Kerr debates an impossibilist on municipal ownership of public transit in 1905.

‘Should a Socialist Vote for Municipal Street Railways While Capitalism Lasts?’ by Charles H. Kerr from Chicago Socialist. Vol. 6 No. 364. February 24, 1906.

The question, “Resolved, That Socialists should vote for municipal ownership of street railways while capitalism prevails” was debated at the Nineteenth Ward headquarters last Monday evening. The affirmative was championed by Charles H. Kerr and the negative by M. Kaplin Below will be found the principal arguments set forth by Comrade Kerr for the affirmative. Next week we will print the arguments set forth by Comrade Kaplin for the negative.

In discussing this question briefly we shall save time by taking for granted a few things on which all members of the Socialist party agree. We all accept the principle of the class struggle–that the struggle is on between those who live by working and those who live by owning, and that our concern is for the interests of those who live by working. We are not concerned with the conflicting interests of the big exploiters and the little exploiters. If, as some think, the municipal ownership of street cars would help the little exploiters at the expense of the big ones, that is no reason why we as Socialists should vote for the scheme, but neither is it a reason why we should vote against it.

Again, we all agree that in the long run the wages of the laborer under capitalism tend to adjust themselves to the cost of living. So even if we were to assume that under municipal ownership the fare on the street cars would be reduced from five cents to three cents, that does not necessarily prove that the change would be to the advantage of the working class. For the employer must, if his supply of laborers is to be kept up, pay wages enough to include street car fare, and if the fare is reduced, the tendency may quite possibly be to reduce was correspondingly. Much might be said to show that this would not be the case, but in a brief discussion I am willing to yield the point, so as to keep our attention on other considerations that are far more important.

They are:

1. Municipal ownership would improve the conditions of labor for the workingmen employed on the street cars, and would thus indirectly raise the standard of living for all the laborers of the city trying the experiment.

2. Municipal ownership would silence the objection which still influences many minds to the effect that a complicated industry cannot be operated with success by a municipality.

3. It will be an immense gain to have some of the complex problems of public administration taken up and worked upon immediately, instead of our having them all to solve at once in the first stormy days after the control of the public powers has passed from the capitalist class to the working class.

4. With a capitalist government directly employing a largely increased number of laborers in the interest of the capitalist class, the struggle for better conditions will be brought out into the open, and the laborer unaccustomed to abstract reasoning will find it easy to understand why he should vote to have his class run the government.

These I take to be the vital questions involved in this discussion. Let us see what is to be said on each side.

First, as to conditions of labor under municipal ownership, with the capitalists still in control just as they are now. We know that these conditions will not be determined by any considerations of abstract justice, but by the interests, in a general way, of the whole capitalist class, and in a more direct and specific way of the group of politicians who run the city hall when municipal ownership begins. Those politicians are dependent on the capitalists who put up the money for the party organisation, and they must protect the interests of those capitalists. But this they can only do by continuing to carry elections, and the laborers have the most votes. So these politicians are in a different position from the directors of a traction company. The directors have no one to consider but their stockholders. They can and do look on the conductors and motormen as mere sellers of labor power to be bought at the market price and worked for all they are worth. They can crush their unions if they think it worth while, and the union men, knowing this, are modest in their demands.

But to the politician the laborers are something besides sellers of labor power: they are also voters, and men who can influence other voters. So in fixing their wages and hours, the politician cannot exact the longest hours for the smallest pay that would make it possible to man the cars at all: he must have some regard to the prevailing conditions in industries where the unions are strong, or he is liable to lose the whole union vote, and, worst of all, he is liable to lose it to the Socialists, which would be an act most reprehensible from the capitalist point of view. So it seems to me that he cannot, if he would do otherwise than greatly to improve the conditions of labor.

It may be urged in reply that wages of street car men in Glasgow are less than in Chicago. But this is beside the question. Economic conditions in Glasgow are different; rents and nearly all elements in the cost of living are cheaper, while wages in other lines are correspondingly lower; moreover, there has been marked advance in the conditions for traction workers since the street car lines were municipalized. To make a comparison that means something, we should com are the wages and hours of street car men in our own city with those of teacher, firemen and policemen. Here the comparison is decidedly to the advantage of municipal ownership. It is clear enough that if a capitalist administration were to and itself in control of a municipal street railway system, it would find itself obliged to raise wages and shorten hours. It would also be obliged to recognize the union. This would strengthen the hands of the working class in its struggle with private corporations in other fields. And it would not be long before the street car unions themselves would make fresh demands, and the politicians in charge could take their choice between granting the demands, or else fighting the unions and making more Socialist votes.

