Thorstein Veblen:
BOLSHEVISM AND THE VESTED INTERESTS IN AMERICA
I. On the Danger of a Revolutionary Overturn             p. 296
   The Dial. No. 800, Oct., 4, 1919, pp. 296-301
II. On the Circumstances Which Make for a Change         p. 339
  The Dial. No. 801, Oct., 18, 1919, pp. 339-346
III. A Memorandum on a Practicable Soviet of Technicians p. 373
   The Dial. No. 802, Nov., 1, 1919, pp. 373-380

The Dial. A Fortnightly (New York)
Vol. LXVII (July 12 to November 29, 1919)
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BOLSHEVISM AND THE VESTED INTERESTS IN AMERICA
I. On the Danger of a Revolutionary Overturn

The Dial. No. 800, Oct., 4, 1919, pp. 296-301
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BOLSHEVISM IS A MENACE to the vested rights of property and privilege. Therefore 
the guardians of the Vested Interests have been thrown into a state of Red 
trepidation by the continued functioning of Soviet Russia and the continual 
outbreaks of the same Red distemper elsewhere on the continent of Europe. It is 
feared, with a nerve-shattering fear, that the same Red distemper of Bolshevism 
must presently infect the underlying population in America and bring on an 
overturn of the established order, so soon as the underlying population are in a 
position to take stock of the situation and make up their mind to a course of 
action. The situation is an uneasy one, and it contains the elements of much 
trouble; at least such appears to be the conviction of the Guardians of the 
established order. Something of the kind is felt to be due, on the grounds of 
the accomplished facts. So it is feared, with a nerve-shattering fear, that 
anything like uncolored information as to the facts in the case and anything 
like a free popular discussion of these facts must logically result in disaster. 
Hence all this unseemly trepidation.

The Guardians of the Vested Interests, official and quasi-official, have allowed 
their own knowledge of this sinister state of things to unseat their common 
sense. The run of the facts has jostled them out of the ruts, and they have gone 
in for a headlong policy of clamor and repression, to cover and suppress matters 
of fact and to shut off discussion and deliberation. And all the while the 
Guardians are also feverishly at work on a mobilization of such forces as may 
hopefully be counted on to "keep the situation in hand" in case the expected 
should happen. The one manifestly conclusive resolution to which the Guardians 
of the Vested Interests have come is that the underlying population is to be 
"kept in hand," in the face of any contingency. Their one settled principle of 
conduct appears to be, to stick at nothing; in all of which, doubtless, the 
Guardians mean well.

Now, the Guardians of the Vested Interests are presumably wise in 
discountenancing any open discussion or any free communication of ideas and 
opinions. It could lead to nothing more comfortable than popular irritation and 
distrust. The Vested Interests are known to have been actively concerned in the 
prosecution of the War, and there is no lack of evidence that their spokesmen 
have been heard in the subsequent counsels of the Peace. And, no doubt, the less 
that is known and said about the doings of the Vested Interests during the War 
and after, the better both for the public, tranquility and for the continued 
growth and profit of the Vested Interests. Yet it is not to be overlooked that 
facts of such magnitude and of such urgent public concern as the manoeuvres of 
the Vested Interests during the War and after can not be altogether happily 
covered over with a conspiracy of silence. Something like a middle course of 
temperate publicity should have seemed more to the point. It may be unfortunate, 
but it is none the less unavoidable, that something appreciable is bound to come 
to light; that is to say, something sinister.

It should be plain to all good citizens who have the cause of law and order at 
heart that in such a case a more genial policy of conciliatory promises and 
procrastination will be more to the purpose than any noisy recourse to the 
strong arm and the Star Chamber. A touch of history, and more particularly of 
contemporary history, would have given the Guardians a touch of sanity. Grown 
wise in all the ways and means of blamelessly defeating the unblest majority, 
the gentlemanly government of the British manage affairs of this kind much -
better. They have learned that bellicose gestures provoke ill will, and that 
desperate remedies should be held in reserve until needed. Whereas the Guardians 
of the Vested Interests in America are plainly putting things in train for a 
capital operation, for which there is no apparent necessity. It should be 
evident of slight reflection that things have not reached that fateful stage 
where nothing short of a capital operation can be counted on to save the life of 
the Vested Interests in America; not yet. And indeed, things need assuredly not 
reach such a stage if reasonable measures are taken is avoid^ undue alarm and 
irritation. All that is needed to keep the underlying population of America in a 
sweet temper is a degree of patient ambiguity and delay, something after the 
British pattern, and all will yet be well with the vested rights of property and 
privilege, for some time to come.

