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.