Mary Marcy’s demands most moderate are; she only wants the earth.

‘The Near-Socialist’ by Mary E. Marcy from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 11 No. 4. October,1910.

“The Socialist Party must take a high revolutionary, uncompromising ground; it must not dare to cater to ignorance for the sake of gaining votes; the moment it does so it signs its own death warrant.”

Eugene V. Debs, Chicago Speech, Sept. 18, 1910.

“THE AIMS of Socialism and the aims of good men in the old parties are not very different after all,” said a small automobile manufacturer a short time ago. “You want to eliminate graft, to put honest men in office and make rich men bear their just share of the taxes. You want to lower prices on the necessaries of life too, and so far the whole middle class is with you. I am a Near-Socialist myself.” He was sitting on a bench in one of Chicago’s small parks and addressing a socialist–a molder by trade, who knows the economics of Karl Marx from A to Z. I pricked up my ears to hear the replies of the workingman.

“Good lord!” he exclaimed sitting up abruptly, “somebody’s been stringing you. We’re not as bad as that. Socialism is a working class movement and it is not a problem of the wage-workers to eliminate graft, nor to lower taxes.

“Politicians do not graft off the working class and propertyless proletarians do not pay taxes.

“The big capitalists oppose graft—generally–on principle; there is an element of uncertainty about it that they do not approve and some day when Big Business is dull, they’ll take time to stop the little graft leaks.

“Usually the grafters pass the big people by and soak it into the small fry like you. You are an example,” the molder continued, taking a pull at his pipe.

“You have a small automobile plant. You pay the men who work for you as little as you may. You sell the automobiles at a profit, of course, or you wouldn’t be in business. Your employes make the autos, but you do not pay them what the machines are worth.

“Your problem is low taxes, no graft and low freight rates that will enable you to compete with the big manufacturers.

“The problem of the wage-worker is to secure the VALUE OF THE AUTOMOBILES.”

“Not at all; not at all” interrupted the Small Manufacturer, “the interests of my employes are identical with mine. If I fail financially in the competitive struggle, where will their jobs be?”

“Gone of course,” the molder replied. “but then you will be forced into the ranks of the wage-workers and you will be ripe for socialism.

“Besides,” he added, “low taxes and honest office holders and the elimination of graft will not save you.” The small automobile manufacturer is doomed. He hasn’t enough capital to compete with J.P. Morgan.

“Look here,” he said, “socialists have just one great aim. This aim is the only thing that makes them and their movement different from other movements the world over. We mean to ABOLISH THE WAGE SYSTEM.

“There is nothing else that can really better the condition of the wage-workers. Figure it any way and revolution is the only answer.

“Suppose you and I lived in a town with an absolutely honest city administration, where taxes were just, as you call it, and you couldn’t find a grafter with an X Ray. Suppose the city owned a coal yard and a coal MINE and sold coal to everybody at just half what they paid in other cities.

“Suppose the city owned the electric light plant and the street car system and we had 3 cent car fares, and rents were 50% lower than they were in nearby towns.

“Do you think all these things would benefit the working class any? Well they wouldn’t; not a single little bit. They would only result in making such a city a temporary heaven upon earth for the capitalist class.

“Let it be known that rents are low, coal cheap and prices generally below normal in one city and workingmen and women will begin to beat it in that direction as fast as they can raise the car fare.

“And then what happens? Being a manufacturer, you know what would happen. The labor market is flooded, over- crowded. Competition between the workers for jobs becomes very keen. Men who have brought their families to the new land of promise, offer to work for anything. Wages fall everywhere–as they always do in a crowded labor-market–and the workers here find themselves getting just enough to live on as they do everywhere else in the world.

“An honest city administration would not be able to GIVE THE WAGE-WORKERS the FULL VALUE of the AUTOMOBILES they produced. It would not stop your profits and that is the aim of socialism.

“Mill hands in China get something like 30 cents a day,” continued the molder, “but 30 cents daily, provides food, clothing and shelter in China, where it would take $2.00 a day to secure the same degree of comfort in Chicago and $4.00 or $5.00 to buy the necessaries of life in Alaska.”

“Well, reform is good enough for me” said the Small Manufacturer his irritation welling up and overflowing. “Thank goodness there is no danger of a lot of ignoramuses being able to overturn so much as a peanut-stand during MY day.”

“O I don’t know” retorted the molder complacently, “there’s an awful lot of us, you know. We built the railroads and we run ’em and we have made just about everything else in the world there is. We HAVE been a lot of ignoramuses but we’re getting wise. All we want now is the earth,” he added grinning, while the Small Manufacturer glared malignantly,–“the factories, the mines” but just then a park policeman pushed his way through the gathering crowd.

“No crowdin’ allowed in the park” he said, waving his club, and the Small Manufacturer faded away and was seen no more.

“Humph” said the molder under his breath. “NEAR-socialist! Lord deliver us from the NEAR-socialists!”

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v11n04-oct-1910-ISR-gog-Corn-OCR.pdf