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 The 
 Militant Proletariat 
 
 BY 
 
 AUSTIN LEWIS 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
 
 CO-OPERATIVE
 
 Copyright 1911 
 By Charles H. Kerr & Company 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LlBr..
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Socialism and the Proletariat 5 
 
 The Militant Proletariat 40 
 
 What is a Union ? 99 
 
 Politics 153
 
 The Militant Proletariat 
 
 I 
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 
 
 The Socialist movement has based itself upon 
 the proletariat. That fact is imdeniable. From 
 the time of the Marxian statement in the Com- 
 munist Manifesto, there could no longer be any 
 doubt that henceforward the Socialist movement 
 relied upon the proletarian class alone, as the 
 stimulating factor in the social revolution. This 
 was not always the case, for the early Socialists, 
 who had proclaimed their Utopian ideas prior to 
 the publication of the Communist Manifesto, had 
 calculated upon something quite other than pro- 
 letarianism for their victory over the oppression 
 and misery with which they saw themselves sur- 
 rounded, and which it was their benevolent and 
 philanthropic mission to destroy. The early So- 
 cialists had sought to impress their ideas upon 
 the more fortunate, and, by a sort of religion 
 and experimental society building, to purge the 
 world of the evils which possessed it and pre- 
 pare for a paradisiacal condition of equality and 
 well-being. Against these concepts the pioneers 
 of the modern Socialist movement were com- 
 pelled to struggle at the very inception, and thus
 
 6 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 was written the Communist Manifesto, the first 
 proclamation of the fundamental principles now 
 underlying the world-wide Socialist movement, 
 which asks the question, "In what relation do 
 the Communists stand to the proletarians as a 
 whole?" and replies, "The Communists do not 
 form a separate party opposed to other working 
 class parties. They have no interests separate 
 and apart from those of the proletariat as a 
 whole. They do not set up any sectarian prin- 
 ciples of their own by which to shape and mould 
 the proletarian movement." In other words, the 
 Communists, who are the modern Socialists, the 
 term Communist having been used merely to 
 differentiate them from the Utopians who had 
 brought the term Socialist into disrepute, do not 
 consider themselves as apart from the pro- 
 letariat but as constituting part of the proletarian 
 army, differentiating themselves from the or- 
 dinary proletarian only by their knowledge of the 
 direction and end of the march. Thus the 
 Manifesto declares, "The Communists are there- 
 fore, on the one hand, practically the most ad- 
 vanced and resolute section of the working class 
 parties of every country, that section which 
 pushes forward all others; on the other hand, 
 theoretically they have over the great mass of 
 the proletariat the advantage of clearly under- 
 standing the line of march, the conditions and 
 the ultimate general results of the proletarian 
 movement." 
 
 There is no question, therefore, that the So- 
 cialist movement from its early stages has re- 
 garded the proletariat as the means of revolution, 
 as the chief agent in accomplishing the over-
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT / 
 
 throw of existing social and political conditions 
 and substituting for them something quite other, 
 and this notion by no means expired with its 
 enunciation in the Manifesto. It has remained 
 and still remains as the very foundation doc- 
 trine of the Socialist Movement. Marx said, 
 "The proletarian movement is the self-conscious -~| 
 independent movement of the immense majority 
 in the interest of the immense majority." In 
 another place, he states, "The proletarian, the 
 lowest stratum of our present society, cannot 
 stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole 
 superincumbent structure of official society being 
 sprung into the air," The concluding words of 
 the Communist Manifesto in which the working 
 class of the world is called upon to unite, upon the 
 ground that it has only chains to lose and a 
 world to gain, have become a universal war cry 
 of the Socialist movement, are translated into 
 all modern languages and have already produced 
 a bulky mass of commentary. They may be re- 
 garded as the very essence of the Socialist move- 
 ment. Even today they have not lost their 
 potency and the contest which is waged in the 
 ranks of the Socialist movement has its practical 
 inception in the difference of opinion as to how 
 far a given line of action represents or fails to 
 represent proletarian interests. 
 
 The ideas of the proletarian are regarded, 
 therefore, as the materialization of the Socialist 
 philosophy. The ideas of the proletarian are the 
 ideas of socialism; the aspirations of the pro- 
 letarian are the aspirations of socialism, the 
 victory of socialism is at once the triumph and 
 the annihilation of the proletarian, for, by the
 
 8 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 institution of the socialist state, the proletarian 
 vanishes, he becomes translated into something 
 different, namely, the citizen of a co-operative 
 commonwealth. 
 
 The later exponents of socialism have been 
 notably inspired by this view. Thus, Liebknecht 
 says, "For our party and for our party tactics 
 there is but one valid basis, the basis of the 
 class struggle out of which the Social Demo- 
 cratic Party has sprung up, and out of which 
 alone it can draw the necessary strength to bid 
 defiance to every storm and to all its enemies. 
 The founders of our party, Marx, Engels, and 
 Lasselle, impressed upon the workingmen the 
 necessity of the class character of our movement 
 so deeply that down to a very recent time there 
 were no considerable deviations or getting off 
 the track" (Liebknecht, "No Compromise," Kerr, 
 Chicago). 
 
 Not only so but the writer already quoted 
 considers that the considerable admixture of an 
 element other than proletarian is actually in- 
 imical to the socialist movement ; thus he says : 
 "In short we have now in Germany a phenome- 
 non which has been observable in France for half 
 a century and longer, and which has contributed 
 much to the confusion of- the party relations in 
 France, viz., that a part of the radical bour- 
 geoisie rallies round the Socialist flag without 
 understanding the nature of socialism. This 
 political socialism, which in fact is only philan- 
 thropic humanitarian radicalism, has retarded 
 the development of socialism in France exceed- 
 ingly. It has diluted and blurred the principles 
 and weakened the socialist party because it has
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT ^ 
 
 brought with it troops upon which no reliance 
 could be plased in the decisive movement." 
 
 The tactics of the Socialist movement are 
 thus described by Liebknecht: "This tactic con- 
 sists in keeping clear the class character of the 
 Socialist party as a proletarian party, to train 
 it by agitation, education and organization for 
 the victorious completion of the emancipation 
 struggle, to wage a systematic war against the 
 class state." 
 
 The result of this class war is more fully stated 
 by the same leader thus : "The political power 
 which the social democrary aims at and which 
 it will own, no matter what its enemies may do, 
 has not for its object the establishment of a 
 dictatorship of the proletariat, but the suppres- 
 sion of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, just 
 as the class struggle which the proletariat carries 
 on is only a counter struggle in self defense to 
 resist the class struggle of the bourgeoisie against 
 the proletariat, and the end of this struggle by 
 the victory of the proletariat will be the abolition 
 of the class struggle in every form." 
 
 Kautsky, who may be considered as more mod- 
 erate than Liebknecht in many ways, and less 
 endowed with the reckless fire of the propa- 
 gandist, still accepts the same position, or at least 
 did so in 1899, for in his "Class Struggle" 
 (translation by William E. Bohn, Kerr Com- 
 pany, Chicago) he says: 
 
 "This social transformation means the libera- 
 tion not only of the proletariat but of the whole 
 human race ; only the working class, however, 
 can bring it about. All other classes, despite 
 their conflicting interests, maintain their exist-
 
 10 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 ence on the basis of the private ownership of the 
 means of production and therefore have a com- 
 mon motive for supporting the principles of the 
 existing social order," and the Erfurt Program, 
 which represented very largely the point of view 
 of Social Democratic Germany twenty years ago 
 and is still perhaps the most complete document 
 on the theoretical and political side of the move- 
 ment, states : "Forever greater grows the number 
 of proletarians, more gigantic the army of su- 
 perfluous laborers, and sharper the opposition 
 between exploiters and exploited. The class 
 struggle between the bourgeoisie and the pro- 
 letariat is the common work of all industrial 
 countries ; it divides modern society into two op- 
 posing camps and the warfare between them 
 constantly increases in bitterness." 
 
 It is true that there has always been a tendency 
 among certain Socialists to minimize the im- 
 portance of the class struggle, and to place the 
 propaganda upon a footing which would be ac- 
 ceptable to other than members of the prole- 
 tarian class. It cannot be said however with any 
 degree of truth that such efforts have had any 
 real effect upon the movement as a whole. The 
 proletarian form of the Socialist movement is 
 that which flourishes and develops. Marxism is 
 the dominant note wherever the Socialist move- 
 ment has firmly planted itself. This does not 
 mean that philosophic Marxism, in the narrow 
 and restricted sense in which the term is em- 
 ployed by some economic deterministe, is com- 
 prehended by the majority or even by a numer- 
 ous minority of the members of the Socialist 
 party. It does mean, however, that the idea that
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 11 
 
 the ultimate destiny of the Socialist movement 
 rests in the hands of the working class tends more 
 and more to prevail, and that the conception of 
 the Socialist movement as representing the prole- 
 tariat and implying in its victory the successful 
 revolution of the proletariat is becoming the 
 dominant conception. In fact, the harmony 
 which has developed of late between the working 
 class in politics and the Socialist party tends 
 more and more to impress this not only upon 
 the mind of the Socialist agitator and the work- 
 ing class, but upon the intelligence and the fears 
 of those who discover that what they had re- 
 garded as a dangerous abstraction is fast be- 
 coming an actual and threatening reality. 
 
 The candidates for admission to the Socialist 
 Party are in many cases compelled to sign a 
 pledge that they believe in the class struggle, so 
 that it is intended that there shall be no misun- 
 derstanding with regard to the objects and aims 
 of the Socialist Party. The class struggle means 
 the unavoidable conflict, not necessarily physical, - 
 between the working class and the rest of society 
 and the Socialist Party advertises itself therefore 
 as the champion of the working class in this 
 conflict. The term "proletarian" has become so 
 widely known, owing to the Socialist agitation, 
 that it has been actually adopted into the lan- 
 guage in spite of much protest. A little while 
 ago the newspapers were indignantly hostile to 
 its employment, claiming that the very expression 
 was in itself insulting to that superior person, 
 the American workingman, but the latter has 
 more lately developed a taste for the word as 
 being more representative and complete than
 
 12 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 any other and as a result there is little doubt 
 that an expression which was until very recently 
 regarded as a term of opprobrium will in all 
 probability, by virtue of the gains of the Socialist 
 and the victories of the working class, actually 
 become a distinctive term, regarded as an honor 
 by those who bear it and with hatred by the 
 others. 
 
 It is certain that in the Socialist Party and 
 movement itself the word it not looked down 
 upon. On the contrary, it is carried with some- 
 thing very much akin to pride. A working man 
 who is a Socialist calls himself a proletarian 
 without any apology therefor, and with perfect 
 naturalness, as though he were to call himself an 
 American or a German. In fact, he frequently 
 uses the term in contradistinction to the national 
 term and will often reply that he has no na- 
 tionality, that he is a proletarian, thus placing his 
 class distinctiveness against and in antagonism 
 to national separativeness ; in fact, advertising 
 the internationalism of his class. 
 
 The criticism is made of even members of 
 the Socialist Party itself, that they are not pro- 
 letarians, and even loyal and devoted members 
 of classes other than the proletarian have much 
 trouble in overcoming the inherent dislike of the 
 proletarians, who frequently state, as a ground 
 for their suspicions, that the person under dis- 
 cussion is not a proletarian. 
 
 If the word is used by the members of the 
 working class as a distinctive appellation it is 
 not so employed by those who have no claim 
 to it. A professional man, for instance, would 
 have no hesitancy in proclaiming himself a So-
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 13 
 
 cialist, but he neither could nor would call him- 
 self a proletarian. He would on the other hand 
 not be backward in saying that he considered 
 the interests of the proletarians as paramount, 
 and would declare that the Socialist movement 
 exists for the benefit of the proletarian. 
 
 In so far as the Socialist political movement 
 stands for the proletariat it is in accord with 
 the fundamental Socialist doctrines ; wherever 
 it steps aside from that service to the proletariat 
 it is recreant to them. The strength of the So- 
 cialist movement depends not primarily upon the 
 number of votes which it polls, nor upon the 
 number of parliamentary seats which it occu- 
 pies, nor upon the number of municipalities 
 which it controls in the name of socialism, but 
 most and chiefly upon the degree with which 
 it pursues the interests of the proletarian ex- 
 clusively. 
 
 There can be no question of the inseparability 
 of socialism and the proletariat. The Social rev- 
 olution is admittedly dependent upon the self- 
 conscious growth of the proletarian class. 
 
 This could not indeed have been put more 
 strongly than by Liebknecht, who, in his letter 
 to the Marxists at Epernay, August 10th, 1899, 
 declares: "On the ground of the class struggle 
 we are invincible; if we leave it we are lost, be- 
 cause we are no longer Socialists. The strength 
 and power of socialism rest in the fact that we 
 are leading a class struggle." As far as the 
 Marxist wing of the Socialist movement is con- 
 cerned there can be no doubt as to its dependence 
 upon the class struggle concept. The social revo- 
 lution rests therefore in the hands of the pro- 
 letariat.
 
 14 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 THE PROLETARIAT 
 
 The proletariat is the product of modern capi- 
 taHsm. It is so regarded by the Sociahsts, and 
 in any discussion involving the Socialist con- 
 ception of the proletariat it is necessary to bear 
 this in mind. There was no proletarian class in 
 the Middle Ages. "Proletarian" signifies a class 
 distinct from its predecessors in modern history. 
 It does not mean poor, or degraded, or per- 
 taining to the slums or anything else that is vile 
 and low, as the use of the word so often implies. 
 
 The pipletarian is the product of the modern 
 world. He is brought into being by the very 
 conditions against which he must contend. Thus 
 the Communist Manifesto declared: "But not 
 only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that 
 bring death to itself ; it has also called into exist- 
 ence the men who are to wield those weapons — 
 the modern working class — the proletarians." 
 Hence the term proletarian and modern working 
 class are held to be synonymous. 
 
