214 THE CLASS STRUGGLE MANIFESTO AND PROGRAM 215 geois reforms, so that the workers may be kept fit to produce the greatest profits at the greatest speed.
DANGERS TO AMERICAN SOCIALISM There is danger that the Socialist Party of America might make use of these purely bourgeois reforms to attract the workers votes, by claiming that they are victories for Socialism, and that they have been won by Socialist political action; when, as a matter of fact, the object of these master class measures is to prevent the growing class consciousness of the worker, and to divert them from their revolutionary aim. By agitating for these reforms, therefore, the Socialist Party would be playing into the hands of the American imperialists.
On the basis of the class struggle, then, the Socialist Party of America must re organize itself, must prepare to come to grips with the master class during the difficult period of capitalist re adjustment now going on. This it can do only by teaching the working class the truth about present day conditions; it must preach revolutionary industrial unionism, and urge all the workers to organize into industrial unions, the only form of labor organization which can cope with the power of great modern aggregations of capital. It must carry on its political campaigns, not merely as a means of electing officials to political office, as in the past, but as a year round educational campaign to arouse the workers to class conscious economic and political action, and to keep alive the burning ideal of revolution in the hearts of the people.
POLITICAL ACTION We assert with Marx that the class struggle is essentially a political struggle, and we can only accept his own oft repeated interpretation of that phrase. The class struggle, whether it manifests itself on the industrial field or in the direct struggle for governmental control, is essentially a struggle for the capture and destruction of the capitalist state. This is a political act. In this broader view of the term political, Marx includes revolutionary industrial action.
In other words, the objective of Socialist industrial action is political, in the sense that it aims to undermine the bourgeois state, which is nothing less than a machine for the oppression of one class by another and that no less so in a democratic republic than under a monarchy.
Political action is also and more generally used to refer to participation in election campaigns for the immediate purpose of winning legislative seats. In this sense, too, we urge the use of political action as a revolutionary weapon.
But both in the nature and the purpose of this form of political action, revolutionary Socialism and moderate Socialism are completely at odds.
Political action, revolutionary and emphasizing the implacable character of the class struggle, is a valuable means of propaganda, It must at all times struggle to arouse the revolutionary mass action of the proletariat its use is both agitational and obstructive. It must on all issues wage war upon Capitalism and the state. Revolutionary Socialism uses the forum of parliament for agitation; but it does not intend to and cannot use the bourgeois state as a means of introducing Socialism; this bourgeois state must be destroyed by the mass action of the revolutionary proletariat. The proletarian dictatorship in the form of a Soviet state is the immediate objective of the class struggle.
Marx declared that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes. This machinery must be destroyed. But moderate Socialism makes the state the center of its action.
The attitude towards the state divides the Anarchist (anarchosyndicalist. the moderate Socialist and the revolutionary Socialist.
Eager to abolish the state (which is the ultimate purpose of revolutionary Socialism. the Anarchist and Anarcho Syndicalist fail to realize that a state is necessary in the transition period from Capitalism to Socialism; the moderate Socialist proposes to use the bourgeois state with its fraudulent democracy, its illusory theory of unity of all the classes, its standing army, police and bureaucracy oppressing and baffling the masses; the revolutionary Socialist maintains that the bourgeois state must be completely destroyed, and proposes the organization of a new state the state of the organized producers of the Federated Soviets on the basis of which alone can Socialism be introduced.
Industrial Unionism, the organization of the proletariat in accordance with the integration of industry and for the overthrow of, Capita Nişm, is a necessary phase of revolutionary Socialist agitation.
Potentially, industrial unionism constructs the basis and develops the ideology of the industrial state of Socialism; but industrial unionism alone cannot perform the revolutionary act of seizure of the power of the state, since under the conditions of Capitalism it is impossible to organize the whole working class, or an overwhelming majority, into industrial unions.
It is the task of a revolutionary Socialist party to direct the struggles of the proletariat and provide a program for the culminating crisis. Its propaganda must be so directed that when this crisis comes, the workers will be prepared to accept a program of the following character. a) The organization of Workmen Councils; recognition of, and propaganda for, these mass organizations of the working class as instruments in the immediate struggle, as the form of expression of the class struggle, and as the instruments for the seizure of the power of the state and the basis of the new proletarian state of the organized producers and the dictatorship of the proletariat. b) Workmen control of industry, to be exercised by the industrial organizations (industrial unions or Soviets) of the workers and the industrial vote, as against government ownership or state control of industry. c) Repudiation of all national debts with provisions to safeguard small investors. d) Expropriation of the banks a preliminary measure for the complete expropriation of capital. e) Expropriation of the railways, and the large (trust)
organizations of capital no compensation be paid, as buying out the capitalists would insure a continuance of the exploitation of the workers; provision, however, to be to