and geodetic survey, for charting coast waters and surveying rivers to the head of tidewater or ship navigation, and for making deep- sea soundings, magnetic observations, etc. ; (4) the bureau of fisheries, for regulating and conserving fisheries; (5) the lighthouse service, in charge of the aids to navigation on all U.S. territory, except Panama and the Philippines: (6) the bureau of navigation, having general superintendence of the commercial marine and merchant seamen, and the enforcement of navigation laws; (7) the steam- ship inspection service, which inspects steam vessels for the purpose of insuring safety at sea, and issues licences to masters, mates, pilots, and engineers of the merchant marine; (8) the bureau of standards, for determining all American measurements; and (9) the bureau of corporations. The last-mentioned bureau, on March 16 1915, was transferred to, and merged with, the Federal Trade Commission (see FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION).
Because of the importance of manufactures there had long been agitation among various commercial organizations of the United States for the creation of a governmental department for promoting commercial interests; but it was not until 1903 that a bill establishing the Department of Commerce and Labor was passed by Congress; it was approved by President Roosevelt Feb. 14. For the next ten years the joint interests of labor and capital were entrusted to this department. The arrangement proved unsatisfactory because of the frequent conflict of these interests, and in 1913 an independent Department of Labor was created, the name of the Department of Commerce and Labor being changed to Department of Commerce.
COMMUNISM (see 6.791). The term " communism " is used loosely to cover all forms and theories of social ownership of
wealth, but has a more specific current meaning to denote the
type of revolutionary socialism first expounded in The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels (1847) and to-day held by the
various communist parties that exist in most countries and are
united in the Communist International. Communism is thus
both an old term and an old theory; but the practice of the
Bolshevik revolution in Russia (see BOLSHEVISM) and the sub-
sequent propaganda of the Communist International have given
it a significance that is in many ways new.
It is important to distinguish at the outset the various senses in which " communism " is often used, in order to avoid the confusions that beset the term. The English writer, Sidney Webb, has distinguished five senses of communism: (i) the communism of free use, or " all things in common," as exemplified on a limited scale in public roads and bridges, and as aimed at on a general scale in religious or Utopian " communities " of all ages; (2) communism by rationing, or the equal distribution of some par- ticular thing or things among the whole population; (3) com- munism in treatment, or the supply of some particular service, not equally, but according to need, as in the public provision of medical care or education; (4) communism in the sense of nationalization or municipalization; (5) the communism of The Communist Manifesto. To these should possibly be added the anarchistic communism of Kropotkin and his school, to which the name of " anarchism " was formerly given (see 1.914).
It is only the last of the five senses given above (the communism of The Communist Manifesto) which will be treated here, since the other senses either do not cover a specific political theory or else are coterminous with Socialism in general. It alone has a continuous history and a present significance.
Historical Development. The conditions which gave rise to communism began with the industrial revolution. The social transformation produced by that event, the emergence of a new middle class and its rise to power, and the creation of a growing town population of wage-earners in large industry, led to numerous movements of unrest in the early 19th century and to all kinds of social theories and questionings. At this time the term socialism became applied to various types of theories of a benevolent or cooperative economic order. These theories, however, formulated mainly by individual thinkers in England and France, had no direct relation to the movement of the masses. s The new feature introduced by communism was its direct correlation of social theory with the struggle of the working class. The necessity for this was making itself felt in various quarters; but its first clear expression was given to the world in what is still the classic statement of communism, The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, written in Nov. 1847. The year 1847 thus marks the starting-point of communism as a conscious force.
The Communist Manifesto. The Communist Manifesto opens with the statement that the history of all hitherto existing human society has been the history of successive class struggles,'which have on each occasion either resulted in the revolutionary transformation of society or in its collapse. From the slave systems of ancient civilization to the feudal system of mediaeval society, and from that in turn to the rule of capitalism or the bourgeoisie, there has been on each occasion a new class rising to power out of the conditions of the old society after a violent and revolutionary struggle with the preceding class. The rise to power of the bourgeoisie is described in rapid outline, its origin from the bosom of feudal society, its breaking of the bonds of feudalism and monarchy, its revolutionizing of the methods of industry, agriculture and communication, its establishment of modern industry with its accelerated and concentrated production, extended franchise, the national state and the international trade, and finally its subjugation of the whole world to its mode of production. " It has achieved greater miracles than the construction of Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts or Gothic cathedrals; it has carried out greater movements than the migration of peoples or the crusades. . . . Although it is scarcely a century since it became the dominating class, the bourgeoisie has created more powerful and more gigantic forces of production than all past generations put together."
Yet to-day the bourgeoisie finds itself threatened in its turn by the new class of the proletariat or wage-earners which its own method of production has created. Like the systems which preceded it, capitalism has created the forces which, in the communist view, will lead to its overthrow: the proletariat, evergrowing in numbers and in the insistence of its demands, and an anarchical system of production leading to periodical crises, unemployment, gluts and overproduction in the midst of famine and misery, and (a modern communist would add) in its last phase the fierce struggles of imperialism and the havoc of world war. It is contended that these contradictions of capitalism 1 reveal that the forces of production have outstripped the existing conditions of social organization, and are producing goods faster than society can control the use of them under the existing laws of property. Social production has been established, but individual appropriation of the results still remain. The contradiction receives expression in the class struggle of the workers against the capitalists. The proletariat, being without property and living in a regime of increasing social production, can no longer fight for individual ownership, but only for the socially conducted utilization of the means of production belonging to the community and of the goods produced. Thus capitalism has created in the
1 To explain the " contradictions " of capitalism would demand an examination of Marxian economic theory for which there is here no room. It must suffice to say that Marx saw in the wage system a system by which monopoly in the means of production is used to compel those outside the monopoly (the proletariat) to sell their labour in return for subsistence and forego all rights to the actual value produced. The resulting surplus provides new capital for yet more production on the same system, but always with the need of finding new markets, since the workers themselves, only receiving in wages a portion of the value produced, can only buy back a portion of the value produced; with the result that, while the early stages of capitalism show rapid expansion and development, opening up the whole world and forcing every nation and race into the circle of its operations, the later stages show increasing crises of overproduction and rivalry in markets, tremendous concentration of financial power, and, in the last phase, the continually intensifying struggles of imperialism culminating in world war and world economic disorganization. In this progress capitalism by its own development has completely destroyed the basis of private property from which it began. Originating in private property and competition, it has eaten up the independent small proprietor and replaced him by tremendous combines, replaced competition by monopoly, reduced the masses of the population to the position of a proletariat which in a regime of private property is without private property, and finally reached a stage of production whose forces it is no longer able to control, any more than it can control the proletarian masses who now begin to rise against its domination. Thus all is ready for its dissolution and for the replacement of its worn-out basis of private property by the new basis of social ownership in accordance with the new mode of production and through the agency of the new class, the proletariat, which has no knowledge of private property. (For a different view of the capitalistic system, see CAPITALISM.)
