I’m reading Maxim Gorky’s The Mother right now. 

There is a galvanizing incident in the book where the factory workers are charged by the owners for a plan to drain a nearby swamp.  

“Draining the swamp”, explained the management, “would be a healthy benefit for the workers”, which was true. And since it was a benefit to the workers, management reasoned that it would be fair enough to take the cost out of the workers’ wages. The problem is- the company didn’t ask beforehand, they just announced the workers would be paid slightly less, in order to provide a benefit the workers never asked for. This angered the workers, who appeal to the socialists to stick up for them and fight management, which the socialists did, calling the practice an injustice to the workers. 

Now, I agree with the workers. The company should not have just taken the tax without asking them, on grounds that it was for their benefit. But then it struck me as odd that the socialists would take this position too. I do get that the socialists positioned themselves opposite the capitalists, and since the capitalists proposed it, apparently, the socialists opposed it.  

But thinking about it, this is the kind of thing that socialists today support, albeit in a more roundabout way. Right now taxes are levied for all kinds of causes. We aren’t given any say as to what we think about them. But the government takes money from us and uses it, ostensibly, for our benefit. 

This is usually done through government, not our companies, but the effect is the same. In the final analysis, socialists are typically willing to propose higher taxes to get more social benefits, which is exactly what the company did. So under what principle would the socialists oppose the benefit, other than because it was proposed by the capitalists? I know enough of the history of socialism to know why they would have taken the stance they did in this instance. However, I couldn’t help but notice the sharp difference in approaches between then and now.