26 THE CLASS STRUGGLE PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM 27 ous.
And in this fight, worker proletarian, you know your place.
Never before in history has the working class had an opportunity as now, but never before has its situation been so perilAnd the danger lies precisely in the fact that capital, after having concluded the world war and obtained a hold on all the world resources, can without hesitation prescribe its conditions to the proletariat: namely, a thousand years of slavery.
To refrain from the conflict now is equivalent to treason to oneself and to the future; there are only two possible roads. slavery or freedom.
Problems of American Socialism By Louis FRAINA The ultimate decision as to whether Capitalism or Socialism shall control the world will be rendered in the United States. As American Capitalism is now the arbiter of international Imperialism, so the American proletariat will become the arbiter of international Socialism. This imposes a great responsibility upon American Socialism, determines its problems and the international character of its policy.
Even now, after the accomplishments of the war, the enormous power of American Capitalism is not fully appreciated. It is not appreciated because of the rapid ending of the war, of America small sacrifice in men; one must probe below the surface to understand the decisive role of the United States in the war. But facts are facts, The United States provided the men and munitions that steadied the wavering front in France, providing means for the offensive; and it provided that deceptive ideology of democracy which steadied the wavering morale of the French, British and Italians, that seduced large sections of the masses, and, in Britain, Belgium and France, seduced the dominant Socialism and Laborism. The threat of American Capitalism to Socialism is not alone physical, it is equally moral: moral, in the sense that its deceptive democracy is a splendid means for promoting Imperialism and seducing the masses.
The United States has become a world power. It will maintain that position potential of evil unless the proletáriat acts for Socialism. American Capitalism is perhaps the most highly developed in the world, the most efficient, the mightiest; it controls a large section of the world richest territory, bursting with natural wealth; it has tremendous resources of raw materials within its own borders.
and it can at any moment seize upon the tremendous resources of Mexico, Central and South America, convert them into means of conquest. Imperialistic finance capital nowhere is as aggressive, commands as much power, as in the United States. The wealth of the United States is twice as large as that of Great Britain which is much more wealthy than its nearest rival. And this wealth is simply a symbol expressive of the enormous capacity for productivity inherent in American Capitalism, a terrific power. The United States has a large navy, has proved that it can easily develop a large army, and is laying plans for the largest navy in the world, and will retain universal military service in one form or another. American Capitalism has all the physical reserves for aggression and is becoming the gendarme of the world.
These physical reserves are supplemented by moral ones.
In no other large nation is the labor movement as reactionary as in the United States; in no other large nation is organized Socialism as loose, as purposeless, as petty bourgeois, as in the United States. Should Great Britain, France and Italy decide upon complete military intervention in Russia, the revolutionary proletariat may march into action surely in France and Italy; but should the United States decide upon this brutal military adventure, the American proletariat on the whole will acquiesce, and its representatives will manufacture justifications for the offensive against Socialism and the coming new civilization. And all this, not because the