The Theory of Social Revolutions | Page 8

in existing conditions can hardly be anticipated.
If capital insists upon continuing to exercise sovereign powers, without
accepting responsibility as for a trust, the revolt against the existing
order must probably continue, and that revolt can only be dealt with, as
all servile revolts must be dealt with, by physical force. I doubt,
however, if even the most ardent and optimistic of capitalists would
care to speculate deeply upon the stability of any government capital
might organize, which rested on the fundamental principle that the
American people must be ruled by an army. On the other hand any
government to be effective must be strong. It is futile to talk of keeping
peace in labor disputes by compulsory arbitration, if the government
has not the power to command obedience to its arbitrators' decree; but a
government able to constrain a couple of hundred thousand
discontented railway employees to work against their will, must differ
considerably from the one we have. Nor is it possible to imagine that
labor will ever yield peaceful obedience to such constraint, unless
capital makes equivalent concessions,--unless, perhaps, among other
things, capital consents to erect tribunals which shall offer relief to any
citizen who can show himself to be oppressed by the monopolistic
price. In fine, a government, to promise stability in the future, must
apparently be so much more powerful than any private interest, that all
men will stand equally before its tribunals; and these tribunals must be
flexible enough to reach those categories of activity which now lie
beyond legal jurisdiction. If it be objected that the American people are
incapable of an effort so prodigious, I readily admit that this may be
true, but I also contend that the objection is beside the issue. What the

American people can or cannot do is a matter of opinion, but that social
changes are imminent appears to be almost certain. Though these
changes cannot be prevented, possibly they may, to a degree, be guided,
as Washington guided the changes of 1789. To resist them perversely,
as they were resisted at the Chicago Convention of 1912, can only
make the catastrophe, when it comes, as overwhelming as was the
consequent defeat of the Republican party.
Approached thus, that Convention of 1912 has more than a passing
importance, since it would seem to indicate the ordinary phenomenon,
that a declining favored class is incapable of appreciating an
approaching change of environment which must alter its social status. I
began with the proposition that, in any society which we now
understand, civilization is equivalent to order, and the evidence of the
truth of the proposition is, that amidst disorder, capital and credit,
which constitute the pith of our civilization, perish first. For more than
a century past, capital and credit have been absolute, or nearly so;
accordingly it has not been the martial type which has enjoyed
sovereignty, but the capitalistic. The warrior has been the capitalists'
servant. But now, if it be true that money, in certain crucial directions,
is losing its purchasing power, it is evident that capitalists must accept
a position of equality before the law under the domination of a type of
man who can enforce obedience; their own obedience, as well as the
obedience of others. Indeed, it might occur, even to some optimists,
that capitalists would be fortunate if they could certainly obtain
protection for another fifty years on terms as favorable as these. But at
Chicago, capitalists declined even to consider receding to a secondary
position. Rather than permit the advent of a power beyond their
immediate control, they preferred to shatter the instrument by which
they sustained their ascendancy. For it is clear that Roosevelt's offence
in the eyes of the capitalistic class was not what he had actually done,
for he had done nothing seriously to injure them. The crime they
resented was the assertion of the principle of equality before the law,
for equality before the law signified the end of privilege to operate
beyond the range of law. If this principle which Roosevelt, in theory at
least, certainly embodied, came to be rigorously enforced, capitalists
perceived that private persons would be precluded from using the

functions of sovereignty to enrich themselves. There lay the parting of
the ways. Sooner or later almost every successive ruling class has had
this dilemma in one of its innumerable forms presented to them, and
few have had the genius to compromise while compromise was
possible. Only a generation ago the aristocracy of the South
deliberately chose a civil war rather than admit the principle that at
some future day they might have to accept compensation for their
slaves.
A thousand other instances of similar incapacity might be adduced, but
I will content myself with this alone.
Briefly the precedents induce the inference that