PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM 41 40 THE CLASS STRUGGLE develop the conception and practice of political strikes, to make it realize that its action should centre in the large plants, that when it wants to act, its action should develop out of the mill, mine and factory. Our political action should become part and parcel of this mass action, should promote the aggressive industrial struggle. To broaden a strike into a demonstration, to develop, out of these, revolutionary mass action against Capitalism and the state that is the policy of revolutionary Socialism, that is the policy which will transform the coming period of strikes definitely into a period of revolutionary action, preparing the mass action of the Revolution.
The proletariat must be made to realize that the futility of industrial action lies not in its being industrial action, as such, but in that it is incomplete, does not broaden and deepen itself into class action, is not sufficiently general and aggressive. The proletariat must be made to realize that its great strength lies in its control of industry; and it is necessary to develop the consciousness and forms of workers control of industry. The proletariat must be made to realize that its characteristic tactics consist of industrial mass action developing into revolutionary mass action, and that through this class struggle of the industrial masses alone can the Socialist proletariat conquer.
And Socialism must be made to realize that the value of parliamentary action lies not in constructive legislation and bureaucratic, petty bourgeois reform measures, but in revolutionary criticism, in developing the industrial action of the masses, in awakening their revolutionary consciousness; and that when the class struggle turns into a test of power, it is the revolutionary mass action of the proletariat that will conquer, parliaments and parliamentary activity will disappear: politics may assist in developing the Revolution, but can never become the instrument of Revolution, unceasing practice of Socialism must be revolutionary mass action; the unceasing object of Socialism must be the revolutionary conquest of power, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
An important problem is the movement developing among the unions of the American Federation of Labor to organize a Labor Party; in some cities this has been done, in others the proposal has been approved.
This may, in a measure, be a reflex of similar action among the Canadian unions. It is, in still larger measure, an expression of the new currents that the war and events in Europe are developing in the world working class. expressed in immature and conservative form. It is, accordingly, a move that, while it should not meet enthusiastic and uncritical acceptance, merits the serious study of the Socialist who does not flee from reality by means of phrases, nor accepts every reality as real, but who studies the social alignment, its development and peculiar forms, as the basis for appropriate Socialist tactics.
The organization of an American Labor Party may prove a step forward for the of but not necessarily a step forward for the American proletariat. The of which has insisted all along upon no politics in the unions while dickering and compromising with Republican and Democratic politicians, may develop a cleaner sense of independence by means of independent politics, in spite of the petty bourgeois forms these politics will necessarily assume.
It may, moreover, by showing the futility of of politics, impress upon the proletariat the necessity of revolutionary Socialist action.
The New York Call wails that there is no necessity for a Labor Party, since the Socialist Party has been in the field for twenty years. This is either an admission that the Socialist Party in practice is no more than a Labor Party, or a characteristic Menshevik refusal to admit the fundamental differences between a Labor Party and a Socialist Party. In either case, it is counter Socialism.
What is a Labor Party? The Labor Party, in England and Australia, has been, from the standpoint of revolutionary Socialism, hopelessly reactionary, consistently un prole