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Title: Law and Order
Author: Randolph Bourne
Date: 1912
Language: en
Topics: law, socialism
Source: Retrieved on November 18, 2010 from http://fair-use.org/masses/1912/03/law-and-order
Notes: From Masses (March 1912). Reprinted in The Radical Will

Randolph Bourne

Law and Order

No incident of recent years has served to bring out so much crude

thinking among supposedly educated men as the now happily ended McNamara

case. A wave of hysterical passion for “law and order” seems suddenly to

have swept over the land, a passion which one would like to believe is

entirely sincere and ready to carry itself through to logical

conclusions. It looks a little too much like a sudden scare, a purely

physical timidity on the part of the comfortable classes, to be quite

convincing. The gallant and well-worn phrase, “law and order,” has been

worked overtime to conceal a very real fear on the part of the dominant

classes for their lives and property.

The “law and order” which they reverence is one in which society minds

its own business as far as they are concerned, and attends with drastic

severity to any violent interference with their peaceful rule of things.

Now “law and order” is a very admirable ideal. It is the highest ideal

for a society with the exception of one — and that is, justice. The

neglect of this important fact has made it very difficult to secure any

impartial discussion of the question. Those who have insisted on

analyzing the concept of “law and order” and have kept before their

minds the ideal of justice, have been instantly denounced as defenders

of dynamiting, champions of murder, and enemies of the human race.

Now, it is one thing to defend a deed; it is another to explain it.

Because Socialists have kept their heads and tried to explain this

remarkable and unprecedented incident, they have had to face a torrent

of abuse and vilification which in too many cases has caused an

ignominious retreat of Socialist thinkers to cover and a surrender of

their logical position. This position is not one of defense or

indictment; it is a coldly scientific one of explanation. And the fact

that in this overheated atmosphere of prejudice and recrimination, there

is a set of principles and a body of facts which will give that

scientific explanation, speaks volumes for the truth, accuracy and

wisdom of the Socialist philosophy.

Socialists see in the dynamiting incident a symptom of the

class-struggle, and in this they are absolutely right. The violence of

the labor-unions is simply a pawn in the great game they are waging

against the employers’ organizations, and the retaliations of the

employers are ruthless, though not perhaps so sensational. It is a real

state of war, little as our God-fearing citizens like to acknowledge it.

To be sure, the unions are not actuated by any motives of sympathy for

the working-class as a whole. They are out simply for the aggrandizement

of their own interests. They are the cleverest, most aggressive and most

determined portion of the working class, just as the big employers they

fight are the most intelligent and aggressive of the capitalistic class.

It is inevitable that the unions should adopt the same methods of

organization as do the industrial corporations; that graft and

corruption and lobbying should permeate their organization just as it

does “big business.” We can best understand the situation by picturing

the labor unions and the corporations as the respective advance guards

of two hostile armies. Their contact represents the point where the

smouldering hostility breaks out into open warfare. The rest of the army

we can see straggling back in the rear; on one side the unorganized

workers, the unskilled laborers, clerks, etc.; on the other, small

merchants, salaried officers and professional men. But the essential,

never-closing gulf remains, based on different economies of life, on

absolutely opposed interests — a gulf that will never be filled up,

except in one way, and that is, of course, Socialism.

This idea of industrial war and the open conflict of a submerged and

eternal class-hostility is no mere figure of speech. It is the only sane

interpretation of this complex situation. The dynamiting, just as the

strikes and riots, is a social phenomenon, not an individual. To speak

of murder in this connection is irrelevant. Murder is the willful taking

of the life of a definite individual or individuals. Malice is a

necessary accompaniment to murder. The dynamiting was, we will admit, a

reckless and absurd attempt to further the material interests of the

labor unions, but its intent was this ultimate political end, not the

taking of the life of individuals, any more than the death of the

employees in a badly ventilated mine can be called murder. Indeed, both

deeds — the blowing up of the men in Los Angeles, and the mine explosion

in Tennessee — are similar in character. Neither expresses malice, but

both express a cynical and ruthless disregard for human life, a

“class-carelessness,” rather than an individual carelessness. It does

little good to hold the individual responsible. Punishing the individual

does not change the class ethics and the class practices. You have to

change the class attitudes towards each other. And here again, of

course, the Socialists have the solution. Abolish this hostile attitude

of classes toward each other by abolishing the class-struggle. Abolish

class-struggle by abolishing classes. Abolish classes by merging the

classes into one.

The part of the government in this case seems perhaps the most unjust of

all. We have seen that the labor union system and the corporation system

are, to all intents and purposes, each a State revolving in the larger

State. Each has its political organization and its control over its

members which are the characteristics of a State. These two States are

the antagonists in the industrial war. Now the crucial question is, what

shall be the position of the governmental State in this struggle? It can

throw its governmental machinery of courts and law on the side of the

corporations, or on the side of the labor unions, or it can remain

neutral and let the contestants fight it out.

Of course, every one recognizes that in actual practice our governmental

system is at the disposal of the corporation class. The common law,

injunctions, and the entire machinery of the courts is set in motion

against the offences perpetrated by the labor unions against the

corporations, and but seldom, and that unsystematically, against

corporations for their wrongs to labor. Now it is manifest that this is

as unfair as it would be for the governmental machinery to be turned

over exclusively to the labor unions. And the third alternative — that

the State remain neutral — while theoretically fair, would, of course,

result in intolerable anarchy, and besides would abrogate the State’s

claim to authority as the political expression of the whole people. The

only thing left then is that the State become either the arbitrator

between the two sides (a function for which it is badly fitted), or that

it should become progressively Socialistic and devote all its efforts to

the abolition of the class-war.

Thus we see that all the morals of this incident of the McNamaras lead

to Socialism. It is imperative that college men should think clearly on

this subject and not let themselves be carried away by traditional

phrases which they have never stopped to analyze. We have a new

situation to interpret, and we must think of it in new terms. The

Socialist philosophy gives the only intelligible analysis and

interpretation of this as of so many other situations. Without it, one

has only confusions and absurdities of thought.