268 THE CLASS STRUGGLE RADICALISM IN CALIFORNIA 269 enlisting fighters for the revolution, we are creating Socialist workers for the future, workers who can become the basis of a new social state.
The young people of the proletariat are ordained to carry out this great work as the true foundation of the Socialist state.
They must show, even now, that they are equal to the great task of bearing the future of the human race upon their shoulders.
There is still an old world to be overthrown. new world must be built!
Radicalism in California By Max BEDACHT California is a comparatively young member of the family of the United States. Its development in the direction toward capitalism began only with the downfall of the Spanish colonial regime, the end of the Mexican period, and the accession of the rule of the United States. Its political life at first was dominated by the interests and the spirit of the frontiersman and the adventurer, of the men and women that pushed across the endless plains of the North American continent, conquered the snowheads of the Rockies and passed over the Sierra, challenging the forces of nature and the hostile tribes of the natives. The mixture produced by the gold fever, moreover, was hardly to the best advantage of the race. Thousands of adventurers of doubtful character followed the trail to the goldfields of California, and many a fortune of today has its foundation not in the honest toil of the inen that wrested gold from the bosom of Mother Earth, but in ill gotten gains won out of the pockets of the miners and prospectors.
During all that period there was little that resembled modern political institutions. When at length order came out of chaos, it was an order dominated and controlled by the unspeakable corruption of railroad capital. The fact that this capitalism was not a natural outgrowth of economic conditions, but was grafted upon the State, still industrially and politically unprepared for a capitalistic order, made the situation still more untenable. The rule of the sixshooter, modified by the conception of honor and morals of the frontiersman and adventurer, was replaced by the dictatorship of the Huntingtons, the Stanfords and the Hopkins.
On the whole this was a transformation in name only. The sixshooter still ruled, but as a powerful instrument in the hands of an unprincipled element that was willing to do the bidding of the railroad interests and that, therefore, was invested with the powers of the state.
Slowly but surely railroad capital replaced the rule of the sixshooter by the rule of the law, devised and executed exclusively in the interest of the magnates. But in its own laboratories of profit making the railroad interests produced the forces that were destined to break its undisputed political rule as far as this could be accomplished.
The colossal land grabs of the Southern Pacific could only bring the desired profits if the value of the land were tremendously increased by intensive colonization. Incidentally the increased population and products necessary for their sustenance furnished increase of the traffic to the roads. The settlers, thus imported, naturally became the enemies of the political system of the railroads. For the railroads the settlers and the farmers were simply another source of profit, while the settlers, on the other hand, considered the railroad rather as a public utility created for their convenience in marketing their products. This contradiction of interests fostered a political radicalism in the California farmer that expressed itself in the Johnsonian progressivism, woman suffrage, initiative, referendum and recall.
As far as a defeat of its own objects is possible within the bounds of the capitalist political state, it suffered these defeats in California. The whole structure of the capitalist state, however, has only one object, that of serving capitalism in the pursuit of its object, profit making. Therefore even these defeats of the railroad capital were not defeats of capitalism itself, but the establishment of a system favorable to a group of capitalist interests other than the railroads. The latter could well suffer this defeat with equanimity, for in the meantime its specific local interests were well taken care of by its local enemies. The bulk of interests lay in the field of national politics.
During the period of struggle between the settlers and farmers on the one hand, and the railroad interests on the other, the Socialist movement was introduced into California. It did not find an industrial proletariat, not even in the cities. Los Angeles is the city of retired petit bourgeois, while San Francisco is the city of the active petit bourgeois, though the latter is being pushed more and more into the background by the growing financial and commercial interests of this ideal outlet of American goods to the Asiatic world.
Thus from its very inception the Socialist movement in California was not a working class movement, but a characteristic petit bourgeois movement. It represented not the exploited class in a struggle against exploitation, but an exploiting class against