History teaches that no effectual popular uprising can be set afoot against an 
outworn institutional iniquity unless it effectually meets the special material 
[297] requirements of the situation which provokes it; nor on the other hand can 
an impending popular overturn be staved off without making up one's account with 
those material conditions which converge to bring it on. The long history of 
British gentlemanly compromise, collusion, conciliation, and popular defeat, is 
highly instructive on that head. And it should be evident to any disinterested 
person, on any slight survey of the pertinent facts, that the situation in 
America does not now offer such a combination of circumstances as would be 
required for any effectual overturn of the established order or any forcible 
dispossession of these Vested Interests that now control the material fortunes 
of the American people. In short, by force of circumstances, Bolshevism is not a 
present menace to the Vested Interests in America; provided always that the 
Guardians of these Vested Interests do not go out of their way to precipitate 
trouble by such measures as will make Bolshevism of any complexion seem the 
lesser evil, which is perhaps not a safe proviso, in view of the hysterically 
Red state of mind of the Guardians.

No movement for the dispossession of the Vested Interests in America can hope 
for even a temporary success unless it is undertaken by an organization which is 
competent to take over the country's productive industry as a whole, and to 
administer it from the start on a more efficient plan than that now pursued by 
the Vested Interests; and there is no such organization in sight or in immediate 
prospect. The nearest approach to a practicable organization of industrial 
forces in America, just yet, is the A. F. of L.; which need only be named in 
order to dispel the illusion that there is anything to hope or fear in the way 
of a radical move at its hands. The A. F. of L. is itself one of the Vested 
Interests, as ready as any other to do battle for its own margin of privilege 
and profit. At the same time it would be a wholly chimerical fancy to believe 
that such an organization of workmen as the A. F. of L. could take over and 
manage any appreciable section of the industrial system, even if their single-
minded interest in special privileges for themselves did not preclude their 
making a move in that direction. The Federation is not organized for production 
but for bargaining. It is not organized on lines that would be workable for the 
management of any industrial system as a whole or of any special line of 
production within such a system. It is, in effect, an organization for the 
strategic defeat of employers and rival organizations, by recourse to enforced 
unemployment and obstruction; not for the production of goods and services. And 
it is officered by tacticians, skilled in the ways and means of bargaining with 
politicians and intimidating employers and employees; not by men who have any 
special insight into or interest in the ways and means of quantity production 
and traffic management. They are not, and for their purpose they need not be, 
technicians in any conclusive sense, and the fact should not be lost sight of 
that any effectual overturn, of the kind hazily contemplated by the hysterical 
officials, will always have to be primarily a technical affair.

In effect, the Federation is officered by safe and sane politicians, and its 
rank and file are votaries of "the full dinner-pail." No Guardian need worry 
about the Federation, and there is no other organization in sight which differs 
materially from the Federation in those respects which would count toward a 
practical move in the direction of 
a popular overturn, unless a doubtful exception should be claimed for the 
Railroad Brotherhoods. The A. F. of L. is a business organization with a vested 
interest of its own; for keeping up prices and keeping down the supply, quite 
after the usual fashion of management by the other Vested Interests; not for 
managing productive industry or even for increasing the output of goods produced 
under any management. At the best, its purpose and ordinary business is to gain 
a little something for its own members at a more than proportionate cost to the 
rest of the community; which does not afford either the spiritual or the 
material ground for a popular overturn.

Nor is it the A. F. of L. or the other organizations for "collective bargaining" 
that come in for the comfortless attentions of the officials and of the many 
conspiracies in restraint of sobriety. Their nerve-shattering fears center 
rather on those irresponsible wayfaring men of industry who make up the I. W. 
W., and on the helpless and hapless alien unbelievers whose contribution to the 
sum total is loose talk in some foreign tongue. But if there is any assertion to 
be made without fear of stumbling it will be, that this flotsam of industry is 
not organized to take over the highly technical duties involved in the 
administration of the industrial system. But it is these and their like that 
engage the best attention of the many commissions, committees, clubs, leagues, 
federations, syndicates, and corporations for the chasing of wild geese under 
the Red flag.