 What was the reason then for inventing a new 
 term? It appears in the next paragraph of the 
 Manifesto. "In proportion as the bourgeoisie, 
 i. e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion 
 is the proletariat, the modern working class, de- 
 veloped, a class of laborers, who live only as 
 long as they find work, and who find work only 
 so long as their labor increases capital. These 
 laborers who must sell themselves piecemeal are 
 a commodity, like every other article of com- 
 merce, and are consequently exposed to all the 
 vicissitudes of competition to all the fluctuations 
 of the market."
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 15 
 
 The proletarian therefore has no property, he 
 has no place in society as at present constituted 
 except to sink himself in his work and to pass 
 on his vitality to his descendants, who will per- 
 form the same functions and in their turn dis- 
 appear. 
 
 To find a name which would fit such a class 
 one had to go to the history of Rome. The 
 break-up of the small farms, the extinction of 
 the peasant proprietorship, and the merging of 
 vast numbers of formerly independent Romans 
 in the City, had produced a class denominated 
 proletarii, or "breeders," who were of no ac- 
 count except to produce descendants. This term 
 was applied to the modern working class as we 
 have seen and hence arose the expression: "pro- 
 letarian," a term much hated but rapidly carrying 
 with it the implications of power which recent 
 achievements in industry and politics under its 
 name necessarily convey. 
 
 To have contemplated the working class, at 
 the time of the writing of the Communist Mani- 
 festo, as the means of its own liberation was one 
 of the most daring conceptions. Never had a 
 large part of humanity been lower than in the 
 commercial and industrial communities at that 
 time. Perhaps the statement of the Manifesto, 
 "at this stage the laborers still form an inco- 
 herent mass scattered over the whole country and 
 broken up by their mutual competition," ex- 
 presses their tondition more completely than 
 many pages of attempted description. Engels' 
 famous "Condition of the Working Class in Eng- 
 land" shows the depths to which the working class 
 had fallen and the misery which accompanied
 
 16 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 the beginnings of the modern system. The blue 
 books of the day and the ParHamentary debates 
 all bear witness that the estimate of the Mani- 
 festo was not exaggerated and that the condition 
 of the working masses was deplorable. How out 
 of this mass of misery was the redemption to 
 come? Whence was the revolutionary impulse 
 to proceed? 
 
 Evidently not from the mass itself, as it was 
 in the middle of the nineteenth century. A few 
 years before parts of that mass had in a delirium 
 of suffering destroyed factories and wrecked ma- 
 chinery as a protest against their tortures. They 
 had of course been whipped back to the kennels 
 again. The constabulary and the yeomanry 
 killed and wounded, the judge sat and sentenced, 
 and the sleek and complacent wrote novels and 
 essays to show the inherent foolishness of ma- 
 chine smashing. Only old Carlyle growled cyni- 
 cal remonstrance at the powers that were, and 
 the Christian Socialists tried to protest in terms 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 In spite of all, however, the worker became 
 more and more dependent upon the machine, and 
 continually more subordinated to the movements 
 of the machine. And the machine, though his 
 tyrant, came in the long run to be his deliverer. 
 Gathered about the machine he learned organi- 
 zation ; trained and drilled in subordination to the 
 movements of the machine he learned discipline 
 for his own ends, so that the proletarian entering 
 the factory system, "an incoherent mass," passes 
 out of it, still a proletariat, it is true, but a pro- 
 letariat who has learnt the art of organization 
 and of political expression.
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 17 
 
 Gradually from the mass of the proletarians, 
 groups begin to emerge who engage in contest 
 with the employers. These groups naturally 
 come into collision with the employing class 
 at the point of contact, that is, in the shop. At 
 first there is no question of anything beyond the 
 price of labor. The bargain is made in terms of 
 the bourgeois system itself, and there is an effort, 
 just as between rival merchants, to higgle the 
 market and arrive at a price for labor. The effort 
 of the labor oganization is directed towards main- 
 taining the rate of wages, which is seldom more 
 than is required for necessities in accordance 
 with a standard which tends to vary somewhat 
 in different localities. 
 
 The fact is that the skilled laborers were first 
 to form unions and combinations for the pur- 
 pose of improving their economic conditions, as 
 it was more difficult to fill their places. The con- 
 sequence of this was the success of skilled labor 
 in effecting an organization to stand up against 
 reductions and in some instances to gain actual 
 concessions from the employing class. The fol- 
 lowing words of the Erfurt Program are as true 
 today as when they were written: 
 
 "Forever greater grows the number of proletarians, 
 more gigantic the army of superfluous laborers, and 
 sharper the opposition between exploiters and exploited. 
 The class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the 
 proletariat is the common mark of all industrial coun- 
 tries, it divides modern society into two opposing 
 camps and the warfare between them constantly in- 
 creases in bitterness." 
 
 The increasing difficulty of escape from the 
 proletarian class is an important consideration, 
 for the conflict might be avoided by the pro- 
 letarian ceasiijg to be proletarian and climbing:
 
 18 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 into some class where he might have more se- 
 curity than in the proletarian class. 
 
 In fact there is no question that the possibility 
 presented to the active and clever proletarian in 
 the United States to escape from his own class 
 into a more secure postition has had very con- 
 siderable influence in causing the comparative 
 backwardness of the working class to assert it- 
 self in the United States. 
 
 Such a condition, however, could not in the 
 very nature of things be permanent. Indeed, 
 it has practically come to an end with much 
 greater rapidity than could have been reasonably 
 anticipated. The practical absorption of the 
 public lands, largely helped by immense confis- 
 catory grants which the greater capitalism in the 
 shape of the transportation companies demanded 
 as an essential prerequisite to their engaging in 
 business ; the extension of the greater capitalism 
 into practically every remunerative form of pro- 
 ductive industry, the extension along with it of 
 organization in the distributive system have all 
 combined to make farming and small business, 
 the two most obvious ways by which the pro- 
 letarian might hope to escape from his prole- 
 tarianism, impossible. There can be no question 
 that the avenues of personal development in 
 the United States are fast becoming closed and 
 that henceforward the American working man 
 will have to rely more upon his efforts as a 
 member of his class than upon his own personal 
 efforts for his individual success. Henceforth 
 his lot in life becomes to an ever increasing de- 
 gree dependent upon the conditions of others 
 like himself. He cannot rise out of the working
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 19 
 
 class. He is inevitably and irremediably con- 
 fined to the class to which he belongs and his 
 economic position becomes more and more de- 
 termined by the ecofiomic position of the class. 
 Hence his whole salvation depends upon class 
 action. 
 
 Where it becomes clear to the average man 
 that his chance of a decent livelihood and his 
 sole opportunity for the advancement of his 
 family is dependent upon the advancement of 
 his class, it is clear that the class struggle, upon 
 which, as we have seen, socialism lays such em- 
 phasis, is not far away, even if it is not actually 
 at the doors. 
 
 The realization of this fact of the interdepend- 
 ence of the members of the class one upon an- 
 other, in other words the substitution of a col- 
 lective for an individual ethic, is, generally speak- 
 ing, a matter of considerable time, but events 
 have moved so rapidly in the United States that 
 a few years have sufficed to cause the formation 
 of a party actually pledged to the class struggle 
 and to develop that party up to the point where 
 it becomes a very distinct factor in public af- 
 fairs. 
 
 It must be remembered that the formation of 
 such a party in the United States and the growth 
 of the sentiments which the development and 
 growth of such a party imply mean much more 
 than the development of any of the Social Dem- 
 ocratic parties heretofore known in Europe. This 
 is so, because the United States starts from a 
 place much further up the line of political prog- 
 ress. Even in the strongest of the European So- 
 cialist parties there is a strong mixture of bour-
 
 20 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 geois radicalism because the complete liberation 
 from feudalism has not been entirely accom- 
 plished. Here, the establishment of a strong So- 
 cialist movement based upon a class struggle 
 theory necessarily implies an attack upon the 
 economic foundations of the modern state, which 
 is certain to be vehemently resisted by the pos- 
 sessing classes. Hence follows a class war or 
 something closely approximating it, unless a 
 recognition of the actual conditions brings about 
 such a reasonable state of mind that steady 
 progress in the Socialist direction is peacefully 
 pursued. 
 
 So far in Europe the governing classes have 
 been wise enough to avoid the revolutionary 
 issue by the passing of remedial legislation and 
 the gradual yielding to the necessity of provision 
 for the least able and the common laborer, the 
 woman worker and the child. The European 
 governments have already doomed supply and de- 
 mand in labor and laissez-faire to the scrap heap. 
 Only in the United States do the ghosts of dead 
 bourgeois economists still walk and the bogies 
 of fifty years ago are paraded in the face of the 
 progressive workman of today. It is a condition 
 ominous in the extreme and one which wise 
 statesmanship would have done everything pos- 
 sible to avoid. 
 
 In no department has the happy-go-lucky char- 
 acter of American statemanship made itself so 
 conspicuous as in that of social questions. This 
 has arisen partly from the fact that the new 
 conditions have developed so rapidly that the 
 need of governmental interference for the benefit 
 of inhabitants of the United States had not time
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 21 
 
 to penetrate the average brain ; besides, the great 
 mass of common labor having been largely alien, 
 its needs have not so far impressed themselves 
 with any strength upon the mind of the politi- 
 cian, particularly as such a large percentage does 
 not vote. 
 
 Warning voices to American statesmen have 
 been raised from across the Atlantic many times 
 in recent years. None, however, have been 
 stronger or more able than the statement of 
 Sidney and Beatrice Webb in their introduction 
 to "Problems of Modern Industry," second edi- 
 tion, 1902. 
 
 Speaking of the effect of the trust they say : 
 
 The competent, "pushful," native-born American 
 will get on all right under this capitalist autocracy. 
 He will, indeed, have to give up the chance of becom- 
 ing his own master, and practically, that of "making 
 a pile." But what will be virtually the civil service 
 of industry, the great salaried hierarchy of the Trusts, 
 will offer a safer and, on the average, a better paid 
 career for industrial talent than the old chances of 
 the market. Every man of skill and energy, compe- 
 tence and "go" will be wanted in the gigantic organiza- 
 tion of the new industry. Brains will be at a premium. 
 
 From the skilled mechanic right up to the highest 
 engineering genius, from the competent foreman up 
 to the highest railway organizer, from the merely prac- 
 tised chemist up to the heaven-born inventor or de- 
 signer, all will find, not merely employment, but scope 
 for their whole talent; not merely remuneration but 
 salaries such as the world has seldom seen. And in 
 serving their employers they will be at least as directly 
 serving the community as they are at present. 
 
 It is when we come to the great mass of wage- 
 earners — the ten or fifteen millions of day laborers and 
 ordinary artisans— that we see the really grave conse- 
 quences of industrial autocracy. These men, with their 
 wives and families, must necessarily constitute the
 
 22 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 great bulk oi the population, the "common lump of 
 men." It is in their lives that the civilization of a 
 nation consists, and it is by their condition that it wrill 
 be judged. And, though the great ones never believe 
 it, it is upon the status, the culture, the upward prog- 
 ress of these ordinary men that the prosperity of the 
 nation, and even the profits of the capitalists, ultimately 
 depend. What is likely to be the Standard of Life of 
 the ordinary laborer or artisan under the great indus- 
 trial corporations of the United States? 
 
 The authors go on to state that without a 
 remedial policy approaching what they term a 
 "national minimum," meaning a scale of wages, 
 leisure, education, etc., which must be compul- 
 sory and enforced by the power of the State, 
 "to what awful depths of misery and demorali- 
 zation, brutality and degradation, humanity can, 
 under 'perfect freedotu' descend, we are scarce- 
 ly yet in a position to say. Is this to be the con- 
 tribution to economics in the twentieth century 
 of the country of Jefiferson and Washington?" 
 
 The reader ma)- judge as well as the writer of 
 the chances of remedial legislation of the de- 
 scription here suggested at the hand of the or- 
 dinary American politician. Such a change of 
 heart is impossible to contemplate. Nine years 
 have passed since the above words were written, 
 and actual events make them almost prophetic. 
 But in the meantime little or nothing has been 
 done to change the current of events and to 
 mitigate the results of the operation of the sys- 
 tem now in full control. 
 
 The alternative to remedial action is thus 
 stated : 
 
 As yet, the American citizen still believes himself 
 to be free, and sees not the industrial subjection into
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 23 
 
 which he is rapidly passing. But, it is not to be sup- 
 posed that he will witness unmoved the successive 
 failures of trade unions and strikes, the general re- 
 ductions in wages which will mark the first spell of 
 bad trade, the manifold dismissals and "shuttings 
 down," the progressive degradation of his class. He 
 will take up every wild dream and every' mad panacea. 
 He will be tricked and outvoted again and again ; but, 
 if so, the result will be a "class war" more terrible 
 than any the world has seen, and one in which, 
 though the ultimate victory will be with the common 
 people, American civilization may go back several gen- 
 erations. 
 
 And thus in the last analysis we are brought 
 again to the proletariat and the class war. 
 
 In another republic, France, one of by no 
 means the most advanced Socialists arrives at the 
 same conclusion in the following words : 
 
 Not only does the proletariat too often suffer vio- 
 lence directly from the economic power of capitalists, 
 but, if I may say so, its own mind is distorted by 
 the habit of the social regime under which it lives. 
 The worst tyranny exerted by a social regime or form 
 is, that in absorbing all the strength of the workers 
 and pouring them into the mould of contemporary 
 society, it renders a very great number of workers 
 whom it overwhelms incapable even of conceiving an- 
 other possible way of applying their strength. Thus, 
 contemporary society weighs doublj'^ on the workers 
 in the exercise of this political sovereignty ; which is 
 violated, firstly, by the employers, and, secondly, by the 
 silent and chronic capitalistic prejudice, stamped by 
 habit on the very class which suffers from its sway. 
 It is to react against these fatal effects — this pres- 
 sure, this distortion — exerted by economic inequality 
 even on the political action of the wage-workers, that 
 we must affirm, always within the democracj', the an- 
 tagonism of classes and the need of the proletarian 
 class to organize, and always affirm the collectivist 
 or communist ideal in the definite, precise, vigorous 
 form needed to dissipate the capitalistic prejudice 
 inoculated into the proletarian class itself.
 
