v Primary Sources v

William English Walling was born in Louisville in 1877. The son of a rich Kentucky former slaveholding family and the grandson of William Hayden English, the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1880. His father, Willoughby Walling, a physician, had amassed a fortune in real estate, and his mother, Rosalind English Walling, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Walling became a socialist while studying at the University of Chicago. After graduating in 1897 he joined the Hull House Settlement in Chicago. He also did postgraduate work in sociology with John Dewey.

Walling worked as a factory inspector before moving to New York City where he worked with Lillian Wald, the founder of the Henry Street Settlement. In 1902 he visited England where he met Mary MacArthur, head of the Women's Protective and Provident League.

In November, 1903, Walling attended the American Federation of Labour (AFL) annual convention in Boston. He met Mary Kenney O'Sullivan and told her about Britain's Women's Protective and Provident League. He invited her to Hull House where she met other women interested in trade unionism. This included Jane Addams, Mary McDowell, Florence Kelley and Sophonisba Breckinridge.

During this period he met and fell in love with Anna Strunsky. They were married in Paris in 1906. Their first child, born in 1908, died when only five days old. The following year she had a miscarriage. Over the next few years Anna Walling gave birth to four children, Rosamond, Anna, Georgia, and William Hayden English.

In August, 1908, Walling and his wife witnessed the Springfield Riot in Illinois, where a white mob attacked local African Americans. During the riot two were lynched, six killed, and over 2,000 African Americans were forced to leave the city. In an article entitled, The Race War in the North, that he wrote for The Independent about the riot, Walling complained that "a large part of the white population" in the area were waging "permanent warfare with the Negro race". Walling argued that they only way to reduce this conflict was "to treat the Negro on a plane of absolute political and social equality".

Mary Ovington, a journalist working for the New York Evening Post, responded to the article by writing to Walling and at a meeting in New York they decided to form the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). The first meeting of the NAACP was held on 12th February, 1909. Early members included Josephine Ruffin, Mary Talbert, Mary Church Terrell, Inez Milholland, Jane Addams, George Henry White, William Du Bois, Charles Edward Russell, John Dewey, Charles Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Fanny Garrison Villard, Oswald Garrison Villard and Ida Wells-Barnett.

In 1912, Walling's friend, Max Eastman, became editor of the left-wing magazine, The Masses. Organised like a co-operative, artists and writers who contributed to the journal shared in its management. Walling joined the team as did Floyd Dell, John Reed, Crystal Eastman, Sherwood Anderson, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Amy Lowell, Louise Bryant, John Sloan, Dorothy Day, Cornelia Barns, Alice Beach Winter, Art Young, Boardman Robinson, Robert Minor, K. R. Chamberlain, Stuart Davis, George Bellows and Maurice Becker.

Paul M. Buhle has pointed out: "In 1912-14, his three major theoretical works appeared: Socialism As It Is, The Larger Aspects of Socialism, and Progressivism and After. Unevenly written, hurried, and repetitive, these now-forgotten studies constitute a monument to the attempted reconciliation of socialism with the Progressive Era reformism and simultaneously with social science. If Walling's conclusions proved correct, neither the Socialist Party nor a revolutionary alternative had any particular role to play in the foreseeable future."

The harmony of the group came to and end during the First World War. The editor of the journal, Max Eastman, believed that the war had been caused by the imperialist competitive system. Eastman and journalists such as John Reed who reported the conflict for The Masses, argued that the USA should remain neutral. Most of those involved with the journal agreed with this view but there was a small minority, including Walling, John Spargo and Upton Sinclair, who wanted the USA to join the Allies against the Central Powers. When Walling failed to convince his fellow members he ceased to contribute to the journal. Walling also left the American Socialist Party because of its attitude towards the war.

Anna Strunsky disagreed with her husband over this issue of the First World War and this created problems in their marriage. They also had arguments on the merits of the Russian Revolution. Whereas she was an enthusiastic supporter he was highly critical of the Bolsheviks.

In 1932, William filed for a Mexican divorce, but Anna refused to recognize the end of the marriage. William Walling died in Amsterdam in 1936.

^ Main Article ^

(1) William English Walling, The Independent (3rd September, 1908)

Either the spirit of the abolitionists, of Lincoln and of Lovejoy must be revived and we must come to treat the Negro on a plane of absolute political and social equality, or Vardaman and Tillman will soon have transferred the race war to the North. Yet who realizes the seriousness of the situation, and what large and powerful body of citizens is ready to come to their aid?

