PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM 43 42 THE CLASS STRUGGLE tarian. The British Labor Party policy is a petty bourgeois policy, a counter revolutionary policy, as has been clearly apparent from its unity with imperialistic Capitalism in the British Cabinet, its declaration that the war was a war of democracy, its accepting petty bourgeois liberalism instead of proletarian Socialism, its nationalistic proposals concerning Ireland, its virtual acquiescence in the expulsion of Maxim Litvinoff from England, its accepting the resolution of the Inter Allied Labor and Socialist Conference favoring democratic intervention in Russia, its bureaucracy through Arthur Henderson acting against every development of revolutionary energy in the British proletariat. The British Labor Party has been a typical party of laborism, in that it struggles for a place in the governing system of things, for petty advantages to the upper layers of the working class, instead of struggling for the overthrow of the governing bourgeois system. The British Labor Party has been and is a party of social Imperialism. a policy characteristic of laborism and petty bourgeois Socialism. characteristic of laborism is that it acts against the broad masses of the industrial proletariat, against the unorganized proletariat of unskilled labor. The labor government of Australia, once in power, used armed force to break the strikes of unorganized, unskilled workers. Moreover, the labor government, instead of introducing Socialism, as was expected by the gullible Socialist, strengthened Capitalism, became the unifying centre of bourgeois reaction camouflaged in labor and liberal colors. When the war broke out. labor Australia was even more patriotic and imperialistic than bourgeois Canada, labor Premier William Morris Hughes becoming the particular pet of the ultra imperialistic forces of British Capitalism. There has been a revolt in the Labor Party against the excesses of Hughes, and more radical currents are developing under pressure of the industrial proletariat and revolutionary Socialism, but the tendency still remains characteristic of a party of laborism.
An American Labor Party would be an expression of the of The policy of the of is clearly reactionary. It acts against the great masses of the unorganized and the unskilled, as is proven by its attitude during strikes. The of is an organization of craft unions, that splits the working class; an organization, moreover, that represents only a very small part of the working class, being largely an organized system of job trusts. The of during the war has pursued a policy of the utmost reaction, even more reactionary than many circles of Capitalism; it united with Capitalism against Socialism in the United States, and in Europe through its Labor Missions. and a Labor Party would pursue an identical reactionary, petty bourgeois policy.
There are elements in the Socialist Party, whose policy is not at all Socialist but the policy of reactionary trade unionism and laborism, who would welcome a Labor Party, and urge merging with it. That would be suicidal; there must be an independent Socialist Party: to merge with a Labor Party would promote confusion, compromise and disaster.
But it must be admitted that the official majority policy of the Socialist Party in action is, in substance, the policy of Laborism disguised with Socialist phraseology. Should our party retain this policy, it would become the fifth wheel of the wagon, serve no necessary mission, and would either decay or become absorbed in the Labor Party. The Socialist Party would have to irrevocably separate itself from a Labor Party and wage war upon it by means of revolutionary Socialism, The movement to organize a Labor Party, all the developments now transforming the world, are a call to Socialist reconstruction, to the annihilation of moderate, petty bourgeois Socialism. The Socialist Party must re organize in accord with the new conditions, must adopt the policy of revolutionary Socialism, of the Bolsheviki accept the ideas now developing a new pulse in international Socialism, and which alone represent Socialism and Marxism.