 24 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 (Speech of Taures at Bordeaux Congress, 
 April 12-14, 1903, from "Modern Socialism" 
 edited by E. K. Ensor.) 
 
 Hence we stand practically today where we did 
 sixty years ago. The proletarian class is re- 
 garded as the savior of society. Out of it still 
 must come the force to overturn the existing 
 state and to establish conditions more in harmony 
 with the aspirations of the progressive. 
 
 In the last analysis even the moderate and the 
 timorous middle classes fall back upon the pro- 
 letariat as a last resort. As we have seen the 
 Webbs, as a punishment for the neglect of the 
 National Minimum, threaten us with a class war, 
 and Jaures who has always looked approvingly 
 to middle class action is still driven finally to 
 rely upon that proletariat with whose movements 
 and conscious tendencies he is so often in dis- 
 agreement. 
 
 Even the victory of the moderate Fabian policy 
 would make no difference in the long run for 
 the process of political and industrial develop- 
 ment would not be complete without a marshal- 
 ing of the proletarian forces. The battle must 
 still be fought out between the capitalist and 
 the proletarian. That statement which has seemed 
 so crude to the student and against which the 
 learned and the humane in the reformers' ranks 
 have protested, and the facts of which they have 
 endeavored to ignore, still remains, as the most 
 categorical and the most fundamentally true of 
 all the utterances put forth by the Socialist 
 movement. The movement is in its essence revo- 
 lutionary, it cannot contemplate anything short 
 of the transformation of modern society in ac-
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 25 
 
 tuality as well as in ethical concept and economic 
 doctrine. 
 
 When the proletariat is regarded, however, as 
 the means by which such results should be ac- 
 complished, the reputable and the wise refuse to 
 admit the possibility of such achievements at 
 the hands of such a class. 
 
 The reason for such hesitancy on the part of 
 the middle class reformer is easy to understand 
 from the contemplation of the vastness of this 
 force, its apparent unmanageability, its lack of 
 unity, the hopeless monotony of its life and more 
 than all the apparently sullen and unintelligent 
 fashion in which it regards events and life. 
 
 There is the slum proletariat into which drop 
 the accumulated failures from the other classes 
 and which festers and moulders in the great 
 cities. It is the despair of philanthropists and 
 a constant commentary upon the wastefulness 
 and brutality of modern life. As a revolutionary 
 factor it can be ignored. The fancy pictures 
 which frightened clergymen and delirious news- 
 papers draw of the slums turning out tens of 
 thousands to sack and pillage are merely fancy. 
 The slums are not revolutionary. Long ago, at 
 , the very beginning, the founders of the Socialist 
 movement disposed of the slum proletariat as 
 an effective factor in revolt. The Communist 
 Manifesto says: "The dangerous class, the so- 
 cial scum, that passively rotting mass thrown 
 off by the lowest layers of old society, may here 
 and there be swept into the movement by a pro- 
 letarian revolution; its conditions of life, how- 
 ever, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed 
 tool of reactionary intrigue."
 
 26 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 How true this statement is may be observed 
 by all who have taken part in elections. 
 
 The polling booths on the edge of the red light 
 district are the center of fraudulent voting. 
 Here are the abodes of prostitutes and thieves, 
 of vagrants and drunkards, from which, how- 
 ever, the police derive their hush-money, and on 
 which batten the minor city officials and the sub- 
 merged portion of the municipal governments. It 
 is here that the respectable candidate gathers 
 most of the votes which constitute his majority. 
 Endorsed by the church, and supported by the 
 mass of respectable citizens living on the hillsides, 
 the hordes of crime and the slum proletariat flock 
 to his standard and the two extremes of modern 
 city life unite in a common effort to perpetuate 
 the evils of the day. There is no new thing in 
 all this. It has always happened. It is part of 
 the machinery of government today as it was 
 sixty years ago, and the truth of the Communist 
 Manifesto statement may be fully grasped from 
 the fact that in many cities of the United States 
 today the power is held by the possessing class 
 largely, if not altogether in some districts, by and 
 through the vote of the slum proletariat. A po- 
 litical contest in which the Socialists have taken 
 a sufficiently prominent part to cause them to 
 closely overhaul the voting registers and to pro- 
 tect themselves against fraud at the polls always 
 reveals a startlingly corrupt condition. In every 
 State the register was discovered to be padded 
 and in one city, of more than a hundred and fifty 
 thousand in which the Socialists recently polled 
 nearly ten thousand votes, it was discovered that 
 almost one third of the register was fraudulent.
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 27 
 
 The same conditions prevail, there is little reason 
 to doubt, over the whole country, and naturally 
 to a greater degree in the slum districts than else- 
 where, as these offer the greatest opportunity for 
 fraud, owing to the transient character of the 
 population and the number of cheap lodging 
 houses in which those districts abound. 
 
 We may therefore exclude the slum proletariat 
 from any consideration of the revolutionary 
 forces which are to be looked for in the pro- 
 letariat as a whole. 
 
 If, however, we cut down the proletariat as a 
 revolutionary factor by the elimination of the 
 lower element, we must also make a further sub- 
 traction of much of what has been regarded as 
 the higher and better paid portion of the pro- 
 letariat. 
 
 In considering this portion of the proletariat, 
 namely the highly paid, well-skilled artisan, 
 Kautsky, in spite of his usual clearness, seems 
 to be under a cloud as to the relation of this 
 portion of the proletarian class to the social revo- 
 lution. Thus in the Class Struggle he says : "It 
 was naturally the skilled workers who began the 
 struggle for better conditions. The fact that it 
 was difficult to find substitutes for them in case 
 of a strike gave them an important advantage. 
 Their position was not unlike that of the medi- 
 eval apprentices and in many respects their un- 
 ions were natural descendants of the gilds." But 
 that Kautsky at this stage does not recognize in 
 these unions, (English and American pure and 
 simple unions) any real tendency towards the so- 
 cial revolution is very clear from what he says 
 immediately after :
 
 28 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 But, if modern skilled laborers inherited certain 
 advantages from their predecessors, they also took 
 over from them one tendency which has done great 
 harm to the modern labor movement. This is the ten- 
 dency to separate the various crafts. Naturally, those 
 in the best position to fight have won for themselves 
 superior advantages and have come to look upon them- 
 selves as an aristocracy of labor. Looking only at 
 their own interest, they have been content to rise at 
 the expense of their less fortunate comrades. 
 
 Far-sighted politicians and industrial leaders have 
 not been slow to take advantage of this condition. 
 Today the worst enemies of the working class are 
 not the stupid, reactionary statesmen who hope to keep 
 down the labor movement through openly repressive 
 measures. Its worst enemies are the pretended friends 
 who encourage craft unions, and thus attempt to cut off 
 the skilled trades from the rest of their class. They 
 are trying to turn the most efficient division of the 
 proletarian army against the great mass, against those 
 whose position as unskilled workers makes them least 
 capable of defense. 
 
 In other words the highly skilled trades sepa- 
 rate themselves from the mass of the proletariat 
 and obtain for themselves a position apart and 
 superior to the rest of the proletariat. This is 
 precisely the history of the pure and simple, 
 highly skilled unions in America, Britain and the 
 British colonies. They have segregated them- 
 selves from the rest of the mass of their fellow 
 workers and have made independent trade con- 
 tracts with their employer many times to the 
 detriment of members of the proletariat less 
 fortunately placed than themselves. 
 
 This estimate agrees with that of the Webbs, 
 as appears from the following quotation from 
 the Introduction to Problems of Modern In- 
 dustry, already several times quoted:
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 29 
 
 The workers may "kick;" there may be labor unions 
 and strikes; but, against such industrial omnipotence 
 the weapons of the wage-earners are as arrows against 
 ironclads. This will be all the more certainly the case, 
 because it will suit the leviathan, as a matter of con- 
 venience, to come to terms with the small minority 
 of skilled and well-paid workmen, who might have 
 stiffened the rest. This is the condition of monopolist 
 autocracy into which every great industry in the United 
 States seems fated to pass, and to pass with great rap- 
 idity. A few thousands of millionaire capitalist "kings," 
 uniting the means of a few hundreds of thousands of 
 passive stockholders, and served by, perhaps, an equal 
 number of well salaried managers, foremen, inventors, 
 designers, chemists, engineers, and skilled mechanics, 
 will absolutely control an army of ten or fifteen mil- 
 lions of practically property-less wage laborers, largely 
 Slavonic, Latin, or Negro in race. 
 
 The situation here described is at least as far 
 as the English speaking countries are con- 
 cerned practically universal. The higher class 
 mechanics, and by that we mean those whose 
 possession of special skill allows them to restrict 
 the market, have taken no part in any general 
 working class movement. On the contrary, when 
 the lower paid of the working class have en- 
 deavored to improve their condition, the higher 
 paid have not hesitated to stand by the employers 
 and by means of contracts with the employers, to 
 rob the poorer employes of the chance of im- 
 proving their condition. 
 
 In politics we find practically the same condi- 
 tion of things. The labor unions, embracing the 
 more highly skilled and organized branches of 
 labor, support, as a rule, the greater capitalism 
 in some form or other. Usually they vote di- 
 rectly for the representatives of the great eco- 
 nomic interests. Sometimes, however, they form
 
 30 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 a labor party which, while apparently proletarian, 
 or, at least, working class in form, is, in reality 
 an adherent of the greater capitalism in sub- 
 stance. Instances of this may be seen in San 
 Francisco, and quite noticeably in the antipodean 
 (Australasian and South African) labor par- 
 ties. On the South African Rand the greater 
 capitalism is unpopular and the people who know 
 confidently predict that it may have to achieve 
 its purposes by the aid, at least, of a labor party. 
 As the matter stands at present there does not 
 appear to be any real revolutionary impulse in 
 those trade organizations which are most familiar 
 to us and which are considered as representa- 
 tive of labor in its best developed and most ad- 
 vanced state. In fact, the trade unionists would 
 vehemently and passionately deny any desire or 
 intention of destroying the present system and 
 producing a condition approximating the Social- 
 ist concept. Their class feeling is to say the 
 least exceedingly hazy and manifests itself only 
 in times of stress and then temporarily and 
 probably intentionally. At least, only on oc- 
 casions in which organized labor is threatened, 
 is the cry that the working class must stand 
 together raised. At all other times the position 
 of the proletariat, which does not come under 
 the description of organized labor, is ignored and 
 flouted by better paid and well organized labor. 
 As we shall see, this phenomenon is in the very 
 nature of things merely transitory and must pass 
 away with the greater development of the ma- 
 chine process and the more complete organiza- 
 tion of industry. In the meantime, however, it 
 manifestly exists, all theories to the contrary
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 31 
 
 notwithstanding, and effectually, at least for the 
 present, places a bar in the path of Socialist de- 
 velopment by the proletariat. Kautsky says : 
 
 But, sooner or later, the aristocratic tendency o£ 
 even the most skilled class of laborers will be broken. 
 As mechanical production advances, one craft after 
 another is tumbled into the abyss of common labor. 
 This fact is constantly teaching even the most effec- 
 tively organized divisions, that in the long run their 
 position is dependent upon the strength of the work- 
 ing-class as a whole. They come to the conclusion 
 that it is a mistaken policy to attempt to rise on the 
 shoulders of those who are sinking in a quicksand. 
 They come to see that the struggles of other divisions 
 of the proletariat are by no means foreign to them. 
 
 At the same time, one division of the unskilled 
 after another rises out of its stupid lethargy or mere 
 purposeless discontent. This is, in part, a natural con- 
 sequence of the successes achieved by the skilled la- 
 borers. The direct results of the activities of the un- 
 skilled proletarians may seem unimportant; nevertheless, 
 it is these activities that bring about the moral regen- 
 eration of this division of the working class. 
 
 Thus, there has gradually formed from skilled and 
 unskilled workers a body of proletarians who are in 
 the movement of labor, or the labor movement. It is 
 the part of the proletariat which is fighting for the 
 interests of the whole class, its church militant, as it 
 were. This division grows at the expense both of 
 the "aristocrats of labor" and of the common mob 
 which still vegetates, helpless and hopeless. We have 
 already seen that the laboring proletariat is constantly 
 increasing; we know, further, that it tends more and 
 more to set the pace in thought and feeling for the 
 other working classes. We now see that in this grow- 
 ing mass of workers the militant division increases 
 not only absolutely but relatively. No_ matter how 
 fast the proletariat may grow, this militant division 
 of it grows still faster. 
 
 But it is precisely this militant proletariat which 
 is the most fruitful recruiting ground for Socialism. 
 The SociaUst movement is nothing more than the part
 
 32 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 of this militant proletariat which has become conscious 
 of its goal. In fact, these two, socialism and the mil- 
 itant proletariat, tend constantly to become identical. 
 In Germany and Austria their identity is already an 
 accomplished fact. 
 
 There can be no question of the truth of this 
 statement, speaking in terms of infinity. If noth- 
 ing else happens, of course, the process itself 
 will dispose of the exclusiveness of the trades 
 unions. In the meantime, however, the trades 
 unions are an eflfective bar to progress in the in- 
 dustrial field and whenever they go into politics 
 in their own account they leave the traces of 
 their small trader footprints. It would appear 
 that no successful move by the proletariat, and 
 consequently by the Socialists, can be made as 
 long as the present form of trade union organi- 
 zation exists. It must go out of existence or be- 
 come so transformed as to be unrecognizable. 
 To this conclusion the Socialists have been slowly 
 but inevitably driven by their experiences in the 
 United States and it is generally recognized, 
 among Marxists at least, tliat the present trade 
 union organization with its craft form and its 
 small business ideals is perhaps the greatest ob- 
 stacle in the path of proletarian progress at pres- 
 ent. We may, therefore, eliminate the highly 
 skilled and well organized mechanic of today as 
 a part of the revolutionary proletariat. 
 