(2) Mary White Ovington, The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1947)

I saw the article as soon as it came out. Its description of rioting and brutality was terrible, but I was familiar with that. What made me put down the magazine and write to Walling within the hour was the appeal to citizens to come to the Negro's aid. My letter reached Walling in Chicago. He replied, telling me that he counted it of the utmost importance and that he would come shortly to New York where we must meet.

(3) William English Walling, The Masses (January, 1913)

We are beginning to realize that the forces of conservatism are composed as largely of the owners of jobs as the owners of capital. The literature of socialism and unionism has shown the change for several years. Debs has repeatedly said that the older unions have their basis in the desire of their members in their desire of their members to protect themselves and their jobs against the great mass of workers. As the unskilled workers and machine operatives attempt in industry after industry, to improve their lot, they find that these owners of jobs oppose them almost as bitterly as the capitalists do.

(4) Paul M. Buhle, A Dreamer's Paradise Lost (1995)

Progressive movement at the edges of moderate political socialism was considered a friendly milieu for socialist agitation. The growing integration of the official labor movement into an overall national economic plan led their successors toward very different conclusions.

The uncomfortable perception spread that capitalism probably would not collapse of its own weight in the near future, nor would it yield to socialist reformers. A gap in the old socialist logic yawned, and a variety of ideas grew to fill the gap. These ideas, along with DeLeon's observations, formed the boundaries of Louis Fraina's critiques to come.

The most measured, optimistic assessment - against which Fraina very largely developed an original revolutionary critique - was made by William English Walling. Former popular muckraking journalist, a founder of the Niagrara movement (precursor to the NAACP), and longtime left-wing critic of Socialist Party policy, Walling reigned briefly as the party's prestigious unorthodox thinker. In 1912-14, his three major theoretical works appeared: Socialism As It Is, The Larger Aspects of Socialism, and Progressivism and After.

Unevenly written, hurried, and repetitive, these now-forgotten studies constitute a monument to the attempted reconciliation of socialism with the Progressive Era reformism and simultaneously with social science. If Walling's conclusions proved correct, neither the Socialist Party nor a revolutionary alternative had any particular role to play in the foreseeable future.

Walling, the first notable socialist intellectual to become an unabashed pragmatist, believed that science applied to sociology and philosophy had banished archaic materialism and idealism alike. In this frank philosophical revision - destined to be expounded again in the 1930s to 1950s by Sidney Hook and accepted by a later Lewis Corey as intellectual gospel - a great measure of socialism's traditions simply fell away. The Hegelian elements of Marxism, with their quasi-mystical roots in religious-utopian perfectionism, lacked any basis in a world of high technologies and experts. Pragmatism seemed to Walling a synonym for "Americanism," a philosophy that assumed that great negations (catastrophes such as ruinous war and total economic collapse) could no longer happen, at least not in American life."

The outdated anticipation of collapsing capitalism, according to Walling, had made socialists wrongly expect a single, decisive political class struggle. Socialists had thereby been blinded to the hidden strengths of the system, "the possibilities of transformation and progress that still inhere... the increased unity and power it will gain through State Capitalism, and the increased wealth that will come through a beneficent and scientific policy of producing." Socialists also had mistaken the actual course of the class struggle.

(5) William English Walling, Socialism As It Is (1912)

I have shown grounds for believing that the chief motives of the new reforms have nothing to do with the Labor vote. However much Mr. Lloyd George, as a political manager, may desire to control that vote, he knows he can do without it, as long as it is cast against the Tories. The Liberals will hold the balance of power, and their small capitalist followers will continue to carry out their capitalistic progressive and collectivist program - even without a Labor alliance. Nor does he fear that even the most radical of reforms, whether economic or political, will enable Labor to seize a larger share of the national income or of political power. On the contrary, he predicted in 1906 that it would be a generation before Labor could even hope to be sufficiently united to take the first step in Socialism. "Does any one believe," he asked, "that within a generation, to put it at the very lowest, we are likely to see in power a party pledged forcibly to nationalize land, railways, mines, quarries, factories, workshops, warehouses, shops, and all and every agency for the production and distribution of wealth? I say again, within a generation? He who entertains such hopes must indeed be a sanguine and simple-minded Socialist."

