Constitution will probably change, as it has changed during the last century, by process of interpretation. . . . It is possible for them [the Su preme Court] by a few progres sive judicial decisions to democ ratize the Constitution."26 In various forms, one or more of these writers proposed social ized medicine, consumer regula tion, inheritance taxes, graduated income taxes, state insurance pro grams, socialized education, exec utive leadership, centralization of government, excess profits taxes, national planning, and a govern ment guaranteed minimum stand ard of living. Croly even argued explicitly that government should discriminate in favor of certain groups in order to assure equality. He said, "The national govern ment must step in and discrim inate; but it must discriminate, not on behalf of liberty and the 25 Croly, op. cit., p. 35l.

26 Weyl, op. cit., p. 317. special individual, but on behalf of equality and the average man."27 In general, though, their par ticular programs were not dog matically advocated. They were pragmatic about the particulars. Pragmatism is not, of course, a test of the ultimate end to be achieved; it is a test of the meth ods to be used. If one method does not work, then another one is tried, and so on. The end remains the same, and inaccessible to prag matic demonstrations. As Weyl said, "The democracy [for which one may accurately substitute "socialism"], though compromis ing in action, must be uncom promising in principle. Though conciliatory towards opponents, it must be constant to its fixed ideals. Though it tack with the wind, it must keep always in sight its general destination."28 This was one of the ways, then, by which socialism was domesti cated in America. • 27 Croly, op. cit., p. 190.

28 Weyl, Ope cit., p. 269. The next article in this series will pertain to "The Democratic Illusion."