270 THE CLASS STRUGGLE RADICALISM IN CALIFORNIA 271 the particular form of exploitation by which it, in turn, was being victimized. It represented that portion of the petit bourgeois who saw that the evil is not so much political as economic in its nature, and that political reforms, such as woman suffrage, initiative, referendum and recall, at their best, cannot bring relief, being, at best, not more than a means by which relief may be gotten. Socialism, that is the socialization of industries by means of an intelligent use of the ballot box, therefore appealed to them.
But it was a kind of post office Socialism which was to replace the individual capitalist by the state, which the petit bourgeois hopes to control with the help of the proletariat.
The petit bourgeois character of the Socialist Movement in California was evidenced by its painstaking effort to preserve its respectability. Upon the altar of that sickening petit bourgeois respectability principle after principle was sacrificed. Not Socialist principles, but consideration of public opinion and respectability determined the course of action taken by the party. Protests against this policy were met by the argument that one must consider the psychology of the American public. They could not and would not understand that what they actually meant was not American, but petit bourgeois psychology, and that a revolutionary movement cannot make concessions even to such a formidable god as psychology. Such concessions may be made in the form of propaganda but not in the substance propagated. Any victory won at the price of a concession of the substance is not a victory, but a defeat. In California we did not conquer, we have been conquered.
The largely agricultural character of the State of California forced the Socialist movement to deal with the agricultural problem. Here again the petit bourgeois character of this movement came out. For a Socialist the agricultural problem is one that concerns the people as a whole. It is the question how the agricultural production may be organized to feed all the people. Agricultural production is not only the means of livelihood for those directly employed in it, but of vital interest to the whole population. In a Socialist state of society the problem presents itself to this point of view. But under a capitalist system of society, as a part of the great class struggle between the classes, the agricultural question concerns itself chiefly with the agricultural labor, the farm hands and the migratory laborer.
The petit bourgeois Socialist movement of California never could see it from that point of view. For them the agricultural problem was always a problem of the farmers, in most cases the owners of the farms, the agricultural petit bourgeois. The most radical expression of its agricultural program may be summed up in the program of the Non Partisan League. Townley was their ideal of a practical Socialist.
Such policy could not be pursued without creating its natural reaction, alienation of the agricultural laborer and the migratory laborer. Instead of basing their activity upon the class struggle between exploited and exploiter, it was based on petit bourgeois reforms. The farm hand and the migratory laborer could not find in the Socialist movement the expression of their struggle but that of the struggle of their masters.
The Socialist movement in California was the first to recognize the fallacy of the ballot box as the only means of emancipation of the working class. The migratory laborer has no political rights. He does not live in one place long enough to establish a residence, and therefore is deprived of his right to vote. The Socialist movement, if it is to be a revolutionary working class movement, must comprise all workers regardless of their political rights, must use the political and economic power of the masses instead of relying on the voting power of the few whom the capitalist state permits to vote.
The petit bourgeois policies of the Socialist movement in California created, as a natural reaction, the anti political action attitude of the masses of the migratory laborers. Instead of uniting the working class it succeeded in splitting it by harnessing and hitching up that portion of the workers that possessed political rights, before the load of petit bourgeois politics, and by repudiating the many workers who are penalized by capitalist society for the crime of being compelled to travel from country to country, from state to state, in search of work, by political emasculation.
The historical events of the last two years will help to make out of the Socialist movement in California what it ought to be.
Shipbuilding has been introduced as a new and ever growing industry and has created the only foundation upon which a healthy Socialist movement may be built, an industrial proletariat.
These workers will gradually dominate the movement, hopelessly damaging its petit bourgeois respectability and creating in its stead the spirit of working class solidarity. The more this spirit will crowd out petit bourgeois policies, reforms, and, last but not least, members, the more will our movement conform to the actual requirements of revolutionary activities of the working class. The movement will be built upon the organization of all workers, regardless of their political rights; it will excercise its activities in the actual class struggle for the exploited against the exploiter. and it will see its aim no more in State Socialism, but in Communism, the organization of production by all the people and for all the people.