The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-08-21

From Letter by the Socialist, William
 English ssvallng. to the Philadelphia
 North American.
 K HR. RoOSEVELT'S programme is
 MI "state socialism which has been
 M taken in Germany and France for half a century to be the exact opposite to socialism.
 Karl Marx describes the most radical of all the measures hinted at in the
 Roosevelt programme (the experimental and partial application of the single tax in Alaska) as ''socialistically frfnged attempt to save the rule of capitalism and to. establish it on a still broader
 basis than at present. Marx and the so- cialist parties have the same view of gov. ernment ownership of railroads now also
 proposed for Alaska. Those measures, all agree, represent progress. But so- cialists say it is progress strictly With in the limits of the capitalism they wish
 to abolish, and then point to Germany and ether countries to show that govern
 ment ownership of railways, etc, only
 tends to strengthen capitalist rule. The Call says that MT. Roosevelt has
 "stolen our thunder" MT. Berger that
 he "appropriates some of our socialist de- mandso It is demonstrably true that Mir. Roosevelt has employed some of our 1 socialist phrases-with qualifications though to qualify phrase may be prac- tically to reject it. He says that ''ulti-
 nately we desire to use the government | to sid. as far as can safely be done, in
 helping the industrial tool users to be- come in part tool owners" This is far | from the socialist demand that all tool users shall become tool owners with gov ernment aid today
 NIT. Roosevelt's other pharses about the
 control of the trusts ''by the people col lectively,p or controlling industries col actively" are not in the least Marxian, as MT. Berger says they are. They are the phrases of "state socialist dema- gogues like Briand in France or Winston Churchill in Ergland-and these have merely put a democratic veneer on the state socialism of that peerless radi- | cal" Bismarck.
 The Call says that the Roosevelt pro ] rramme means that we socialists have lHdrven" the progresives thus far and win drive them further; that Roosevelt | is "our agert'' and that he is doing "the
 preliminary wrenchng and tearing Of i the rotten old system. Revolutionary 1 socialistsf say. on the contrary, that
 Roosevelt is strengthening the old system,
 that he is being driven to this by the 1 far-sghted industrial statesmanship of Galy and Perkins. who want to make
 the government more useful to the capi-. talsts, and that he is their agent also in wanting to use the government to make the working class more contented, more Eofficient and rlore profitable.
 Mir Roosevelt's programme is, in the socialist view, neither populistic nor so- cielistic in the slightest degree, but cap .talistic. He has not appropriated a sin I gle socialist demand. He has merely 1 taken up certain measures the socialists 1 took from other radicals These meas ureS were placed on our programme be-
 cause it was seen that they were cap able of immediate realization. because though previously neglected, they might be accepted by the majority of capital l ists without any loss to themselves or any necessary danger to the capitalist Isysten.
 Alr. Roosevelt's new policies are not so- i cialist demands approved by progressiyes,
 but progressive demands approved by so- I.cialists. Mr. Roosevelt is dangerous to socialism, not because he steals what MT. Berger calls socialist demands" for he ldoes nothing of the kind. but because he I promises to increase enormously the pow l CTS of the government. And our govern ment, like every other. must remain completely and absolutely opposed to each and every one of the revolutionary pur- | roses of the socialist party, as long as lthat party fails to control it.
 No revolutionary socialist. whether q Rebel or Debs. is disturbed for one mo- me1t when a radical party appears to in sure the early enactment of such pro