424 THE CLASS STRUGGLE LABORISM AND SOCIALISM 425 Imperialism, and Imperialism is necessary to the existence of Capitalism; the state is repressive and undemocratic because that is essential to Capitalism, as are all the other evils of Capitalism.
The democratization of the state depends upon the democratization of industry; and the democratization of industry is conceivable only through the industrial self government of Communist Socialism. The attack must be made upon Capitalism itself; the supremacy of capital must be annihilated; with the annihilation of the bourgeois state and its bureaucratic machinery, with the conquest of power by the proletariat, reconstruction may proceed in a way that is immediately advantageous and ultimately realizes Socialism. Arthur Henderson, in an appeal to the intelligence of the ruling class, warns them of this impending evolution, and suggests that compromise (through accepting the Labor Party program) is the alternative to revolution. This is a policy of conciliation with the bourgeois state and Capitalism, away from Socialism. Capi lism can be overthrown only by the revolutionary proletariat; fundamental reconstruction is a class, and not a social process, a process initiated and developed by the proletariat. If reconstruction is a class process, then the supreme consideration of Socialism is the conquest of power by the proletariat as the starting point of reconstruction. Conquest of power by the proletariat means its mastery of the bourgeois state, the annihilation of this state by the new proletarian state of the organized producers. The supreme task of revolutionary Socialism is the conquest of power by the proletariat; all other measures are an expression of petty bourgeois Socialism, and counter revolutionary, which is precisely the official character of British Laborism, of the German Social Democracy, of moderate Socialism everywhere.
The British Labor Party program proposes a systematic plan of intensive social reform. The realization of this program would necessarily depend, considering prevailing conditions and the fact that it is to be introduced upon the basis of Capitalism, upon the prosperity and aggrandizement of British Imperialism. Social reforms are realizable only through a prosperous Imperialism, since Capitalism depends wholly upon Imperialism; and, accordingly, these reforms would be introduced by the oppression of colonial peoples, since this oppression is the mechanism of Imperialism. But, you may say, the Labor Party program declares that its proposed new social order must not be based on an enforced dominion over subject nations, subject races, subject colonies, subject classes, or a subject sex. This is a lofty ideal; but its realization depends wholly upon the realization of Socialism. The strength of Imperialism, and its danger, lies precisely in the possibility of improving the conditions of its own workers by an intensive exploitation of subject peoples: the spoils of Imperialism are not only distributed among the cliques of the ruling class, but among a portion of the workers. The objective of Imperialism is a prosperous nation of a few millions based upon the oppression of hundreds of millions of an alien race. Out of the prosperity of Imperialism, and out of that alone, can come the sinews for an intensive social reform program introduced on the basis of the bourgeois state.
It means not only that: it means the creation of a privileged caste of workers within the nation, who profit not only from the exploitation of foreign workers, but from the exploitation of the great mass of the industrial proletariat of unskilled labor. Under the historical conditions and limitations of Capitalism, the prosperity of the ruling class means the oppression of the bulk of the people; and better conditions for a section of the workers means the oppression of the great bulk of the workers constituting the industrial proletariat of unskilled labor.
There are sections of British Labor which realize this aspect of Imperialism, this inseparable connection between social reform and Imperialism, much more adequately than the official British Labor Party. The London Nation recently indicated this tendency very acutely. But there is still one element which has been omitted from this ingenious calculation of party interest. The workman (or his head men) will get something out of the new speculation in empire. Hence the new labor party. We say new labor party,