 There is also a vast mass of floating proletari- 
 ans, who belong to what is generally called un- 
 skilled labor. They are driven to and fro ac- 
 cording to the demands of the labor market and 
 constitute a most important body, particularly in 
 the far west. In fact, the whole plan of de-
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 33 
 
 velopment of that part of the country is depend- 
 ent upon them. They are engaged in first this 
 business and then that. In the summer they are 
 in the fields working on the farms or ranches, 
 and in the winter large numbers flock into the 
 cities, there to add to the already overflowing 
 supply of undifferentiated labor. The roads are 
 full of them at some seasons. They are not 
 tramps in the general acceptation ; in fact, they 
 are not tramps at all, except so far as they are 
 frequently obliged to travel on foot from place 
 to place in search of work. They are objects 
 of persecution and graft to the police and the 
 authorities of the small towns. They are subjected 
 to many indignities, in .some places they are 
 domed to the rock-pile and the jail, not because 
 of what they have done, but because of what 
 they are. Occasionally a city owns a municipal 
 quarry, used to provide stones for road mending. 
 The advent of the migratory work-seeker of the 
 variety described affords a good chance to the 
 Tiunicipality to acquire able-bodied labor for 
 next to nothing and a charge of vagrancy is 
 sustained against a friendless and obviously 
 harmless person as soon as made. Hence the 
 city gets its municipal work done by police- 
 guarded vagrants at the nominal cost of three 
 prison meals a day. 
 
 This class of proletarians, of course, has no 
 vote. They never fulfil the residential qualifi- 
 cations, hence, they are unable to play any role in 
 proletarian revolt at the ballots. They have hith- 
 erto been ignored as a possible force tending to- 
 wards the social revolution. Their apparent iso- 
 lation from ordinary life, their nomadic habits^
 
 34 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 their fluidity would seem to prohibit their taking 
 any important part in that sequence of events 
 called the revolution. But of late these unskilled 
 and fluid laborers are showing some very marked 
 efforts in the direction of successful organiza- 
 tion. In many cases they have raised the price 
 of farm labor, and have had a distinct effect upon 
 the rate of wages for rough labor. They seem 
 to be sorting themselves out and giving them- 
 selves distinctive names, such as "rough-necks," 
 all of which tend to show a movement toward 
 self-realization. At present, their efforts are 
 largely confined to making possible their or- 
 ganization and to securing the right of free 
 speech for themselves, which, of course, is a 
 necessary preliminary to their active organiza- 
 tion. Even so, their progress has been very 
 marked of late, and it is a distinct gain to the 
 proletariat that a portion of it, which in the 
 very close past could have been ill treated and 
 imprisoned with impunity, is now able to com- 
 pel the municipalities to allow its members or- 
 dinary citizen rights. 
 
 A few years ago no one would have ventured 
 to describe this class as likely to contribute nota- 
 bly to the revolutionary movement. Now, how- 
 ever, opinions could not be so positively deliv- 
 ered on that point and the migratory unskilled 
 laborer, as he is called in trade union circles, may 
 yet be a most powerful force in the Socialist 
 direction. 
 
 The intellectual proletariat so called is general- 
 ly reckoned among Socialist writers as a po- 
 tential force, at least, for the revolution. This 
 class has come into existence as a result of the
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 35 
 
 necessary demand for intellectual workers in the 
 modern process. The widespread education has 
 greatly increased the numbers struggling for a 
 precarious livelihood in the professions. The 
 vast numbers of educated have tended to de- 
 crease the average returns for professional work 
 so that as a whole the so-called professional 
 workers do not occupy a much higher plane eco- 
 nomically than do the skilled handworkers. It 
 is quite doubtful if as a body they are actually 
 as well off. As Kautsky very aptly points out 
 men were once accustomed to speak of the "ar- 
 istocracy of intellect," but now they talk of the 
 "educated proletariat." 
 
 It must be admitted that the earlier Socialists 
 had expected more from the educated classes 
 than they have received. It was confidently be- 
 lieved that men of training and ability from the 
 middle class would be driven into the Socialist 
 ranks and could and would aid in securing vic- 
 tory. But a scant minority of this class, how- 
 ever, comes into the Socialist movement, and 
 such as comes is, generally speaking, of but 
 dubious value. The most part consists of those 
 who are unable to succeed in their chosen voca- 
 tions in the world. They stand on practically 
 the same footing as the unsuccessful small busi- 
 ness man who, failing, comes in to the Socialist 
 movement. This minority which comes in is a 
 broken minority, generally bankrupt, not only 
 economically but intellectually as well. It is not 
 the stuff out of which a strong, energetc, fighting 
 body can be built. Its affiliations with the old 
 system are too strong, its ideas are already fixed, 
 and fixed wrong, before it comes into the move-
 
 36 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 ment. It has given and gives more trouble than 
 any other element, and almost all the backsliding, 
 all the hypocrisies, and all the surrenders made 
 in the name of politics in the Socialist movement 
 have been brought about by just this element. 
 
 The curse of the Socialist movement is the 
 small trader and the professional man, the senti- 
 mental failures, who have lost their footing in 
 the world and who persist in dreaming of a 
 Socialist Kingdom of Heaven. It is impossible 
 to make Socialists, who can stand up and fight, 
 out of beaten material. There is much truth in 
 the street slang that a beaten man cannot "come 
 back," and those who have suffered all the 
 agony inflicted by economic defeat are not such 
 as prove valuable recruits, at least for a mili- 
 tant campaign. This "mercantile and intellectual 
 proletariat," as it has been called, is generally 
 without morals, discipline or force. Indeed the 
 life of the average middle class man is lacking 
 in precisely these qualities, and they are quali- 
 ties essential to a revolutionaiy movement. On 
 the other hand these elements are the source of 
 all those weaknesses in the Socialist movement 
 which occasionally make it the sport of its ene- 
 mies as well as the despair of its friends. It is 
 to the so-called intellectual proletariat that we 
 have to trace the sham altruism, the maudlin 
 note, the whipped dog whimper, which too fre- 
 quently manifests itself in the revolutionary lit- 
 erature and speeches. For, the intellectual pro- 
 letarians labor under the disadvantage that they 
 are not and never have been producers. Clergy- 
 men, lawyers, writers and newspaper men are, 
 generally speaking, hangers on. They live for
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 37 
 
 the favor of other people and grow into the habit 
 of adapting manners of thought and expression 
 accommodated to those upon whom they look for 
 economic support. It is obvious that such ma- 
 terial is not well calculated to make stalwart 
 fighters. Attention has been called to the same 
 phenomenon in Europe. Thus Paul Lafargue 
 (Socialism and the Intellectuals, Kerr — Chicago) 
 says: "Jaures in his preface to the Socialist 
 History of France says that the intellectual bour- 
 geoisie offended by a brutal and commercial so- 
 ciety and disenchanted with the bourgeois power 
 is rallying to the support of socialism. Unfor- 
 tunately nothing could be less exact. This 
 transformation of the intellectual faculties into 
 merchandise, which ought to have filled the in- 
 tellectuals with wrath and indignation, leaves 
 them indifferent. * * * To sell their intellectual 
 merchandise has become in turn such an all-ab- 
 sorbing principle, that if one speaks to them of 
 socialism, before they inquire into its theories, 
 they ask whether in the Socialist society intel- 
 lectual labor will be paid for and whether it will 
 be regarded equally with manual labor." 
 
 Lafargue discovers that the intellectuals in 
 France pursue the same tactics as they have 
 been discovered to follow in this country. He 
 says: 
 
 These intellectuals propose to modify the tactics, 
 as well as the theories of the socialist party ; they wish 
 to impose upon it a new method of action. It must no 
 longer strive to conquer the public powers by a great 
 struggle, legal or revolutionary, as need may be, but 
 let itself be conquered by every ministry of a republi- 
 can coalition ; it is no longer to oppose the socialist 
 party to all the bourgeois parties ; what is needed is
 
 38 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 to put it at the service of the Hbeial party; we must 
 no longer organize it for the class struggle, but keep 
 it ready for all the compromises of politicians. And, 
 to further the triumph of the new method of action, 
 they propose to disorganize the socialist party, to break 
 up its old systems and to demoHsh the organizations 
 which for twenty years have labored to give the work- 
 ers a sense of their class interests and to group them 
 in a party of economic and political struggle. 
 
 It is true that the same writer laments the 
 absence of the intellectuals from the Socialist 
 movement. He declares that the interests of in- 
 tellectual and proletarian are alike anti-capital- 
 istic and declares : 
 
 United in production, united under the yoke of 
 capitalist exploitation, united they should be also in 
 revolt against the common enemy. The intellectuals, 
 if they understood their own real interests, would 
 come in crowds to socialism, not through philanthropy, 
 nor through pity for the miseries of the workers, not 
 through affectation and snobbery, but to save them- 
 selves, to assure the future welfare of their wives and 
 children, to fulfill their duty to their class. They ought 
 to be ashamed of being left behind in the social battle 
 by their comrades in the manual category. They have 
 many things to teach them, but they have still much 
 to learn from them ; the workingmen have a practical 
 sense superior to theirs, and have given proof oi an 
 instinctive intuition of the communist tendencies of 
 modern capitalism, which is lacking to the intellectuals, 
 who have only been able by a conscious mental effort 
 to arrive at this conception. If only they had under- 
 stood their own interests, they would long since have 
 turned against the capitalist class the education which 
 it has generously distributed in order better to exploit 
 them ; they would have utilized their intellectual ca- 
 pacities, which are enriching their masters, as so many 
 improved weapons to fight capitalism and to conquer 
 the freedom of their class, the wage-working class. 
 
 However much we may agree with Lafargue, 
 his lament is vain, for, in general, the really use-
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAT 39 
 
 ful intellectual will not come intOfthe Socialist 
 movement until it has progressed to such a de- 
 gree that he can serve the movement without 
 materially damaging his interests. 
 
 Hence it is obvious that the intellectual can- 
 not be regarded as a dependable factor in the 
 revolutionary movement of the proletarian. 
 
 The proletariat in its revolutionary manifesta- 
 tions then, does not appear by any means as 
 a united body. The whole proletarian army does 
 not move en masse upon the bourgeois enemy. 
 The revolutionary tendencies of the proletarian 
 class must be sought in some moving force, other 
 than the mere conglomeration covered by the 
 generic term proletarian. 
 
 Whence then comes this force, or does it come 
 at all? Is the Marxian notion of a proletarian 
 revolutionary movement, spontaneously coming 
 into being as the result of economic conditions 
 altogether vain? 
 
 Decidedly not. There is a proletarian revo- 
 lutionary movement, there is a force at work 
 among the working class, which produces a mili- 
 tant attitude on the part of that class. That is 
 a fact which cannot be ignored. Even the daily 
 papers are filled with the accounts of its manifes- 
 tations. From what portion of the working 
 class then does this manifestation come? Who 
 are the militant?
 
 II 
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 Kautsky has called attention in "The Class 
 Struggle," from which we have quoted so often, 
 because it is probably the best interpretation of 
 Marxism and the Erfurt Program, to the fact 
 that a militant body arises in the masses of the 
 proletarians. He puts it in the following lan- 
 guage : 
 
 Thus, there has gradually formed from skilled and 
 unskilled workers a body of proletarians who are in 
 the movement of labor, or the labor movement. It 
 is the part of the proletariat which is fighting for the 
 interests of the whole class, its church militant, as it 
 were. This division grows at the expense both of the 
 "Aristocrats of labor" and of the common mob which 
 still vegetates, helpless and hopeless. We have already 
 seen that the laboring proletariat is constantly in- 
 creasing; we know, further, that it tends more and 
 more to set the pace in thought and feeling for the 
 other working classes. We now see, that, in this grow- 
 ing mass of workers, the militant division increases 
 not only absolutely, but relatively. No matter how 
 fast the proletariat may grow, this militant division 
 of it grows still faster. 
 
 But, it is precisely this militant proletariat which 
 is the most fruitful recruiting ground for socialism. 
 The socialist movement is nothing more than the part 
 of this militant proletariat which has become conscious 
 of its goal. In fact, these two, socialism and the mil- 
 itant proletariat, tend constantly to become identical. 
 In Germany and Austria their identity is already an 
 accomplished fact. 
 
 40
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 41 
 
 This says, essentially, that among the prole- 
 tarian element there is a growing body which 
 adopts an attitude of revolt towards the exist- 
 ing system and that the members of this body 
 constitute the active revolutionary part of the 
 proletariat, which becomes Socialist. But this 
 gives us no information as to the special marks 
 of this revolutionary element. If it consists 
 merely of those who are temperamentally in- 
 clined to take the radical side in a controversy, 
 merely of those who are in the language of the 
 street "chronic kickers," we learn nothing of value 
 respecting its composition ; for, a like proportion 
 of discontented and radical persons would proba- 
 bly be found in any other portion of the popu- 
 lation. Thus "the burden of the day" is re- 
 sented by professional men and middle class 
 people, generally, as the "Progressive" move- 
 ment in this country testifies. 
 
 Every movement must have its nucleus ; the 
 central group to which the movement is econom- 
 ically and essentially necessary, and which exer- 
 cises an influence, constantly widening, from 
 that nucleus, in proportion to the power exercised 
 by and the development of that nucleus. Thus, 
 generally speaking, the interests of the shop- 
 keeper are not the interests of the proletarian. 
 In fact they are quite other. The classes are 
 antagonistic and as buyer and seller they are at 
 opposite poles and mutually in antithesis. Yet in 
 times of strike the small shopkeeper finds his 
 interest and that of the proletarian practically 
 identical because the small shopkeeper maintains 
 his existence by selling to the proletarian. Hence 
 he profits in proportion as the proletarian im-
 
 42 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 proves his position. The result is that we find 
 the dealers in the districts which the working 
 class inhabit voting the Socialist ticket in large 
 numbers. Also in times of strike the small shop- 
 keepers are usually on the side of the working 
 class to whom they give credit. Thus the in- 
 fluence of a group may be powerful, not only 
 over those who are directly affiliated wnth the 
 group, but over those also who are dragged 
 nolentes volentes in the direction taken by the 
 controlling group. An admirable instance of this 
 is seen in a Western Federation of Miners 
 camp. Here the economic organization of the 
 miners is in control. The whole community 
 is dependent upon the organization, and classes 
 which would, under other circumstances, be an- 
 tagonistic to the working class are there forced 
 into support of it, by virtue of its position. 
 
