LABORISM AND SOCIALISM 429 428 THE CLASS STRUGGLE has been one of adapting itself to the new conditions, of working on the basis of the modification of class antagonisms, of subtly, but none the less actually, becoming part and parcel of imperialistic State Capitalism.
The epoch of Imperialism is characterized by a multiplication of the contradictions of Capitalism, proof that Capitalism is on the verge of collapse. Simultaneously with the appearance of the tendency of modifying class antagonisms, has appeared a new series of violent class struggles the struggles of the industrial proletariat of unskilled labor against Capitalism. The significance of Imperialism, from the proletarian standpoint, is the awakening to consciousness and action of the typical proletariat, the machine proletariat, the proletariat of average labor. study of labor history for the past twenty years will show that the great labor struggles have been an expression of this unskilled proletariat, the proletariat massed into regiments and battalions by concentrated industry. The concentration of industry, the perfection of the technological process, expropriates the worker of his skill, as it expropriates the industrial petit bourgeois of his importance in industry. The necessity of skill in the worker becomes progressively superfluous, skill being now the monopoly of a small layer of the workers, technicians, engineers, etc. the mass of the workers become the typical proletariat in the Marxian sense, appendages of the machine. Ideologically, at first, this proletariat is. a part of the dominant unionism and Socialism; but gradually it initiates its own independent action. The characteristic of its struggles, decisive as to the character of the new alignment, is that they are frequently directed as much against the dominant unionism and Socialism as against Capitalism itself.
Laborism and the dominant moderate Socialism may become absorbed in imperialistic State Capitalism, representing as they do the dominant unionism and the petite bourgeoisie, now integral parts of Imperialism. But imperialistic State Capitalism cannot absorb the great industrial proletariat of average labor, since that would mean the capitulation of the capitalists as a ruling class.
Laborism and moderate Socialism approach a conciliation with Capitalism, which means a conciliation with Imperialism; they express and affirm the necessity for the modification of class antagonisms; they act on the policy of the co operation of classes: but this co operation means the co operation of the ruling elements, excluding the industrial proletariat. This proletariat of average labor accepts the theory of conciliation only at the risk of being used to promote the interests of the aristocracy of labor and the petite bourgeoisie. There is no part in State Capitalism for the proletariat of average labor, the controlling factor in industry; this proletariat must struggle against the whole bloc of the ruling system of things, including Laborism and the dominant Socialism.
The character of the Socialist struggle after the war will be determined by whether Socialism accepts the conciliatory, petit bourgeois tendency of Laborism, or whether it accepts the revolutionary tendency of the industrial proletariat of machine labor, which is the tendency of fundamental Socialism and the proletarian class struggle.
The machine proletariat, organized by the mechanism of concentrated industry itself, not divided by distinctions of craft skill, massed in the basic industries of Capitalism, and subjectively absorbing the objective industrial facts of unity and integrationthe machine proletariat instinctively turns to industrial unionism and mass action. Laborism, on the contrary, turns to parliamentary action as decisive; and this because neither the aristocracy of labor nor the middle class, which Laborism represents, are a controlling factor in industry. The machine proletariat is belligerent, Laborism conciliatory; Laborism proceeds on the basis of Capitalism, the machine proletariat is compelled, immediately or ultimately, to organize a general attack upon Capitalism as the only instrument of its emancipation. Revolutionary Socialism, basing itself upon the dominant proletariat, accepts political action only as a phase of the general, dynamic and creative mass action of the industrial proletariat.
Mass action is the synthesis of the tactics of revolutionary Socialism, the mechanism of the proletarian class struggle; its acceptance or rejection will determine the success or failure of the