Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/164

 forts of social progress and struggle lead to the same end, to the victory of democracy in the economic life and to the economic liberation of the working classes. Modráček criticizes the policy of those trade-unions which plead only for higher wages; he points out that the employers have several means of transferring the amount of increase in wages to the consumers. The trade-unions should be inspired therefore by a higher aim: to work for the abolishment of the wage-system and to demand a co-partnership of workmen in the profit and management of all industrial establishments. Though Modráček does not consider partnership of workers as an ideal, nevertheless it is the first step toward the co-operative system.

The present economic system, based on hegemony of capital and exploitation of workmen, he holds to be untenable. It is a perpetual anarchy and revolution which permanently endangers human society. The present system of wages must be abolished as serfdom was abolished, and its place will be taken by the Socialist co-operative system as the only possible form of industrial undertaking. To work this aim is, according to Modráček, the most important object of the Socialist and Labor policy.

Having this aim in view Modráček advises the workers to take a greater part in the co-operative movement and thus to prepare themselves for the economic management of the future Socialist society. By the way it is interesting to note that Modráček has proposed in the Czechoslovak National Assembly the introduction into the superior schools of instruction in cooperation. Modráček does not agree with those co-operative theoreticians who consider the producing co-operative societies of workmen as useless and economically unnatural, and proves that it is possible to organize Labor on a co-operative basis. According to his opinion the future Socialist society will be based on co-operation of producers and consumers.

Modráček laughs at the expropriation theory of the Social Democracy and sharply combats Bolshevism. He points out that if we expropriate out of several millions of private employers a few hundred great capitalists, it does not bring us anywhere near to the Socialist society. The expropriation of private property will only be a transitory phenomenon of the Social and economic transformation. Modráček approves therefore expropriation in a limited extent, as regards monopolistic economic concerns, where it is necessary to take the natural economic resources on which the existence of the nation depends out of the hands of the capitalist usurpators. Such economic concerns are large landed estates, railways, mines, etc. Modráček’s speech for the expropriation of great landowners delivered at the last congress of the Social Democratic Party greatly pushed forward this question which is at present under consideration by the Czechoslovak National Assembly. As the bourgeois parties also favor expropriation of the great landowners, there is no doubt that large estates will soon disappear in the Czechoslovak Republic. Modráček proposes that expropriated land be given to co-operative societies of agricultural laborers and to the invalids.

The most striking example of the senseless policy which pretends to establish a Socialist Society by expropriation and State socialism Modráček’ sees in Bolshevist Russia; the experiments of Bolshevists brought the country to an economic catastrophe and to actual starvation, though Russia is the richest country in agricultural products.

Such are the general outlines of the principles propagated by Modráček and “Socialistické Listy”. The majority of the party maintains for the time being a neutral attitude as regards the intellectual currents in the party: doctrinary marxism as preached by the Germans never had any important body of convinced followers in Bohemia. As regards Modráček’s ideas the party did not pronounce as yet its judgment. But it may be confidently expected that in the end Modráček’s group will gain the upper hand, because the Czech Socialist Party, formerly National Socialist Party, accepts Modráček’s general principles as the basis of Czech Socialism.