 It becomes of interest to discover what is that 
 group in the proletariat which is militant and 
 what influence it can exercise over the mass of 
 proletarians, as well as the actual power which 
 it could wield if brought into the field. 
 
 It is just here that the distinction between 
 those European countries in which liberalism has 
 not fully developed and the English speaking 
 communities in which liberalism has practically 
 attained its maximum becomes very apparent. 
 This fact of the development of liberalism is 
 the determining fact as regards the actual revo- 
 lutionary attitude of the proletarian or that part 
 of which is described as militant. Even the 
 vestiges of the feudal system still remaining in 
 Great Britain, the established church, the throne, 
 the house of lords, the plural voting, the hun-
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 43 
 
 dred and one stupid little abuses and survivals 
 which are so many obstacles in the path of prog- 
 ress all interfere to prevent that essential devel- 
 opment of the proletariat proper into a fighting 
 body with a mission to accomplish. In fact, as 
 we have seen, Kautsky goes on to say forth- 
 with : "The Socialist movement is nothing more 
 than the part of this militant proletariat which 
 has become conscious of its goal. In fact, those 
 two, socialism and the militant proletariat tend 
 constantly to become identical. In Germany and 
 Austria, their identity is already an assured fact." 
 But how far is the realization of the Socialist 
 movement in the countries mentioned a prole- 
 tarian manifestation proper and how far is it just 
 a liberal demonstration which parades under the 
 Socialist name, and pretends to threaten a pro- 
 letarian revolt, whereas it really means to ac- 
 complish certain necessary bourgeois reforms? 
 To still further confuse the matter, Kautsky 
 says: "To make this great mass (the working 
 class) feel its common interests, to induce it 
 to act as one in an organization, it is necessary 
 to have means of communicating with large 
 numbers. A free press and the right of as- 
 semblage are absolutely essential." It is useless 
 to endeavor to discover how far a movement 
 is really Socialist or proletarian in a community 
 which does not possess the absolutely fundamen- 
 tal pre-requisites of a free press and free speech. 
 These are admitted primary essentials lacking 
 which it is difficult to conceive of any real work- 
 ing class movement being practical. Until such 
 concessions, at least, are won the class war may 
 be considered practically in abeyance, for, it is
 
 44 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 evident that proletarian and bourgeois must 
 unite on the same platform as regards these 
 fundamentals. A threat of the destruction of 
 the constitutional guarantees, or even a tendency 
 to impair them would have in this country the 
 effect of merging together whole masses of peo- 
 ple who would in reality have nothing more in 
 common than the preservation of bourgeois lib- 
 erties, and who, when their purpose was achieved 
 would find themselves divided by varying eco- 
 nomic and consequently political interests. 
 
 When one contemplates the political blurriness 
 of the European countries with the clearness of 
 the United States as regards politics, it will be 
 seen that there is no standard by which we can 
 measure the relative strength of the militant pro- 
 letariat in the two hemispheres. 
 
 There is no question that the political work 
 of liberalism must be accomplished and got out 
 of the way before any new and peculiarly so- 
 cialist departure is possible. This can be readily 
 seen in the English Parliament where the Inde- 
 pendent Labor Party, ostensibly returned to look 
 after the interests of the working class and to be 
 the representative of the militant proletarian, as 
 a matter of fact, becomes tied to the Liberal 
 Party and spends most of its time and effort 
 in carrying out bourgeois reforms. 
 
 Up to this point the path of the proletarian 
 is not difficult, no questions of any great moment 
 calling for any particular statesmanship in the 
 conduct of the agitation actually appear. It is 
 easy to declare the policy of the proletarian to 
 be the keeping of his own political organiza- 
 tion and the working out of necessary political
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 45 
 
 bourgeois measures in which the socialist party 
 represents the combined interests of the prole- 
 tarian class and of many bourgeois. Thus in 
 speaking of the relative values of political and 
 economic movement Kautsky says : "The fact is 
 that the two cannot be separated. The economic 
 struggle demands political rights and these will 
 not fall from heaven. To receive and maintain 
 them tliie most vigorous political action is neces- 
 sary. The political struggle is, on the other 
 hand, in the last analysis, an economic struggle. 
 Often, in fact, it is directly and openly economic, 
 as when it deals with tariff and factory laws. 
 The political struggle is merely a political form 
 of the economic struggle, in fact its most in- 
 clusive and vital form." All of which reads 
 admirably but in reality does not amount to 
 much, at least as a guide, in determining the 
 nature of the militant proletariat in the United 
 States and its plan of campaign. For that which 
 Kautsky expects to achieve by politics seems al- 
 ready to have been achieved here without work- 
 ing class political intervention, and, for the rest, 
 tariff laws do not bear practically upon the 
 economic condition of the working class, neither 
 is such factory legislation as has been secured 
 in any way dependent upon the action of the 
 militant proletariat. He claims parliamentarism 
 an essential to the working class because great 
 capitalists can influence legislators directly, but 
 the proletariat only by a show of electoral force. 
 In this country, however, where political char- 
 latanry and the trade of vote-catching has de- 
 veloped into a fine art, the professional pol- 
 itician can detect the slightest popular move-
 
 46 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 ment, and he forthwith begins to lay his schemes 
 to take advantage of it, for the furtherance of 
 his own personal advancement, independent of 
 other considerations. 
 
 Kautsky also claims that parliamentarism on 
 the part of the proletariat tends to change the 
 character of parliament itself and is "the most 
 powerful lever to raise the proletariat out of its 
 economic, social and moral degradation." All of 
 which appears by the way to be a mere begging 
 of the question, for such results do not actually 
 seem to have followed so-called proletarian 
 political action as far as we know it. In fact, 
 the general conclusion which Kautsky reaches is 
 so lame as to be altogether unworthy of the 
 strength and directness which we are accustomed 
 to associate with that author. It is thus ex- 
 pressed: "Besides freedom of the press and the 
 right to organize, the universal ballot is to be 
 regarded as one of the conditions prerequiste 
 to a sound development of the proletariat." 
 
 In the United States we have practically all 
 of these. It is true that occasionally we have to 
 complain of governmental aggressions, and that 
 there is a relatively increasing number of citi- 
 zens who do not have the ballot, also that the 
 later naturalization laws tend to make it more 
 difficult to become citizens, but on the whole at 
 the present we may safely claim to be fully in 
 possession of those valuable prerequisites to pro- 
 letarian action. 
 
 Still the question of militant proletarian action 
 is a burning one, and the American proletarian 
 movement by no means so simple and strong, 
 in spite of these manifest advantages, that we
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 47 
 
 can easily and readily define its line of march. 
 Occasionally, we have a victory of what would 
 be generally considered as the proletariat, and in 
 Australia there is actually a working class gov- 
 ernment in full control of the Commonwealth. 
 There exists a body of wage earners, with what 
 would seem to be a class movement. They have 
 the economic power, for labor is so well or- 
 ganized that it can practically control the situa- 
 tion in Australia. They have obviously the po- 
 litical power, for they are admittedly in control 
 of the government. If there ever was an op- 
 portunity for showing the transforming influ- 
 ence of the proletarian upon government, Aus- 
 tralia has certainly had that opportunity. We 
 do not find, however, any signs of a change 
 which would predispose us to regard with par- 
 ticular favor such manifestations as have oc- 
 curred in a British Parliament by virtue of the 
 introduction, or rather the domination of what 
 Kautsky would unquestionably have called the 
 proletarian element. Is the Australian Common- 
 wealth Government to be regarded as a type of 
 government by the militant proletariat? If so, 
 the whole matter might as well be relegated to 
 the dust heap of profitless discussion, for the 
 Labor Government of Australia rises no higher 
 than other governments, in that it carefully and 
 scrupulously enforces law for the benefit of the 
 dominant capitalism. Call it by what name you 
 will, the government of today is the expression 
 of the dominant economic force, that is, the force 
 of the greater capitalism, and no government, 
 whatever its pretensions, can be more than that. 
 Whether it be Aristide Briand, using all the
 
 48 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 powers of government for the suppression of 
 the general strike, or an AustraHan Common- 
 wealth Government, employing all the resources 
 of governmental "organization against strikers, 
 even to the extent of imprisoning them for re- 
 fusing to handle scab materials, the results are 
 the same. They do not seem to diifer very much, 
 moreover, from those which we witness in other 
 communities of less pretensions, and where the 
 governments are more or less frankly the ex- 
 ponents of the same dominant economic power. 
 
 It does not seem to be so much a matter of 
 names as of attitude of mind. To call a labor 
 party into existence upon a political basis is 
 merely to give political expression to the eco- 
 nomic interests of the labor organizations which 
 have combined for political purposes. The care- 
 less observer might be tempted to assume that 
 the individuals combining would of necessity 
 have the working class point of view and to pre- 
 dict that (the working class attitude of mind 
 being naturally antagonistic to the capitalistic) 
 the working class movement, so called, would by 
 sheer force of its own propulsion, find itself a 
 socialist movement, having for its obpect the 
 destruction of the existing system. But no such 
 thing really occurs. As a matter of fact, a trade 
 union organization converted into a political 
 party rises no higher than its trade union concep- 
 tion. This is, as we have said already, that the 
 relation of employer and employe is a purely 
 contractual relation in which the employer owns 
 the tools and the employe owns the labor power. 
 
 It is obvious that when this is translated into 
 politics, su^h a party may easily be of actual
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 49 
 
 service to the employing class and this indeed 
 has happened on many occasions. In fact, it is 
 happening continually in those parts of the world 
 where the capitalists can the better carry out 
 their plans by means of a labor party. Even the 
 actual socialist movement, so-called, need by no 
 means constitute a militant proletariat. In fact, 
 the socialist movement might be, and, indeed, is 
 in some places, notably in the United States, not 
 a movement of the militant proletariat at all, but 
 one in which petit-bourgeois and trade unionists 
 find a common ground of political action, and 
 which cannot be differentiated in any important 
 respects from the labor parties elsewhere, as we 
 have described them. In fact so slight is the 
 difference, that in California, where a Union 
 Labor Party has been in control of the City of 
 San Francisco, and the Socialist Party has 
 shown a tendency to increase its vote in the 
 State, strong representations have been made 
 that an amalgamation of the two elements would 
 be good for both, although the Union Labor 
 Party is not only essentially conservative, having 
 progressed no further than the old and well worn 
 idea of fair play between capital and labor, but 
 is actually playing the game and furthering the 
 interests of the great capitalism in the city of 
 San Francisco. 
 
 We must evidently go further than names if 
 we desire to find the militant proletariat. In 
 fact these conditions are actually typical of what 
 is going on all over the world. There seems to 
 be what one might call the outer shell of an os- 
 tensibly labor and so called socialist movement, 
 hiding a distinctly bourgeois and compromising
 
 50 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 kernel. We find the same phenomenon in 
 France, in Italy, in Australia, as well as in the 
 United States. 
 
 There is besides this expression, however, of 
 the craft unions and the small business men, who, 
 after all, constitute the bulk of so-called labor 
 and socialist parties, a certain nucleus which is 
 forming noticeably at the present time. Some- 
 times it lives inside the so-called socialist and 
 labor parties, particularly in countries which 
 have imperfectly developed from the feudal 
 State, as Germany. There, as has been already 
 pointed out, all sections of the radicals must of 
 necessity work together for the abolition of the 
 remains of feudalism, and until the liberalistic 
 work, which should never have fallen to the task 
 of the Socialist Party, is accomplished, the pe- 
 culiar work of the Socialist movement eannot be 
 taken up. In other places, such as France, there 
 is a distinct revolutionary nucleus outside of the 
 Socialist movement, so-called, at least outside of 
 that morement, as politically expressed. The 
 same facts are found in most other modern coun- 
 tries. Even in Australia, a Socialist movement 
 grows and spreads outside of the dominant labor 
 party, and the same is true of the United States. 
 
 Here the Socialist Party, which has developed 
 with great rapidity, takes on more and more the 
 form of the labor parties as developed elsewhere, 
 with a remnant of the revolutionary idealism 
 which is associated with the European Social 
 Democratic Parties. Only of late has it, however, 
 become markedly popular with the trade union 
 bodies and only in certain localities merely. Still, 
 as the numerical importance of the party in-
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 51 
 
 creases and its chances of gaining votes grow, it 
 tends to become more popular with the organized' 
 labor bodies and as they come into it it mirrors 
 to a more complete degre the political ambitions 
 of the craft unionists and thus tends to become 
 less, revolutionary and more political. Outside 
 of this party other groups are forming. These 
 tend, by virtue largely of reaction against the 
 bourgeoisization of the Socialist Party, to adopt 
 a non-political attitude in the beginning, which, 
 not infrequently, becomes an actually anti- 
 political attitude. Such, however, must in the 
 nature of the case be but transitory. They call 
 more particularly for industrial action for the 
 purpose of producing direct economic effects of a 
 revolutionary nature. But such economic effects 
 when once produced must of necessity produce 
 their political reflex. It cannot be otherwise. 
 In their ranks the militant proletariat must be 
 found. Here we must look for the realization of 
 the proletariat as thus described in the "Com- 
 munist Manifesto." Of all the classes that stand 
 face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the pro- 
 letariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The 
 other classes decay and finally disappear in the 
 case of modern industry; the proletariat is its 
 special and essential product. 
 
 THE MACHINE PROLETARIAT 
 
 The statement at the close of the last section, 
 to the effect that the proletariat is the special 
 and essential product of modern industry, should 
 be considered as a starting point for discussion 
 of the moving revolutionary force. In fact when 
 we more closely examine the statement we see 
 that this is practically the sole basis of the So-
 
 52 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 cialist contention stripped of propaganda glamor 
 and unnecessary rhetoric. The contention is es- 
 sentially as follows : A given society produces its 
 own destruction by the operation of economic 
 forces in that society, which cannot be avoided, 
 but which are inherent in that form of society. 
 A new class comes into existence in terms of the 
 conditions this generated and this class causes the 
 overthrow of the former dominant class. The 
 most striking instance is, of course, the over- 
 turn of the feudal nobility by the bourgeoisie, 
 which was a product of feudalism, developing 
 out of it, and finally destroying it. In the same 
 way the proletariat has developed as the result 
 of the present system, and is held to be the de- 
 stroyer of the existing ruling class. 
 