Wherever the mechanical industry has taken decisive effect, as in America and in 
the two or three industrialized regions of Europe, the community lives from hand 
to mouth, in such a way that its livelihood depends on the effectual working 
[298] of its industrial system from day to day. In such a case a serious 
disturbance and derangement of the balanced process of production is always 
easily brought on, and it always brings immediate hardship on large sections of 
the community. Indeed, it is this state of things the ease with which industry 
can be deranged and hardship can be brought to bear on the people at large that 
constitutes the chief asset of such partisan organizations as the A. F. of L. It 
is a state of things which makes sabotage easy and effectual and gives it 
breadth and scope. But sabotage is not revolution. If it were, then the A. F. of 
L., the I. W. W., the Chicago Packers, and the U. S. Senate would be counted 
among the revolutionists.

Far-reaching sabotage, that is to say derangement of the industrial system, such 
as to entail hardship on the community at large or on some particular section of 
it, is easily brought to bear in any country that is dominated by the mechanical 
industry. It is commonly resorted to by both parties in any controversy between 
the businesslike employers and the employees. It is, in fact, an everyday 
expedient of business, and no serious blame attaches to its ordinary use. Under 
given circumstances, as, e. g., under the circumstances just now created by the 
return of peace, such derangement of industry and hindrance of production is an 
unavoidable expedient of " business as usual." And derangement of the same 
nature is also commonly resorted to as a means of coercion in any attempted 
movement of overturn. It is the simple and obvious means of initiating any 
revolutionary disturbance in any industrial or commercialized country. But under 
the existing industrial conditions, if it is to achieve even a transient 
success, any such revolutionary movement of reconstruction must also be in a 
position from the outset to overcome any degree of initial derangement in 
industry, whether of its own making or not, and to do constructive work of that 
particular kind which is called for by the present disposition of industrial 
forces and by the present close dependence of the community's livelihood on the 
due systematic working of these industrial forces. To take effect and to hold 
its own even for the time being, any movement of overturn must from beforehand 
provide for a sufficiently productive conduct of the industrial system on which 
the community's material welfare depends, and for a competent distribution of 
goods and services throughout the community. Otherwise, under existing 
industrial conditions, nothing more can be accomplished than an ephemeral 
disturbance and a transient season of accentuated hardship. Even a transient 
failure to make good in the management of the industrial system must immediately 
defeat any movement of overturn in any of the advanced industrial countries. At 
this point the lessons of history fail, because the present industrial system 
and the manner of close-knit community life enforced by this industrial system 
have no example in history.

This state of things, which so conditions the possibility of any revolutionary 
overturn, is peculiar to the advanced industrial countries; and the limitations 
which this state of things imposes are binding within these countries in the 
same measure in which these peoples are dominated by the system of mechanical 
industry. In contrast with this state of things, the case of Soviet Russia may 
be cited to show the difference. As compared with America and much of western 
Europe, Russia is not an industrialized region, in any decisive sense; although 
Russia, too, leans on the mechanical industry in a greater degree than is 
commonly recognized. Indeed, so considerable is the dependence of the Russians 
on the mechanical industry that it may yet prove to be the decisive factor in 
the struggle which is now going on between Soviet Russia and the Allied Powers.

Now, it is doubtless this continued success of the Soviet administration in 
Russia that has thrown this ecstatic scare into the Guardians of the Vested 
Interests in America and in the civilized countries of Europe. There is nothing 
to be gained by denying that the Russian Soviet has achieved a measure of 
success; indeed, an astonishing measure of success, considering the extremely 
adverse circumstances under which the Soviet has been at work. The fact may be 
deplored, but there it is. The Soviet has plainly been successful, in the 
material respect, far beyond the reports which have been allowed to pass the 
scrutiny of the Seven Censors and the Associated Prevarication Bureaux of the 
Allied Powers. And this continued success of Bolshevism in Russia or such 
measure of success as it has achieved is doubtless good ground for a reasonable 
degree of apprehension among good citizens elsewhere; but it does not by any 
means argue that anything like the same measure of success could be achieved by 
a revolutionary movement on the same lines " in America, even in the absence of 
intervention from outside.

