34 THE CLASS STRUGGLE PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM 35 Russia and Germany, concerning the Bolsheviki (although he, too, has jubilated over the Socialist Republics in Germany and Russia, in the approved style. he accepted the war for democracy (indeed, much worse, declared in April this year, that the war should be supported as it was a war to save the Russian Revolution. he has, in the New York City Board of Aldermen, voted in favor of the Liberty Loan campaign, adopted the disgraceful policy of the petty bourgeois reformer and bureaucrat. Algernon Lee, in short, is a typical representative of that Socialism which collapsed during the war, and which is directly counter revolutionary in Europe. According to the policy promulgated in the St. Louis declaration against the war, our party should align itself with the Italian Socialist Party, with the Bolshevik Communist Party of Russia and the Bolshevik Communist Labor Party of Germany; but Lee will align the party with Haase and even Ebert, with the Mensheviki, with the majority party in France, which greets Woodrow Wilson enthusiastically, with the British Labor Party. This is the reactionary, official policy of the Socialist party; considering this, how much value is there in accepting the Bolsheviki in words?
Action is necessary. Emphasizing the implications of accepting the Bolsheviki is necessary the necessity for the revolutionary reconstruction of Socialism.
lutionary peace? But it can at least maintain its Socialist, proletarian integrity, in theory and practice, develop reserves for action in the days to come.
The proletarian revolution is in action: that is a definite fact. And equally definite should be our relation to this fact.
The immediate requirement imposed upon us is the struggle to prevent intervention in Russia and in Germany.
The party officially is pledged against intervention; but an infinitely larger and more aggressive campaign could be carried on against intervention. The party will spend thousands of dollars, will use tremendous energy, to elect Socialist incompetents such as Algernon Lee and Meyer London; but apparently, in most cases, it is satisfied with a gesture concerning intervention. Resolutions and declarations are not enough: they should become life in intensive agitation, developing the ideology of action, at least, as a preliminary to action itself.
Moreover, our agitation against intervention pursues, largely, a petty bourgeois policy. Faith in President Wilson, demands upon Congress, the attempt to create understanding with the liberals, the policy of petty bourgeois democracy all this characterizes the campaign against intervez? tion. This is a clear abandonment of Socialism and the class struggle. The campaign against intervention should in all its aspects assume the character of Socialism and the class struggle that alone develops power. The campaign should become a campaign to move the masses, to set them in motion; the campaign should center in the large industrial plants. Get the workers to march out of the plants, go to other plants and pull out other workers, broaden the scope of this industrial action into mass action that is the policy of the militant proletariat and revolutionary Socialism: only the aggressive action of the industrial proletariat can prevent the government from putting over its reactionary plans.
The workers won move? But where is that written? And, moreover, is particular agitation justified only if immediate The international situation, at this moment, is characterized by the developing revolutionary struggle against Capitalism and Imperialism, and for a Socialist peace.
Peace with revolution that is the tactic of the revolutionary proletariat, in Russia and in Germany, and developing in the other European nations. But the official majority in the party still prates of a democratic peace, of a peace without annexations and indemnities, of a liberal peace on the basis of Capitalism. This is sheer petty bourgeois ineptitude. as if there could be any real peace without the overthrow of Capitalism! The Socialist Party cannot determine a revo