Here the objection may be raised that the United States government does not recognize anions in the government printing office and the post-office. True, but here there are two things to be said. One is that the government does at least treat its laborers better than a corporation would treat them. The other is that United States officials are farther removed from the voters and thus less sensitive to the feelings of the voters than city officials. If you don’t believe that municipal street railways would be ran a little more in the interest of the laborers than corporation street railways, ask the Chicago Chronicle.

Now for our second point. A stock argument against Socialism is that a complicated industry cannot be carried on by a municipality under a democratic form of government, because the politicians are too corrupt. Now we learn from Marx, Engels and Labriola that ideas do not make facts, but facts make ideas. And there is a fact at the basis of this idea. That fact is that a generation ago, when the big industry was only beginning to be big, when production was largely superintended by the rising capitalists who owned the means of production, and when municipal governments had relatively unimportant things to deal with, these same capitalists who could have dominated the government if they had thought it worthwhile, were too busy organizing the machinery of production to spare the time, so they left the running of the government to a class of men of whom our genial neighbor, Johnny Powers, is one of the last illustrious survivors. The particular capitalists who had schemes for making money out of public franchises used these politicians to run the government for them, and the rest of the capitalists let them do it, because they could better afford to let some petty stealing go on than to use their valuable time in stopping it. So the spoils politicians made hay while the sun shone.

But their sun has set. The “good” business men of American cities have found out what the “good” business men of European cities learned a generation ago, namely, that the municipal finances are becoming too important and the need of “safe” officials to protect their interests against the discontented working class is too keen, to let public offices be run on the spoils system. Recent revelations of graft have not been in governments, but in corporations. Civil Service reform has come to stay, because economic forces have made it necessary. If a great American city runs its street cars through its elected officials, they are going to be run in the interest of the whole capitalist class of that city. The people who ride on the cars are going to get better service. And here I might mention incidentally that some of the people who ride on the cars, perhaps 90 per cent or some such trifling number, belong to the working class: I don’t want to make too much of this point, but even class-conscious Socialists may get tired hanging from straps, and might vote to sit down if they could do so without compromising their principles.

I come now to our third argument. We do not believe that we can reach the co-operative commonwealth “a step at a time” that is to say, by disbanding the Socialist party to join with all the “good men” who would like to establish one reform, and then another reform, and so on down the list. On the contrary, a revolution is the only way. The working class must come into power in place of the capitalist class. But when the working class comes into power, it will have to tackle problems of administration that will give good healthy exercise to the gray matter in the heads of the most experienced committeemen of the Socialist party, and if the votes of our Aldermen and legislators can encourage the capitalist politicians to get any part of these problems out of the way before the revolution comes, there is so much the better chance for order rather than chaos on the morrow of the revolution.

There is another reason peculiar to America why we should do well to help the reformers get the street cars. We are almost certain to capture Chicago before we can capture Illinois, much less the United States. Now if we should come into power in Chicago with the street railways still in private hands, the whole strength of the State and federal courts would be exerted to keep us from socializing them. On the other hand, if on coming into power we found the street railways being run by the city administration in the interest of the capitalists, it would be a quick step for us to begin running them in the interest of the laborers

And this brings me to the last argument. Not only is it true that municipal ownership under capitalism would make it easy for the Socialists to do things when once in power; it is also true that it would make it easier for us to get into power. The main lesson we have to teach the non-Socialist workingman is that the government is being used by the owning class in its interest and against the interest of the class to which he belongs There are timid Socialists who fear that if we allow the capitalists to add to the functions of government they will be enabled to intrench themselves so we cannot dislodge them. But whoever raises this objection overlooks the fact that capitalist corporations can control jobs and dictate to the holders of jobs how they shall vote quite as effectively as capitalist governments, indeed, far more effectively in these days of civil service reform. On the other hand, when the old party offers controlling municipal railways come to the point of resisting the unions, as they must sooner or later, then we shall have one more tremendous object lesson to bring to bear on the laborer who is not yet with us. Then it will be an easy thing to show him that capitalist corporations and capitalist governments are different machines for doing the same thing, namely, helping the owning class to live luxuriously off the unpaid labor of the working class. Then he will see that there is a simple way to set himself free to get what he earns, and that is to vote for the Socialist party.

To sum up, then. I believe that Socialists should vote for municipal ownership of street railways under capitalism, because it will directly help the street car workers and thus indirectly help other workers. They should vote for it because it will show that a municipality be run is one great industry, and thus pave the way for socialising others. They should vote for it because it will be well to have some of our administrative problems solved so far as may be before the Socialists take control of the city. They should vote for it because when a capitalist government is a direct employer of labor on a large scale, it will be easier for the laborers to see that they need to have their own class run the government.

CHARLES H. KERR

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/workers-call-chicago-socialist/060224-chicagosocialist-v06w364.pdf