PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM 39 38 THE CLASS STRUGGLE with the development in the proletariat of a more conscious and aggressive spirit.
But Capitalism cannot reconstruct itself. Capitalism cannot solve the multiplying antagonisms of a system of production that is decaying, that is becoming international while its forms and control are still national. Demobilization will offer enormous problems of providing employment.
Adapting industry again to peace conditions means complications. The sharpening of imperialistic compétition and the new industrial efficiency, each will contribute in a measure to unemployment, to the necessity of still more oppression of the proletariat. Crises and antagonisms, industrial dislocation, will characterize Capitalism in the days new to come.
immediate conditions may, revolutionary Socialism always expresses its fundamental policy in theory and in action.
The necessity of revolutionary Socialism in the United States does not depend upon the immediate coming of the final revolutionary struggle; but revolutionary Socialism develops the coming of the final struggle by adapting itself to the prevailing conditions: out of these conditions emerge revolutionary consciousness and the final struggle.
The revolutionary crisis in Europe is surely influencing the consciousness of the American proletariat, which it is our task to express and bring to a focus; and this influence will become stronger as events sweep on.
But certain objective conditions are developing which, in proportion as Socialism appreciates the opportunity, will accelerate the development of class consciousness and revolutionary action.
Capitalism in the United States has profited enormously from the war. But, precisely because of this fact, Capitalism must aggressively and consciously accept Imperialism. The new industrial efficiency developed by Amefican Capitalism, the lower costs, the increasing volumes of profits, and surplus capital and goods, all this implies the necessity for new markets, for undeveloped territory, for investment and markets.
American Capitalism must pursue the practice of Imperialism. An understanding of Imperialism, as marking a new änd final stage of Capitalism and introducing the revolutionary epoch, is necessary; and equally necessary is the adoption of revolutionary tactics to fight Imperialism. Yet American Socialism to these problcnis of revolutionary theory and practice.
Simultaneously, American Capitalism will itself provide the objective conditions out of which can be developed the spirit for the revolutionary struggle. The war has sharpened imperialistic appetites and antagonisms. Capitalism has been shaken. Capitalism must reconstruct itself. In this reconstruction, new and more acute problems will develop, new forms for the exploitation of the proletariat, coincidentally concenWithout considering the influence of the developing international revolutionary crisis, the coming period will be characterized by giant industrial revolts, by strikes larger and more numerous than in the past, by an intense unrest of the industrial proletariat. These strikes, which will assume the form of mass revolts, will particularly affect the larger, basic industry, where the industrial proletariat is trated. Conciliation, reconstruction, understanding between employer and employe, will not prevent the coming of this period of great strikes, of mass industrial revolts, of potential revolutionary mass action.
This situation will offer a great opportunity to Socialism.
But if, as in the past, the Socialist Party uses these great strikes to make political capital, to prove to the workers the futility of strikes, and the power of the vote, then a great opportunity will be wasted. That is the petty bourgeois policy, which tries to compress the elemental action of the proletariat within the stultifying limits of parliamentary action, as such.
The Socialist Party, revolutionary Socialism, should use these strikes and mass industrial revolts to develop in the proletariat the consciousness of revolutionary mass action, to