 The mere fact of the existence of a proletariat, 
 however, by no means forces the conclusion that 
 such a class is, of necessity, revolutionary, still 
 less does it follow automatically that the class 
 will be victorious in its revolutionary attempt, 
 even granting it the revolutionary state of mind. 
 In fact, the teaching of history would seem to 
 point to failure rather than ■ success as the re- 
 sult of the revolutionary operations of the so- 
 called proletariat, and that, so far at least, the 
 proletariat, as a whole, cannot be brought into 
 the field. 
 
 But it is certain also that there is a militant 
 nucleus in that proletarian mass, for we see 
 daily evidences of it. Also we know that a 
 nucleus is sufficient, provided that its interests 
 and its mental structure are antagonistic to and 
 irreconcilable with the existing regime so as to 
 form a revolutionary core around which might
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 53 
 
 gather and organize elements and groups other- 
 wise unorganizable. So that by virtue of the 
 organization at the center the whole mass might 
 be projected against the governmental forces, 
 the movement being precipitated by probably 
 some momentary or trivial cause, and what is 
 called a revolution occur. 
 
 Of course, that occurrence is not in itself the 
 revolution. It is only the last act in a series of 
 acts tending to produce the definitive result, the 
 end of a process which has on the one hand con- 
 tributed continually to weaken the possessing 
 class and on the other hand to swell the strength 
 of the attacking forces. There may be so-called 
 revolutions for which all this preliminary or- 
 ganization and the existence of a strong nucleus 
 do not appear to be necessary. Such, however, 
 will be found not to be revolutionary movements 
 proper, but what are called "palace revolutions" 
 merely. These are such as involve a mere change 
 in the personnel of the government, but do not 
 imply a fundamental change in the social struc- 
 ture such as is involved in the triumph of one 
 economic class over another. Such, to all ap- 
 pearances, at present writing (May,^ 1911),^ is 
 the so-called revolutionary movement in Mexico, 
 A change of government, the result of which 
 would be the substitution of Madero for Diaz, 
 could not be other than a "palace revolution." 
 But there are also involved in the Mexican dis- 
 turbances the economic demands of nurnbers of 
 Mexican peasants who require the abolition of 
 peonage and the security to themselves of 
 sufficient land to enable them to live indepen- 
 dently. This latter class forms the real economic
 
 54 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 basis of a Mexican revolution, and its victory 
 would have distinct governmental effects, for, 
 besides involving the economic fact of the de- 
 struction of the great estates, the political effect 
 would be seen in the assumption of governmental 
 functions by the new small land proprietors. 
 This would necessarily give an entirely different 
 complexion to a government which is now con- 
 ducted exclusively in the interests of the large 
 landholders and high finance. 
 
 Each revolution is made fundamentally by a 
 typical class produced by the conditions against 
 which the revolution is conducted. The peculiar 
 product of the existing regime overthrows it. A 
 class of semi-independent yeomen and still more 
 independent burghers who had grown up in the 
 lap of the feudal system formed the nucleus of 
 that force which overthrew the feudal system and 
 enabled the regenerating revolutionists to develop 
 into the bourgeois tyrants of today. 
 
 The question, therefore, which must be an- 
 swered before anything can be predicted of the 
 sucess of the social revolution is, how far have 
 the bourgeois conditions actually produced a class 
 sufficiently differentiated from the dominant type, 
 to form a revolutionary nucleus? Then inquiry 
 must be made into the potentialities of this class 
 as a revolutionary force. 
 
 The general and very unsatisfactory reply of 
 the ordinary Socialist agitator to the question. 
 Who will make the revolution? is, the People. 
 This People notion is a pious legacy bequeathed 
 to him, religiously passed on in church and school, 
 and never questioned or analyzed. The bour- 
 geois revolution sanctified itself as a popular
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 55 
 
 revolution and incessantly paraded the People as 
 the source of its authority and the moving im- 
 pulse of its action. The word, as victory was 
 achieved, came to have a certain sanctity which 
 was exaggerated in the case of some of the 
 later revolutionists, like Mazzini, into a kind 
 of mysticism. The People were then sufficiently 
 to be differentiated from the rulers to make a 
 distinct body, with identity of interests, in terms 
 of which they could fight, and which would form 
 the foundations of government should the Peo- 
 ple succeed. As a matter of fact, those interests 
 have been made the foundations of the laws 
 of modern states. It is by appeal to these old 
 demands expanded and idealized that the so- 
 called reformers of the present day claim that 
 they will be able to abolish the tyranny of the 
 great and restore republican conditions in an 
 oligarchy of wealth. But the so-called People no 
 longer exists for political purposes. The People 
 is no entity except as regards the inviolability of 
 the national soil, and since the anti-militaristic 
 campaign has spread so widely and so fast, it is 
 questionable if it is an effective entity even 
 for that purpose. 
 
 The essentials of a revolutionary class are 
 that it should have sprung from the conditions 
 against which it rebels, that it should have 
 economic interests antagonistic to those of the 
 governing class, and the other condition follows 
 that its mode of thought and expression should 
 be other than those typica? of the conditions 
 against which the revolution is to be directed. 
 
 These characteristics are the essential marks of 
 a victorious revolutionary class. Without them
 
 56 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 a discontented body, merely dissatisfied with 
 things as they are, can achieve nothing because 
 its demands have no real point of differentiation 
 from the existing conditions, and because, in spite 
 of the poverty of the members of the revolting 
 class, its mental viewpoint and its ethics are 
 those of the dominant class. Hence, we find 
 that mere riots and tumults, Jacqueries, and 
 trades union risings like those in Barcelona, and, 
 to a more limited degree, in this country, have 
 accomplished nothing of any permanent value. 
 They have been just hunger rebellions, lacking 
 cohesive power, and the great impulse of a com- 
 mon idea, lacking also the unbridgable separa- 
 tion between the mind of the rebels and the 
 mind of the masters, a separation which becomes 
 an antagonism irreconcilable and complete, ow- 
 ing to the psychological conditions produced by 
 the existence of the actual economic fact. 
 
 The same may be said of the Populist move- 
 ment in the United States which at one time bid 
 fair to be a powerful revolt movement. Its call 
 to all the producers might have had some political 
 effect, save for the fact that the return of fairly 
 good times and a sudden improvement in the 
 condition of the farmer destroyed the fun- 
 damental basis of what was after all largely a 
 hunger movement. 
 
 The economic fact, on each side of which the 
 opposing classes are arrayed, produces psy- 
 chological results on each of those classes which 
 render them more and more antagonistic and 
 their mutual agreement continually less possible. 
 We have seen, for example, in the history of the 
 breakup of the feudal system, how the develop.-
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 57 
 
 ment of the middle class and the economic fact 
 which gave rise to it deepened and accentuated 
 the antagonism between the feudal nobility and 
 the bourgeoisie, until compromise was practically 
 impossible. 
 
 Given the militant nucleus which tends towards 
 revolution, does the present system produce such 
 an economic fact as to render antagonism on each 
 side of that fact complete, and is the fact so es- 
 sential to the modern system as to be in- 
 dispensable? If so, what is that fact? 
 
 There is one essential and indispensable eco- 
 nomic fact in the existing system peculiar to it 
 and inseparable from it. This fact produces 
 psychological effects, which are mutually an- 
 tagonistic and which render agreement between 
 the parties on each side of the fact impossible 
 and whicTi," moreover, produce a revolutionary 
 mental state in the mind of the subject of the 
 economic fact. That fact is the machine process. 
 
 The machine process has been discussed by 
 numerous modern writers, notably by Cook 
 Taylor in his "Modern Factory System" and 
 more briefly, but far more effectively, by Thor- 
 stein Veblen in his "The Theory of Business 
 Enterprise" (Scribners). This latter is, in the 
 opinion of the present writer, one of the most 
 brilliant works on this and kindred subjects. 
 
 The machine-process is thus defined: 
 
 Whenever manual dexterity, the rule of thumb, and 
 the fortuitous conjunctures of the seasons have been 
 supplanted by a reasoned procedure on the basis of 
 a systematic knowledge of the forces employed, there 
 the mechanical industry is to be found, even in the 
 absence of intricate mechanical contrivances. It is a
 
 58 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 question of the character of the process rather than 
 a question of the complexity of the contrivances em- 
 ployed. Chemical, agricultural, and animal industries, 
 as carried on by the characteristically modern methods 
 and in due touch with the market, are to be included 
 in the modern complex of mechanical industry. 
 
 The machine-process implies standardization 
 which as a result has produced a great social 
 gain as regards celerity and efficiency, and hence 
 a wonderful saving in the expenditure of labor. 
 "What is not competently standardized calls for 
 too much of craftsmanlike skill, reflection and 
 individual elaboration, and is therefore not avail- 
 able for economical use in the processes. Ir- 
 regularity, departure from standard measure- 
 ments in any of the measurable facts, is of itself 
 a fault in any item that is to find a use in the 
 industrial process, for it brings delay, it detracts 
 from its ready usability in the nicely adjudged 
 process into which it is to go; and a delay at 
 any point means a more or less far-reaching 
 and intolerable retardation of the comprehensive 
 industrial process at large. Irregularity in prod- 
 ucts intended for industrial use carries a penalty 
 to the nonconforming producer which urges him 
 to fall into line and submit to the required 
 standardization," 
 
 The result is not only the subjection of the 
 workman to the standardization process of the 
 machine, but also the elimination of the idio- 
 syncrasies and private desires of the purchaser, 
 the general public, who are obliged to take the 
 standardized products of the machine process. 
 
 This machine production, Veblen also points 
 out, leads to a standardization of services. 
 
 Thus, to quote still further:
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 59 
 
 To make effective use of the modern system of com- 
 munication in any or all of its ramifications (streets, 
 railways, steamship lines, telephone, telegraph, postal 
 service, etc.) men are required to adapt their needs 
 and their motions to the exigencies of the process 
 whereby this civilized method of intercourse is carried 
 into effect. The service is standardized, and there- 
 fore the use of it is standardized also. Schedules of 
 time, place and circumstance rule throughout. The 
 scheme of everyday life must be arranged with a strict 
 regard to the exigencies of the process whereby this 
 range of human neds is served, if full advantage is 
 to be taken of this system of intercourse, which means 
 that, in so far, one's plans and projects must be con- 
 ceived and worked out in terms of those standard 
 units which the system imposes. 
 
 In addition to this standardization, what is 
 called by Professor Veblen "Interstitial Adjust- 
 ment" is very marked. Thus the various fac- 
 tors in the production of a given industry are 
 obliged to accommodate themselves one to the 
 other, and the more highly developed the in- 
 dustry happens to be the more dependent is it 
 for its successful conduct upon the correlation 
 of these parts. Hence, the dislocation of any of 
 its sub-processes in the general scheme of ma- 
 chine production tends to dislocate the entire sys- 
 tem and causes a general disturbance in that 
 particular industry which, owing to the close 
 relations between indutries, due again to the 
 machine process, will spread outside of the 
 sphere of the industry in question and very 
 soon affect the whole social process. In short, 
 as Professor Veblen says, "This mechanical con- 
 catenation of industrial processes makes for 
 solidarity in the administration of any group of 
 related industries, and more remotely it makes 
 for solidarity in the management of the entire
 
 60 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 industrial traffic of the community." (N. B. 
 This statement should be carefully borne in mind 
 when the matter of industrial unionism is con- 
 sidered.) The result of all this organization and 
 concatenation of industries and correlated indus- 
 tries is that industrial effort is directed towards, 
 and industrial leadership is best displayed in the 
 management of the industries so as to keep the 
 adjustments of the system as perfect as possible, 
 to maintain the running of the entire process un- 
 disturbed by defective working of the inter- 
 related parts. 
 
 This is the new system, the peculiar product 
 of the present age, and it is under this new sys- 
 tem that we must look for that revolutionary 
 proletariat, that nucleus of militants, which is to 
 supply the propulsive force of social revolution, 
 if it is to be found anywhere. 
 
 The growth and development of this machine 
 industry, as a matter of fact, constitutes a con- 
 dition in the socialist and labor movement which 
 could not have been contemplated even by the 
 far-seeing and erudite exponents of the Marxian 
 idea. It is true that the Communist Manifesto 
 states, "Owing to the extensive use of machinery 
 and to division of labor, the work of the prole- 
 tarians has lost all individual character, and con- 
 sequently all charm for the workman. He be- 
 comes an appendage of the machine," and refers 
 to the equalizing tendency of the machine system 
 upon wages and conditions of life. All of which 
 is very striking when the early period at which 
 the '"Manifesto" was written is considered. But 
 the machine process as it is today did not and 
 never could have entered the minds of the writers
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 61 
 
 of the "Manifesto." In fact, they unquestionably 
 thought that the whole system, as they knew it, 
 would have been destroyed and the Socialist Re- 
 public established long before industry had at- 
 tained the present heights of development, and 
 the machine-process had come to be the all dom- 
 inant power it now is. 
 
 After all, in the earlier stages the Socialist 
 propaganda was directed to the proletariat in the 
 small industry and proved fruitless to a great 
 extent because the necessary stage of economic 
 development had not been reached, and so the 
 mind of the proletariat was not prepared to ac- 
 cept it. Such Socialism as was propagated was 
 of the "natural rights" sort, which took as its 
 basis the principles of the bourgeois victory and 
 regarded Socialism as merely an extension of 
 these. 
 
