Social Despotism or Social Democracy? – Seymour Stedman, 8/31/1905

Republished from our predecessor publication Lucifer the Light Bearer

It is of frequent occurrence that Socialists point out the postal system of the United States as an example of the
application of their theory. This great national institution has a great deal more despotism and imperialism in its
makeup than a social democracy can have. Above everything else, Socialism stands for a tolerant as well as a
democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. It is also impossible for a single industry to
be operated in any sense on socialistic lines while surrounded by and constantly bombarded by capitalist institutions
and business methods. For the past few years there has been a studied and persistent attempt to bring even public
ownership into disfavor. The express companies and other capitalist interests are doing all they can to destroy the
effectiveness of the postal system and to make it unpopular with the masses. Recently, the employees in the postal
system attempted to relieve themselves from the low $600-a-year salaries and to increase their pay through legislative
enactment. They appealed, as we presumed every American citizen had a right to do, to the law-making body of the
United States, to wit, Congress. They organized for the purpose of acting as a unit. For this seeming offense, the
leaders of this organization lost their positions in the postal service and were given to understand by His Imperial
Majesty, Theodore I, that when they wished any provisions made for their benefit, they would go to their master, the
Postmaster General, and should not presume to petition the only body in the United States government which has
the right, through legislation, to increase their pay. The railroads charge the government for the mail which they carry
so much per pound and ton. They do not weigh the mail each day, but every four years a month is selected and the
mail is weighed during that month, which is considered the average weight for the four years following. During this
month, which is selected for the weighing of the mails, the mail service is filled with pamphlets, leaflets, books, and
correspondence, which are run forward and backward from town to town.

This corrupt method of overloading the mails has been recognized by every observer in the country for the last twelve
or fifteen years. The railroads rob the postal system right and left, and the cheap bureaucrats and subsidized capitalist
officeholders in the postal system either know the facts or are in a mental condition entirely unfit to serve any purpose
except, perhaps, as inmates in a dope house, and even there their comatose condition might be disturbed by dreams.
Ordinarily, we would presume it a benefit to the public that any man should have the privilege of subscribing for a trade
journal or a Socialist paper and ordering it sent to his friends; but no, the lordly bureaucrats of the postal system will not
permit it. You, Mr. Reader, have no postal right to subscribe for this paper and have it sent to a friend. Every man must
pay for the paper that he receives. When a publisher presents his mailing list to the postal authorities, he must give
assurance that every name represents an actual bona fide subscriber; that is, a man who personally has made a
payment for the paper. We should think that the greater the amount of business the postal system could secure, the
better off it would be, but in order to assist the express companies and to bring public ownership into disrepute, the
postal authorities are of the opinion that the less mail they handle, the more the express companies will have and
the more private trust enterprises will thrive. Wilshire published a magazine. He happened to have the personal pronoun
“I” in certain parts of the magazine, and he also had some “ideas,” so an ex-railroad man, Mr. Madden, whom the
capitalists recognized as a species who would make a good and servile lackey, was placed in the service (Third Assistant
Postmaster General). He excluded Wilshire’s magazine, which was thereafter published from Canada. The reason
given by the postal authorities for excluding this magazine was because he was exploiting his ideas. A very dangerous
compound—“ideas”—for nothing is more disturbing to a tyrant or an encroaching bureaucrat than ideas, especially if
they amount to anything.

Later on, this autocratic machine announced to several Socialist papers that they must not put in a subscription blank
between their pages and should desist from sending out bundle orders. This is a prescription in self-defense, for Socialism
would make the postal system democratic as well as collective, and democracy is the daylight which makes some
species creep into their holes. A beet sugar journal published in Chicago was desirous of issuing a supplement to
give data and information to the farmers who were growing beets, by which they could raise larger crops and a better
quality of beets. Many engaged in the beet sugar enterprise desired to subscribe to these journals and have them
sent to the farmers, but, lo and behold, the Great American Bureaucracy refused to permit the paper to be sent,
because the beet sugar farmers themselves did not have sense enough to subscribe for a paper which they had
never heard of and which was adapted to their line of business. A person with ordinary sense and reason would ask,
“If the postal system is paid for sending these papers, why should it care who has subscribed or paid for them?” To
understand the reason, we will have to grasp the capitalist methods which are exercised to cripple not only the postal
system but every other public enterprise, for the capitalist class does not propose to have its great trusts threatened
by either superior talent or better service in public enterprises. The postal department has excluded LUCIFER from
the mails. It is true that some articles in that paper would offend a hyper-orthodox and ossified Presbyterian. In fact,
Bebel’s Woman, Louis H. Morgan’s Ancient Society, and much from Herbert Spencer, Darwin, or Westermarck would
offend the same class of moiety-minded people who were offended by LUCIFER. It is not necessary that anyone
should agree with Harman or his theories, or the theories of those who write for his paper. We may differ with him
just as we differ with the Sultan of Turkey, or, if you please, with the ethical standard of the wealthy class of Americans
who give a dowry with their daughters to a royal title, or as we differ with the ethics of the postal officers who permit
the system to be openly pilfered and robbed by railroads and small grafters, and then stop magazines because they
“exploit an idea.”

The postal system has singled out Harman’s paper as the line of least resistance, because a very great number of people
oppose Harman’s views. The later issues of Harman’s paper, which have been stopped from the mail privilege, were
stopped purely for the reason that the postal authorities differed from Harman in opinion and not because LUCIFER was
either immoral or lascivious. Louis F. Post, in a fifteen-column editorial, now published in pamphlet form by The Public
(offices in the First National Bank Building, Chicago), has shown conclusively to any reasonable mind the extent of the
censorship which now prevails in the United States and the great danger with which we are threatened. The Socialists
of this country should recognize this danger to their cause, for when liberty of the mail is denied to them, freedom of
speech is to all purposes destroyed. Graft, running from the smallest petty business to the Senate chamber, will use
means as immoral and debauching to perpetuate itself as the immorality of conditions which it has produced. It will use
the postal system, when deemed necessary, to throttle all radical and progressive papers, and unless we are equal to
the danger at an early date, we will find born, in recent months, a postal censorship of despotic mien, in addition to
government by injunction; imprisonment without trial by jury and without the witnesses being brought face to face with
the accused; the use of the militia; the ousting of sheriffs; and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, as in
Colorado—in other words, a state military despotism. And all this we will have crowned by a postal censorship which
will crush free speech and free communication. We are moving to this goal at a most terrific pace. Those who are fighting
against the Caesars in the United States and who are in the Socialist Party recognize the danger and the true enemy.
They understand that the class which is predominant today controls the situation through private ownership of the
means of production, and that this master class will use the corrupt United States senator and smaller officeholders
as lackeys and servants to perpetuate its unholy life. While we fight for collectivism, let us double the blows for
democracy in Socialism.