Soviet Russia has made good to the extent of maintaining itself against very 
great odds for some two years; and it is even yet a point in doubt whether the 
Allied Powers will be able to put down the Soviet by use of all the forces at 
their disposal and with the help of all the reactionary elements in Russia and 
in the neighboring countries. But the Soviet owes this measure of success to the 
fact that [299] the Russian people have not yet been industrialized in anything 
like the same degree as their western neighbors. They have in great measure been 
able to fall back on an earlier, simpler, less close-knit plan of productive 
industry; such that any detailed part of this loose-knit Russian community is 
able, at a pinch, to draw its own livelihood from its own soil by its own work, 
without that instant and unremitting dependence on materials and wrought goods 
drawn from foreign ports and distant regions, that is characteristic of the 
advanced industrial peoples. This old fashioned plan of home production does not 
involve an "industrial system" in the same exacting sense as the mechanical 
industry. The Russian industrial system, it is true, also runs on something of a 
balanced plan of give and take; it leans on the mechanical industry in some 
considerable degree and draws on foreign trade for many of its necessary 
articles of use ; but for the transient time being, and for an appreciable 
interval of time, such a homebred industrious population, living close to the 
soil and supplying its ordinary needs by home-bred handicraft methods, will be 
able to maintain itself in a fair state of efficiency if not in comfort, even in 
virtual isolation from the more advanced industrial centers and from the remoter 
sources of raw materials. To the ignorant, that is to say, to the wiseacres of 
commerce, this ability of the Russian people to continue alive and active under 
the conditions of an exemplary blockade has been a source of incredulous 
astonishment.

It is only as a righting power, and then only for the purposes of an aggressive 
war, that such a community can count for virtually nothing in a contest with the 
advanced industrial nations. Such a people makes an unwieldy country to conquer 
from the outside. Soviet Russia is self-supporting, in a loose and comfortless 
way, and in this sense it is a very defensible country and may yet prove 
extremely difficult for the Allied Powers to subdue; but in the nature of the 
case there need be not the slightest shadow of apprehension that Soviet Russia 
can successfully take the offensive against any outside people, great or small, 
which has the use of the advanced mechanical industry.

The statesmen of the Allied Powers, who are now carrying on a covert war against 
Soviet Russia, are in a position to know this state of the case ; and not least 
those American statesmen, who have by popular sentiment been constrained 
reluctantly to limit and mask their cooperation with the reactionary forces in 
Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, Siberia, and elsewhere. They have all been at 
pains diligently to inquire into the state of things in Soviet Russia; although, 
it is true, they have also been at pains to give out surprisingly little 
information, that being much of the reason for the Seven Censors. The well-
published official and semi-official apprehension of a Bolshevist offensive to 
be carried on beyond the Soviet frontiers may quite safely be set down as an 
article of statesmanlike subterfuge. The statesmen know better. What is feared 
in fact is infection of the Bolshevist spirit beyond the Soviet frontiers, to 
the detriment of those Vested Interests whose guardians these statesmen are. And 
en this head the apprehensions of these Elder Statesmen are not altogether 
groundless; for the Elder Statesmen are also in a position to know, without much 
inquiry, that there is no single spot or corner in civilized Europe or America 
where the underlying population would have anything to lose by such an overturn 
of the established order as would cancel the vested rights of privilege and 
property, whose guardians they are.

But commercialized America is not the same thing as Soviet Russia. By and large, 
America is an advanced industrial country, bound in the web of a fairly close-
knit and inclusive industrial system. The industrial situation, and therefore 
the conditions of success, are radically different in the two countries in those 
respects that would make the outcome in any effectual revolt. So that, for 
better or worse, the main lines that would necessarily have to be followed in 
working out any practicable revolutionary movement in this country are already 
laid down by the material conditions of its productive industry. On provocation 
there might come a flare of riotous disorder, but it would come to nothing, 
however substantial the provocation might be, so long as the movement does not 
fall in with those main lines-of management which the state of the industrial 
system requires in order to insure any sustained success. These main lines of 
revolutionary strategy are lines of technical organization and industrial 
management; essentially lines of industrial engineering; such as will fit the 
organization to take care of the highly technical industrial system that 
constitutes the indispensable material foundation of any modern civilized 
community. They will accordingly not only be of a profoundly different order 
from what may do well enough in the case of such a loose-knit and backward 
industrial region as Russia, but they will necessarily also be of a kind which 
has no close parallel in the past history of revolutionary movements. 
Revolutions in the eighteenth century were military and political; and the Elder 
Statesmen who now believe themselves to be making history still believe that 
revolutions can be made and unmade by the same ways and means in the twentieth 
century. But any substantial [300] or effectual overturn in the twentieth 
century will necessarily be an industrial overturn; and by the same token, any 
twentieth-century revolution can be combated or neutralized only by industrial 
ways and means. The case of America, therefore, considered as a candidate for 
Bolshevism, will have to be argued on its own merits, and the argument will 
necessarily turn on the ways and means of productive industry as conditioned by 
the later growth of technology.