 From this class of propaganda we get the 
 demand that each worker shall have the full 
 product of his toil, a demand which is really 
 ridiculous in face of the highly concentrated and 
 intricate machinery of today, and the ridiculous- 
 ness of which, in terms of modern conditions, is 
 abundantly shown in the standardization of 
 wages as the result of union labor agitation. It 
 is evident that this Socialism is the product of 
 the small store and the small shop. Indeed, to- 
 day it finds its adherents for the most part among 
 the small business men, farmers, and those crafts- 
 men who have so far remained largely unaffected 
 by the machine process. 
 
 The machine process produces psychological 
 effects upon those who follow it which go to the 
 making of a distinct type and aid the ^orma-
 
 62 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 tion of a proletariat distinctively peculiar to the 
 present era. Irreligion and impatience of exter- 
 nal restraint have been noted as peculiarities 
 of the city proletariat which is the special prod- 
 uct of the machine process. Lafargue points 
 out that the irreligion of the machine proletariat 
 is largely due to his being brought in his daily 
 work into relation with mechanical processes 
 where cause and effect are intimately and in- 
 separably related, that the processes of nature, 
 so mysterious and inexplicable, such as birth, 
 growth, etc., which meet the agriculturist at 
 every turn, must of necessity tend to produce 
 a mind more attuned to mysticism and religion 
 than is possible to the experience of the modern 
 artisan. The essential psychological difference 
 between those engaged in business and those who 
 come under the influence of the machine process 
 is thus stated by Veblen in the work to which 
 reference has been already made: 
 
 The ultimate ground of validity for the thinking 
 of the business classes is the natural rights ground 
 of property, — a conventional, anthropomorphic fact 
 having an institutional validity, rather than a matter- 
 of-fact validity such as can be formulated in terms of 
 material cause and effect; while the classes engaged 
 in the machine industry are habitually occupied with 
 matters of causal sequence, which do not lend them- 
 selves to statement in anthropomorphic terms of nat- 
 ural rights and which afford no guidance in ques- 
 tions of institutional right and wrong, or of conven- 
 tional reason and consequence. Arguments which pro- 
 ceed on material cause and effect cannot be met with 
 arguments from conventional precedent or dialectically 
 sufficient reason, and conversely.
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 63 
 
 On the positive side Veblen is at least as pro- 
 nounced. He says : 
 
 The discipline of the modern industrial employments 
 is relatively free from the basis of conventionality, but 
 the difference between the mechanical and the business 
 occupations is a difference of degree. It is not simply 
 that conventional standards of certainty fall into abey- 
 ance for lack of exercise, among the industrial classes. 
 The positive discipline exercised by their work in good 
 part runs counter to the habit of thinking in conven- 
 tional, anthropomorphic terms, whether the convention- 
 ality is that of natural rights or any other. And in 
 respect of this positive training away from conven- 
 tional norms, there is a large divergence between the 
 several lines of industrial employment. In proportion 
 as a given line of employment has more of the charac- 
 ter of a machine process and less of the character of 
 handicraft, the matter of fact training which it gives 
 is more pronounced. In a sense more intimate than 
 the inventors of the phrase seem to have appreciated, 
 the machine has become the master of the man who 
 works with it and an arbiter in the cultural fortunes 
 of the community into whose life it has entered. 
 
 It does not appear that any serious and 
 effective attack can be inade upon the validity 
 of these conclusions. In fact, we find them ac- 
 knowledged freely in the religious and conserva- 
 tive press, where exactly these characteristics are 
 made the subject of attack and are taken as il- 
 lustrative of the degree to which we have de- 
 generated as the result of modern conditions. 
 
 Not only archaic and surviving ethical concep- 
 tions are fast being obliterated by the action of 
 the machine process, but the very elementary 
 virtues which were regarded as primary and es- 
 sential from the bourgeois point of view are 
 coming to be despised. Hence, thrift, an essen- 
 tial small bourgeois virtue, is disappearing in
 
 64 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 view of the machine process development. This 
 is a direct result of the mobility of the worker's 
 life under the machine industry. As a laborer he 
 is part of an intricate machine and must always 
 be usable. He is in fact, as one would say of the 
 mechanical parts of the machine itself, standard- 
 ized and must be available whenever required in 
 the process. Hence he can have but little im- 
 pedimenta, as such would interfere with the 
 freedom of his movements. So that thrift dis- 
 appears, not owing to the wicked and wanton ex- 
 travagance of the working class, as the clergy 
 and editors are eager to declare, but by virtue of 
 the very necessities of the machine process itself. 
 In connection with this absence of thrift it may 
 be noted that the migratory farm laborers do not 
 save money even during their period of employ- 
 ment. Starting in Southern California, where 
 large numbers of them hibernate, they move 
 north with the crops. They spend their wages 
 on the best food obtainable, first-class steaks, and 
 good meals. They spend what a country dweller 
 not accustomed to the machine process would 
 consider an extravagant amount upon physical 
 necessities. But experience has shown them that 
 this is after all their most economical way of 
 living. In order to take their place in the ma- 
 chine process, and to perform the work which 
 the system requires of them, they must be in the 
 best physical condition with all the strength of 
 which they are capable. To keep this condition 
 necessitates the expenditure of what otherwise 
 might be considered an extravagant amount on 
 food. But there is no alternative — no ex- 
 penditure, no job.
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 65 
 
 It is also pointed out that the distinctive effects 
 of the machine process upon the mind of those 
 engaged in it is to lead to a denial of the natural 
 rights' doctrine which lies at the bas6 of the com- 
 mon law and the whole political and juridical 
 system of the English speaking countries. The 
 workers engaged in the machine process deny the 
 right of individual freedom to contract on the 
 part of the worker with the employer ; they deny 
 also the right of the employer to carry on his 
 own business in his own way. 
 
 Here there is also an approach to that stand- 
 ardization which is apparent in the machine proc^ 
 ess. It is very obvious that the idea of in- 
 dividual bargaining is practically impossible un- 
 der the machine industry and that it would tend 
 to interfere with the smooth working and the cor- 
 relation of the parts of that industry which we 
 have seen to be essential to its satisfactory con- 
 duct. In fact, so far has the machine process 
 acted upon the minds of the parties on each side 
 of it that there is hardly any employer worth 
 considering in industry affected by the machine 
 process, who does not see the advantage of col- 
 lective bargaining. It has advanced so far as to 
 receive legislative and judicial sanction in Great 
 Britain and those outlying portions of the British 
 Empire in which the modern system prevails. 
 The Civic Federation in this country, a highly 
 influential, if unofficial committee of capitalists 
 and trade unionists, takes the same attitude. In 
 fact, a properly organized and amenable trade 
 union is considered almost essential as part of 
 the capitalist equipment. It is obviously neces- 
 sary to the maintaining of that adjustment ("In-
 
 66 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 terstitial Adjustment," Veblen calls it) which the 
 machine process demands. Hence the machine 
 process itself is apparently such as to work an 
 entire change in the concepts underlying bour- 
 geois society and may be regarded as a revolu- 
 tionary and subversive economic fact, like the 
 rise of trade and the substitution of money — 
 rents for payment by feudal service in the feudal 
 system. 
 
 The machine process, moreover, tends to widen 
 the gulf between the possessing and the revo- 
 lutionary classes and to make the passage from 
 the subject to the owning class continually more 
 difficult. In the prior stage the evolution from 
 man to master was usual. V/here it did not take 
 place the man was so frequently to be blamed 
 for lack of the elementary qualities of success 
 that his failure was naturally imputed to him- 
 self, and even he felt that it was largely his own 
 fault. The classes fitted together so closely and 
 the level was so well kept that a young energetic 
 man was no misfit husband for the daughter of 
 the master. In fact there was no real gulf be- 
 tween master and servant. But the foundation 
 of the greater industry with its machine process, 
 with its corporations and trusts, its absent stock- 
 holders, its graded and disciplined organization, 
 accentuates markedly the fact of subject and 
 master, and produces, on the other hand, feelings 
 of haughtiness and pride, of arrogance and su- 
 periority, together with a sense of material, 
 coupled with political power, and on the other 
 hand that recognition of subjection and hope- 
 less endeavor which is the most fruitful imme- 
 diate source of revolutionary action.
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 67 
 
 Moreover, the proletariat, or at least that nu- 
 cleus of it which we have pointed out as being 
 engaged in the machine process, actually does 
 tend to become more and more revolutionary, 
 that is, to take up a continually more iconoclastic 
 attitude to the natural rights theories. Veblen 
 says, "The latest, maturest expressions of trade 
 unionism are on the whole the most extreme, in 
 so far as they are directed against the natural 
 rights of property and pecuniary contract." 
 
 True as this was in 1904, when the first edition 
 of the work was published, the last seven years 
 have proved still more forcibly the accuracy of 
 this general expression. The trades unions, even 
 those which were most conservative and yielded 
 less readily to the influence of the machine proc- 
 ess and which retained the impress of the pre- 
 ceding system longer, have begun to give way 
 more and more to the influence of the machine 
 process. This shows that as the old members 
 of the unions pass away the old mental attitude 
 passes also, and that the new men, the young 
 who take their places in the unions, or who are 
 sufficiently adventurous to form new labor or- 
 ganizations, come into them with concepts de- 
 rived from the machine process and are thus 
 more radical or iconoclastic. They proclaim the 
 "standardization of industry" as against that 
 "standardization of business" (Veblen), which 
 is incorporated in the common law, not, it is true, 
 in its fullness, because the vestiges of the old 
 still remain and the subject class has as usual 
 retained the traditions of the former epoch to a 
 greater extent than its masters.
 
 68 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 Each succeeding wave of unionism and of 
 working class effort, however, places the work- 
 ing class standard in advance of its predecessors 
 and always in greater accord with the operation 
 of the machine process upon the working class 
 mind. Wherever this tendency is obvious the 
 machine proletariat will be found, and there will 
 be seen the effects of the operation of the machine 
 process. Thus the old system of agriculture 
 affords no psychological ground for the develop- 
 ment of a revolutionary class movement among 
 the agricultural laborers. But the conversion of 
 the old-fashioned farmhand into the modern farm 
 laborer, a cog in the machine process, very soon 
 converts that apparently most hopeless of indus- 
 trial subjects into material for organization. So 
 that the Industrial Workers of the World, the 
 most advanced product of the machine process 
 and a form of unionism absolutely inconceivable 
 in any state of industrial development anterior 
 to that of a fully grown machine process, has 
 partially succeeded in organizing the migratory 
 farm laborers and in causing them to win strikes 
 and to greatly increase the price of their labor. 
 
 It must be remembered also in this connection, 
 that the numbers of those organized are but a 
 small proportion of those affected. The resources 
 of the new organization referred to are too slight 
 to enable them to enter upon any greater field 
 of organization at present than their staff and 
 equipment permit. Thousands of requests for 
 organization have come in from the rural dis- 
 tricts which could not be acceded to as the or- 
 ganization was not prepared to enter upon the 
 task which this extended scope necessarily pre-
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 69 
 
 sented. This is evidence in itself of the action 
 of the machine process upon that part of the 
 proletariat which Veblen speaks of as unaffected. 
 Indeed, the same proletariat in Europe is un- 
 affected simply because the machine process in 
 agriculture in Europe has not attained the im- 
 portance it has achieved here. It may be noted 
 that the machine process is not at work to any 
 extent in farming proper. The machine process 
 goes chiefly to handling the crop and it is in just 
 that particular work that the industrial or- 
 ganizable qualities of the new agricultural pro- 
 letariat are beginning to show themselves. In 
 other words, those wandering hordes, the despair 
 of politician and reformer, are being gradually 
 made into an organized whole by virtue of noth- 
 ing but the machine process itself and its psycho- 
 logical effect upon the units of these hordes. 
 
 The same may be said of other classes of 
 labor which come under the influence of the ma- 
 chine process, and especially of unskilled labor, 
 which, formerly, having its craft to protect, was 
 practically hopeless from the organization stand- 
 point. The machine process, however, develops 
 the revolutionary state of mind even in this pro- 
 portion of the proletariat, so that the foreign un- 
 skilled laborers in the machine process are fast 
 learning the art of organization, as the growth 
 of tht United Laborers' Unions (composed of 
 migratory unskilled laborers) in the American 
 Federation of Labor plainly shows, and as is 
 further evidenced by the remarkable continued 
 increase in numbers and influence of the Indus- 
 trial Workers of the World. This latter as has 
 been noted is at once the most revolutionary of
 
 70 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 modern unions, and is composed almost entirely 
 at the present time of elements which had hither- 
 to been considered unorganizable. 
 
 The operation of the machine process explains 
 a phenomenon, which seems to find no satis- 
 factory solution except in terms of the psycho- 
 logical effects of the process in question. It is 
 found that speaking generally the economically 
 better situated class of workers is more amenable 
 to the Socialist propaganda than those less well 
 off. Thus according to the analysis of the mem- 
 bership of the Socialist Party published in the 
 Socialist Bulletin for April, 1909, it appears that 
 20 per cent are laborers and 41 per cent crafts- 
 men. Of course the laborers are economically 
 worse off than the craftsmen and might there- 
 fore be expected to be more revolutionary in 
 tendency. Occasionally the Socialist driven to 
 an explanation ventures the assertion that it is 
 just because the craftsmen are better off that 
 they take an interest in the Socialist movement. 
 He says that the hours of the craftsman being 
 fewer, his leisure greater, and his opportunities 
 of self -improvement better, he becomes more in- 
 tellectual and consequently more inclined to So- 
 cialism. This explanation has never been satis- 
 factory, although it appears to correspond fairly 
 well with the facts. For example, the question 
 remains why should some certain classes of 
 craftsmen be more amenable than others to So- 
 cialism? It will be found that the socialistic 
 craftsmen are for by far the most part partici- 
 pants in the machine industry and are therefore 
 under the influence of the machine process, while, 
 as regards the laborers, there is little doubt that
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 71 
 
 practically all of them who take part in the 
 socialist movement do so by virtue of the psycho- 
 logical effect of the machine process. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Socialists regard 
 the industrial centers as their proper hunting- 
 grounds, and as affording to them the best op- 
 portunities for the development of a strong revo- 
 lutionary movement. In fact it is axiomatic with 
 the Socialists that their propaganda is dependent 
 upon industrial development. Socialism requires 
 a high degree of industrial development, which, 
 of course, necessarily implies the machine- 
 process. Under no other conditions can a state 
 of mind amenable to the Socialist propaganda in 
 its modern form be produced. 
 
