44 THE CLASS STRUGGLE PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM 45 The way to wage war upon a Labor Party, should it eventuate, is not to promise more reforms than the Labor Party, is not to plead and placate, but to develop the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat, to awaken to action the great, unorganized industrial proletariat, which is the dominant force in industry, and which will determine the destiny of the Revolution. This would mean a broadening of the conception and practice of politics a broadening fully in accord with Marxism and fundamental Socialism. The of does not represent the elements of the real proletariat the industrial proletariat massed in the basic larger industry. The of except in the case of anachronisms such as the miners, represents the skilled workers, the aristoc.
racy of labor, men who have skill and consider this skill property. Their ideology is a petty bourgeois ideology, and their domination of Socialism and the industrial proletariat would prove a calamity. The answer to the of compromise and petty bourgeois policy is to awaken the industrial proletariat, and pull out of the of unions, such as the Miners, which belong with the industrial proletariat.
As against the Labor Party, a Socialist Party; as against the aristocracy of Labor, the masses of the industrial proletariat; as against of unionism, industrial unionism; as against conciliation with Capitalism, the revolutionary struggle against Capitalism.
There is no magic in labor it depends upon what labor represents, its tendency and action. There is no magic in Socialism either; both may be reactionary and counterrevolutionary. The great task of Socialism is its own reconstruction this animates its policy on all problems.
Did the British Labor Party use its industrial power to secure for its delegates access to Conferences held in other nations?
Socialism must possess industrial power. But industrial power emerges only out of the class consciousness and revolutionary activity of the proletariat. Socialism must have industrial power, but this will develop not out of parliamentarism, not out of unity with a reactionary Labor Party, but out of the aggressive mass action of the industrial proletariat, out of awakening the masses to independent revolutionary activity, out of industrial unionism.
The moderate Socialist has never concerned himself with the struggles of the revolutionary Socialist to develop industrial power by means of industrial unionism; the moderate Socialist thinks of this only when it may promote reactionary purposes, never when it may promote the Revolution.
But the task of developing this industrial power is important. The coming period of strikes will provide an ex: cellent opportunity for the development of more effective forms of organization, for the construction of industrial unionism, for the building up of a revolutionary labor movement. This is a task that Socialism cannot shirk. The argument that the Socialist Party is a political party, and therefore cannot concern itself with problems of union organization, is a miserable subterfuge; a Socialist Party is a party of Socialism, of the proletarian class struggle, of the Revolution; and it must concern itself with every problem that affects the revolutionary struggle and the coming of Socialism. The problem of unionism, of revolutionary industrial unionism, is fundamental, all the more, since in its theoretical phase, the construction of an industrial state, the abolition of the political state, contains within itself the norms of the new proletarian state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. revolutionary union movement that must be an integral phase of our activity. Life itself will determine the Socialism must have an economic basis industrial power, That is one argument made in favor of a union Labor Party.
But does conservative unionism use its industrial power for large purposes? Is it using it for the release of Tom Mooney?