It has been argued, and it seems not unreasonable to believe, that the 
established order of business enterprise, vested rights, and commercialized 
nationalism, is due presently to go under in a muddle of shame and confusion, 
because it is no longer a practicable system of industrial management under the 
conditions created by the later state of the industrial arts. Twentieth-century 
technology has outgrown the eighteenth-century system of vested rights. The 
experience of the past few years teaches that the usual management of industry 
by business methods has become highly inefficient and wasteful, and the 
indications are many and obvious that any businesslike control of production and 
distribution is bound to run more and more consistently at cross purposes with 
the community's livelihood, the farther the industrial arts advance and the 
wider the industrial system extends. So that it is perhaps not reasonably to be 
questioned that the Vested Interests in business are riding for a fall. But the 
end is not yet; although it is to be admitted, regretfully perhaps, that with 
every further advance in technological knowledge and practice and with every 
further increase in the volume and complexity of the industrial system, any 
businesslike control is bound to grow still more incompetent, irrelevant, and 
impertinent.

It would be quite hazardous to guess, just yet, how far off that consummation of 
commercial imbecility may be. There are those who argue that the existing system 
of business management is plainly due to go under within two years' time; and 
there are others who are ready, with equal confidence, to allow it a probable 
duration of several times that interval; although, it is true, these latter 
appear, on the whole, to be persons who are less intimately acquainted with the 
facts in the case. Many men experienced in the larger affairs of industrial 
business are in doubt as to how long things will hold together. But, one with 
another, these men who so are looking into the doubtful future are, somewhat 
apprehensively, willing to admit that there is yet something of a margin to go 
on; so much so that, barring accident, there should seem to be no warrant for 
counting at all confidently on a disastrous breakdown of the business system 
within anything like a two-year period. And, for the reassurance of the 
apprehensive Guardian of the Vested Interests, it is to be added that should 
such a break in the situation come while things are standing in their present 
shape, the outcome could assuredly not' be an effectual overturn of the 
established order; so long as no practicable plan has been provided for taking 
over the management from the dead hand of the Vested Interests. Should such a 
self-made breakdown come at the present juncture, the outcome could, in fact, 
scarcely be anything more serious than an interval, essentially transient though 
more or less protracted, of turmoil and famine among the underlying population, 
together with something of a setback to the industrial system as a whole. There 
seems no reason to apprehend any substantial disallowance of the vested rights 
of property to follow from such an essentially ephemeral interlude of 
dissension. In fact, the tenure of the Vested Interests in America should seem 
to be reasonably secure, just yet.

Something in the nature of riotous discontent and factional disorder is perhaps 
to be looked for in the near future in this country, and there may even be some 
rash gesture of revolt on the part of ill-advised malcontents. Circumstances 
would seem to favor something of the kind. It is conservatively estimated that 
there is already a season of privation and uncertainty in prospect for the 
underlying population, which could be averted only at the cost of some 
substantial interference with the vested rights of the country's business men, 
which should seem a highly improbable alternative, in view of that spirit of 
filial piety with which the public officials guard the prerogatives of business 
as usual. So, e. g., it is now (September, 1919) confidently expected, or rather 
computed, that a fuel famine is due in America during the approaching winter, 
for reasons of sound business management; and it is likewise to be expected that 
for the like reason the American transportation system is also due to go into a 
tangle of congestion and idleness about the same time barring providential 
intervention in the way of unexampled weather conditions. But a season of famine 
and disorderly conduct does not constitute a revolutionary overturn of the 
established order; and the Vested Interests are secure in their continued 
usufruct of the country's industry, just yet.

This hopeful posture of things may be shown convincingly enough and with no 
great "expenditure of argument. To this end it is proposed to pursue the 
argument somewhat further presently; by [301] describing in outline what are the 
infirmities of the have to be the character of any organization of an regime of 
the Vested Interests, which the more sanguine malcontents count on to bring that 
regime to an inglorious finish in the immediate future; and also to set down, 
likewise in outline, what would industrial forces which could be counted on 
effectually to wind up the regime of the Vested Interests and take over the 
management of the industrial system on a deliberate plan.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN.
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