Mr. Lloyd George sought the support of Labor then, not because it was all-powerful, but because, for a generation at least, it seemed doomed to impotence - except as an aid to the Liberals. The logic of his position was really not that Labor ought to get a price for its political support, but that having no immediate alternative, being unable to form a majority either alone or with any other element than the Liberals, they should accept gladly anything that was offered, for example, a material reform like his Insurance bill - even though this measure is at bottom and in the long run purely capitalistic in its tendency.

And this is practically what Labor in Great Britain has done. It has supported a government all of whose acts strengthen capitalism in its new collectivist form, both economically and politically. And even if some day an isolated measure should be found to prove an exception, it would still remain true that the present policies considered as a whole are carrying the country rapidly and uninterruptedly in the direction of State Capitalism. And this is equally true of every other country, whether France, Germany, Australia, or the United States, where the new reform program is being put into execution.

Many "Socialistic" capitalists, however, are looking forward to a time when through complete political democracy they can secure a permanent popular majority of small capitalists and other more or less privileged classes, and so build their new society on a more solid basis. Let us assume that the railways, mines, and the leading "trusts" are nationalized, public utilities municipalized, and the national and local governments busily engaged on canals, roads, forests, deserts, and swamps. Here are occupations employing, let us say, a fourth or a fifth of the working population; and solvent landowning farmers, their numbers kept up by land reforms and scientific farming encouraged by government, may continue as now to constitute another fifth. We can estimate that these classes together with those among the shopkeepers, professional elements, etc., who are directly dependent on them will compose 40 to 50 per cent of the population, while the other capitalists and their direct dependents account for another 10 per cent or more. Here we have the possibility of a privileged majority, the logical goal of "State Socialism," and the nightmare of every democrat for whom democracy is anything more than an empty political reform. With government employees and capitalists (large and small) - and their direct dependents, forming 50 per cent or more of the population, and supported by a considerable part of the skilled manual workers, there is a possibility of the establishment of an iron-bound caste society solidly intrenched in majority rule.

(6) William English Walling, Socialism As It Is (1912)

State Capitalism has a very definite principle and program of labor reform. It capitalizes labor, views it as the principal resource and asset of each community (or of the class that controls the community), and undertakes every measure that is not too costly for its conservation, utilization, and development—i.e. its development to fill those positions ordinarily known as labor, but not such development as might enable the laborers or their children to compete for higher social functions on equal terms with the children of the upper classes.

On the one hand is the tendency, not very advanced, but unmistakable and almost universal, to invest larger and larger sums for the scientific development of industrial efficiency—healthy surroundings in childhood, good food and healthy living conditions, industrial education, model factories, reasonable hours, time and opportunity for recreation and rest, and on the other a rapidly increasing difficulty for either the laborer or his children to advance to other social positions and functions—and a restriction of the liberty of laborers and of labor organizations, lest they should attempt to establish equality of opportunity or to take the first step in that direction by assuming control over industry and government. From the moment it approaches the labor question the "Socialist" part of "State Socialism" completely falls away, and nothing but the purest collectivist capitalism remains. Even the plausible contention that it will result in the maximum efficiency and give the maximum product breaks down. For no matter how much the condition of the laborers is improved, or what political rights they are allowed to exercise, if they are deprived of all initiative and power in their employments, and of the equal opportunity to develop their capacities to fill other social positions for which they may prove to be more fit than the present occupants, then the human resources of the community are not only left underdeveloped, but are prevented from development.

(7) William English Walling, Socialism As It Is (1912)

"State Socialism" as I have described it will doubtless continue to be the guiding policy of governments during a large part, if not all, of the present generation. Capitalism, in this new collectivist form, must bring about extremely deep-seated and far-reaching changes in society. And every step that it takes in the nationalization of industry and the appropriation of land rent would also be a step in Socialism, provided the rents and profits so turned into the coffers of the State were not used entirely for the benefit either of industry or of the community as a whole, as it is now constituted, but were reserved in part for the special benefit of the less wealthy, less educated, and less advantageously placed, so as gradually to equalize income, influence, and opportunity.

But what, as matter of fact, are the ways in which the new revenues are likely to be used before the Socialists are either actually or practically in control of the government? First of all, they will be used for the further development of industry itself and of schemes which aid industry, as by affording cheaper credit, cheaper transportation, cheaper lumber, cheaper coal, etc., which will chiefly benefit the manufacturers, since all these raw materials and services are so much more largely used in industry than in private consumption.

Secondly, the new sources of government revenue will be used to relieve certain older forms of taxation. The very moderately graduated income and inheritance taxes which are now common, small capitalists have tolerated principally on the ground that the State is in absolute need of them for essential expenses. We may soon expect a period when the present rapid expansion of this form of taxation as well as other direct taxes on industry, building, corporations, etc., will be checked somewhat by the new revenues obtained from the profits of government enterprises and the taxation of ground values. Indirect taxation of the consuming public in general, through tariffs and internal revenue taxes, will also be materially lightened. As soon as new and larger sources of income are created, the cry of the consumers for relief will be louder than ever, and since a large part of consumption is that of the capitalists in manufacture, the cry will be heard. This will mean lower prices. But in the long run salaries and wages accommodate themselves to prices, so that this reform, beneficial as it may be, cannot be accepted as meaning, for the masses, more than a merely temporary relief. A third form of tax reduction would be the special exemption of the poorer classes from even the smallest direct taxation. But as employers and wage boards, in fixing wages, will take this reduction into account, as well as the lower prices and rents, such exemptions will effect no great or lasting change in the division of the national income between capitalists and receivers of salaries and wages.

A third way in which the new and vastly increased incomes of the national and local governments can be expended is the communistic way, as in developing commercial and technical education, in protecting the public health, in building model tenements, in decreasing the cost of traveling for health or business, and in promoting all measures that are likely to increase industrial efficiency and profits without too great cost.

A fourth way in which the new revenue may be expended, before the Socialists are in actual or practical control, would be in somewhat increasing the wages and somewhat shortening the hours of the State and municipal employees, who will soon constitute a very large proportion of the community. Here again it is impossible to expect any but a Socialist government to go very far. As I have shown, it is to be questioned whether any capitalistic administration, however advanced, would increase real wages (wages measured by their purchasing power), except in so far as the higher wages will result in a corresponding or greater increase in efficiency, and so in the profits made from labor. And the same law applies to most other governmental (or private) expenditures on behalf of labor, whether in shortened hours, insurance, improved conditions, or any other form.

The very essence of capitalist collectivism is that the share of the total profits which goes to the ruling class should not be decreased, and if possible should be augmented. In spite of material improvements the economic gulf between the classes, during the period it dominates, will either remain as[Pg 110] it is, or become wider and deeper than before. On the ground of the health and ultimate working efficiency of the present and future generation, hours may be considerably shortened, and the labor of women and children considerably curtailed. Insurance against death, old age, sickness, and accident will doubtless be taken over by the government. Mothers who are unable to take care of their children will probably be pensioned, as now proposed in France, and many children will be publicly fed in school, as in a number of the British and Continental places. The most complete code of labor legislation is practically assured; for, as government ownership extends, the State will become to some extent the model employer.

A quarter of a century ago, especially in Great Britain and the United States, but also in other countries, the method of allaying discontent was to distract public attention from politics altogether by stimulating the chase after private wealth. But as private wealth is more and more difficult to attain, this policy is rapidly replaced by the very opposite tactics, to keep the people absorbed in the political chase after the material benefits of economic reform. For this purpose every effort is being used to stimulate political interest, to popularize the measures of the new State capitalism, to foster public movements in their behalf, and finally to grant the reforms, not as a new form of capitalism, but as "concessions to public opinion." At present it is only the most powerful of the large capitalists and the most radical of the small that have fully adapted themselves to the new policies. But this will cause no serious delay, for among policies, as elsewhere, the fittest are surely destined to survive.

Ten years ago it would have been held as highly improbable that we would enter into such a collectivist period in half a century. Already a large part of the present generation expect to see it in their lifetime. And the constantly accelerated developments of recent years justify the belief of many that we may find ourselves far advanced in "State Socialism" before another decade has passed.

(8) Floyd Dell, Homecoming (1933)

The Russian Revolution of March, 1917, brought glorious new hope; but soon it was apparent that Kerensky was trying in the name of Socialism to lead Russia back into the shambles. And failing - a failure which seemed to require American cannon-fodder. The Masses stood, according to the best of its bewildered lights, for peace, Socialism, and revolution; it told the truth, which just wasn't being done in America. William English Walling and other pro-Ally editors denounced us as pro-German and resigned. But new editors and contributors joined us. And most of the artists stayed with us; and the art-for-art's-sakers became among the most boldly propagandist of all.