 In these industrial centers, however, very dis- 
 tinct differences are to be observed in the classes 
 of people attracted to the Socialist movement. 
 Broadly speaking, they may be divided into two 
 classes, which are denominated within the So- 
 cialist ranks as proletarian and bourgeois, respect- 
 ively. The latter are really representatives of 
 the smaller bourgeoisie not under the influence 
 of the machine process, and the former are the 
 products of the machine-process, generally speak- 
 ing. Between those two types there is an inces- 
 sant war in the Socialist movement itself, which 
 is constantly agitated by the endeavor of the ma- 
 chine proletarian to obtain the upper hand. Each 
 fight gives him a better position, as he is in 
 accord with industrial processes and the growth 
 of the machine industry. There is also to be 
 observed that tendency to "Interstitial Adjust- 
 ment," which has been noted by. Veblen as a 
 distinct necessity of the machine process. Just
 
 72 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 as the machine process requires a continual ad- 
 justment of the sub-processes to meet its require- 
 ments, and to contribute to the economic result, 
 so the working class endeavors to make its or- 
 ganization follow the lines of the nucleus process 
 and to bring about those "Interstitial Adjust- 
 ments" between the various elements of the labor 
 side of the process, which the masters are con- 
 tinually making on the capitalist side. 
 
 Hence follows the dispute between the ad- 
 vocates of craft unionism and what is called 
 industrial unionism. The chief charge of the 
 latter against the former is that the craft union- 
 ism is not suited to the present stage of the ma- 
 chine process, that it is archaic, and should be 
 abandoned. In fact, willy-nilly, it is being aban- 
 doned, and the only reason which prevents its 
 more speedy abandonment is the natural ten- 
 dency of those in office to perpetuate their tenure 
 and to retain the emoluments. Even in the So- 
 cialist movement we find the same fundamental 
 and essential distinctions between the types. In 
 speaking of the non-efifectiveness of the Socialist 
 movement to affect the rural classes of Europe, 
 Veblen explains the fact of the impermeability 
 of the peasants as follows: "The discipline of 
 their daily life leaves their spirit undisturbed on 
 the plane of conventionality and anthropo- 
 rnorphism and the changes to which they aspire 
 lie _ within the scope of the conventionalities 
 which have grown out of the circumstances of 
 their life and which express the habit of mind 
 enforced by these circumstances." The same 
 words might be applied almost without change 
 to those in the Socialist movement who are not
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 73 
 
 subjected to the operations of the machine 
 process. 
 
 The same characteristics which have made 
 Methodism and kindred sects typical of the small 
 bourgeois class pervade their socialism. They 
 are idealistic in the long view, and small and 
 sordid in their immediate actions. They yield 
 readily to and are easily made the victims of 
 pietistic adventurers who translate the old theol- 
 ogy into terms of a pseudo-socialism. They pos- 
 sess in a marked degree that surviving reverence 
 for natural rights which has been mentioned 
 heretofore, and base their hypotheses upon it. 
 
 The machine process, however, produces a type 
 which tends ever further away from this idealistic 
 point of view and becomes continually more defi- 
 nite and concrete. This latter class troubles itself 
 less about abstractions and busies itself more with 
 the creation of an industrial machine through 
 which it can actually express itself, and hence 
 thus readily responds more to economic than to 
 political stimulus. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the modern industrialist 
 devotes more energy and thought to the subject 
 of shop control than to the mere question of 
 wages and hours. It will be noted that this is 
 entirely distinctive from what may be called the 
 old-fashioned proprietary form of socialism. 
 According to this latter, the "full product of his 
 toil" was the objective of the class-conscious 
 worker. But the present industrialist aims at the 
 "control of the job," in common with his fellow- 
 workers. It is a very slight step from this to the 
 ownership of the job, to wit: the instruments of 
 labor. The objective may seem to be the same
 
 74 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 in the long run, but the objective has always been 
 the same. At every time men have desired to 
 obtain the full return of their labor. It is the 
 method of approach which differentiates the 
 epochs, and the method of job control is a later 
 development, as compared with expropriation by 
 legal decree based on a revolutionary mandate. 
 It will be thus found that the operation of the 
 machine process is explanatory of much of the 
 discussion and the strife within the Socialist 
 movement. 
 
 There are differences, apparently irreconcil- 
 able, which can only be solved by the passing of 
 time and the elimination of one or other of the 
 combatants. In this event the final triumph must 
 necessarily rest with those most closely associ- 
 ated with the machine process, since it is fast 
 becoming dominant. 
 
 The socialism which is mere rebellion and an 
 expression of discontent with economic failure 
 is the product of non-association with the ma- 
 chine process. Its adherents are largely small 
 business men who have failed to secure a per- 
 manent footing in the competitive struggle in 
 retail trade, or who find themselves, after a suc- 
 cessful business career, threatened with ruin and 
 extinction by the operation of the great combi- 
 nations. Besides these are the large numbers of 
 craftsmen who still are tool-users and conse- 
 quently still have a basis for a craft union. They 
 are in much the same position as the small busi- 
 ness man. 
 
 Both of these classes are without the ma- 
 chine-process state of mind. They are both ' 
 prone to the same pietistic weaknesses ; they
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 75 
 
 are both subject to emotional appeals; they both 
 deal in absolutes; they both have a tendency to 
 the same ridiculous and pettifogging little re- 
 forms, and they both are the slaves of some in- 
 tangible thing which they call "Public Opinion," 
 and bow down before some equally intangible 
 thing which they call the "People." In fact, they 
 carry over into the Socialist movement of today 
 the ante-machine process of mind of yesterday. 
 This very class still forms the nucleus of church 
 membership throughout the country. 
 
 The difference between the city and country 
 delegations to a Socialist convention is distinct, 
 as distinct as the t^pes of leaders which repre- 
 sent one or other. One instance will illustrate 
 the effect of contact with the machine process. 
 A carpenters' union in a country place in South- 
 ern California had volunteered its services free 
 of cost towards the erection of a Methodist 
 church in a small country place on Labor Day. 
 The story of this, being told in Los Angeles to a 
 meeting of the carpenters' union, was received 
 with much merriment and jeering laughter. Here 
 we have two entirely different points of view 
 from members of unions in the same craft, and 
 actually in the same county organization. The 
 members of the one were craft union men, carry- 
 ing on their business in the old-fashioned style 
 in a rural district. The members of the other 
 formed part of a building trades organization, 
 which is an undeveloped and primary form of 
 industrial organization, and mirrors to some ex- 
 tent the machine process in an industry of which 
 carpentering is a sub-process. Hence, the ma- 
 chine-process state of mmd naturally prevails in
 
 76 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 the membership. It is very clear that persons 
 holding such divergent views are bound to clash 
 in the same organization, but these views are 
 natural consequences of the industrial move- 
 ment. 
 
 The expressions which have done duty for the 
 combatants during the last few decades — "petit 
 bourgeois" and "proletarian" — convey an ap- 
 proximation to the underlying differences, and 
 they are by no means exact. Thus, the craft 
 union man is a proletarian in the sense that he 
 has only his labor power to sell. Still, except 
 where he is involved in the machine process, his 
 opinion is more likely to coincide with that of 
 an actual small bourgeois than with that of a 
 proletarian engaged in the machine process. It 
 all seems to proceed from the process and to be 
 independent of individual volition. Thus, a city 
 carpenter engaged in the machine process, as has 
 been pointed out, may go into the country and 
 there drop out of the machine process. He will, 
 in the course of time, adopt the point of view of 
 the rural carpenter. He will remain interested in 
 the Socialist movement and even join his country 
 local, but his attitude to tactics will change. This 
 will be all the more readily the case if, owing to 
 the rural conditions, he is able to take small con- 
 tracting, to procure a little property and thus to 
 remove himself more and more from the opera- 
 tion of the machine process. He will still re- 
 main a member of the Socialist Party; will still 
 take part in the Socialist movement, but his atti- 
 tude of mind with regard to what is involved in 
 the Socialist movement will differ much from 
 his attitude when he comes, though only par- 
 tially, in contact with the machine orocess.
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 77 
 
 A very complete instance of the effect of the 
 machine process was shown in this very trade 
 (carpentering) during the recent strike at Gold- 
 field. The Western Federation of Miners, an 
 industrial organization, which is formed, at least 
 partially, to correspond with the machine-process 
 development, was engaged in a strike against 
 mine-owners. In the Western Federation were 
 carpenters who were employed about mines, were 
 members of the Federation, were engaged in the 
 machine process, and, hence, were solidly organ- 
 ized with the striking miners. Besides these, 
 however, were carpenters not engaged in the 
 mining industry and who were affiliated with the 
 American Federation of Labor. These carpen- 
 ters were, in great part, sub-contractors and car- 
 ried on their work not in connection with the 
 machine process. They were antagonistic to the 
 strike. In San Francisco, however, the carpen- 
 ters who were members of the American Federa- 
 tion of Labor, but were engaged in the machine 
 process, were for the strike. Here an obvious 
 connection appears. It is quite possible — certain, 
 in fact — that many of the Goldfield American 
 Federation carpenters called themselves Social- 
 ists ; it is also certain that many of the San Fran- 
 cisco carpenters also did the same. The machine 
 process was, however, stronger than any artifi- 
 cial bonds, industrial or political. 
 
 Some years ago Richard Calwer published a 
 pamphlet on the condition of the German Social 
 Democratic Party, which raised the question of 
 the relations of petit bourgeois and proletarian, 
 and was much discussed. He spoke of the atti- 
 tude of the petit bourgeois as reactionary, just as
 
 78 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 some Socialists are fond of speaking of the atti- 
 tude of certain groups in the American move- 
 ment as reactionary. In reahty this does not ap- 
 pear to be the case. What Calwer and many 
 advanced SociaHsts are attacking at the present 
 day is the old pre-machine process socialism, 
 which has not changed, but which time and the 
 machine process have rendered inadequate. 
 
 As I write this I read in the New York Call, 
 May 29th, 1911: "Yet, as regards our move- 
 ment, though every day it grows stronger in 
 numbers, intelligence and power, there are many 
 in our ranks who evidently believe that the So- 
 cialist movement is gradually losing its character 
 as a revolutionary organization and becoming a 
 party of compromise and reform." Against this 
 the editor protests, though in the estimation of 
 the writer he protests on altogether wrong 
 grounds, and justifies his protest with an archaic 
 quotation which has no connection whatsoever 
 with the modern form of the Socialist move- 
 ment, as it is affected by the machine process, 
 this quotation being a vociferous demand for the 
 wealth of the capitalist, in the old-fashioned 
 Style, and is to the effect that the proletariat has 
 strong hands and will take the bourgeois prop- 
 erty. Here is the old proprietary socialism again 
 in an even more elementary form than usual. 
 
 SOME POTENTIALITIES OF THE MILITANT 
 PROLETARIAT. 
 
 The machine-process conditions which have 
 developed out of bourgeois society have pro- 
 duced a type differentiated, as we have seen, in 
 many vital particulars from the dominant hour-
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 79 
 
 geois type. It may also be noted that the machine 
 process fact has had its effect upon the individ- 
 uals on each side of it; it has affected both pro- 
 letarian and capitalist. Thus, if the modern 
 proletarian does not view economic actualities 
 with the same eyes as formerly, and if even the 
 Socialist movement has ceased, in a great meas- 
 ure, to repose complete confidence in its own 
 former solutions, the capitalist has by no means 
 been immune from the workings of the same 
 process. He, too, regards both economic facts 
 and economic solutions differently than hereto- 
 fore. What formerly he cursed now he blesses 
 altogether. In accordance with his necessities, 
 the schools and theologians have altered the tone 
 of their teachings, so that competition which was 
 formerly designated the life of trade, is now 
 treated in a much less complimentary manner, 
 and those combinations which were so recently 
 denounced as pernicious and un-American have 
 become, in turn, recognized as the fine flower of 
 economic and social progress. 
 
 For example. Judge Elbert H. Gary, in the 
 proceedings of the Steel Trust Investigating 
 Committee, June, 1911, frankly advocated gov- 
 ernmental control of the machine process. He 
 actually asked for a federal license for the trusts, 
 which would in itself be a protection against in- 
 terference on the part of individual states. So 
 that the ramifications of the greater industry 
 spread ever more widely, and the mi nd o f the 
 capitalist, formerly concentrated upon a narrow 
 and specific portion of productive industry, moves 
 with the industry itself, growing more compre-
 
 80 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 hensive as the necessities of the economic and 
 industrial situation require. 
 
 But, with all these changes, the fundamental 
 antagonism between the capitalist and the la- 
 borer does not become mitigated. On the con- 
 trary, it grows in intensity, as the machine proc- 
 ess organizes the laborers ever more closely. For 
 this organization at the machine and in terms 
 of its process implies in addition organization 
 for mutual assistance in the struggle for a larger 
 proportion of the product. The more fully or- 
 ganized the business and the more complete the 
 machine-process, the greater the mutual antag- 
 onism between the capitalist class and the labor- 
 ing class. The chasm grows ever more un- 
 bridgeable, and the militant portion of the pro- 
 letariat is compelled in the very nature of things 
 to increase its militancy. Thus, funds which 
 were formerly collected as insurance against sick- 
 ness and to secure decent interment are now 
 directed to actual industrial conflict and the 
 money chests of the union tend more and more 
 to become war chests. 
 
 This fact of the laboring class organization and 
 its antagonism to the capitalistic management is 
 the one fact which the capitalist organizer can- 
 not avoid. It is the nemesis which follows him. 
 All else may be met but "labor," which, after 
 all, is only an abstraction for actual and flesh 
 and blood men and women. Even governments 
 may be ridiculed. Thus Judge Gary, while ask- 
 ing for the federal regulation of the steel trust 
 and the fixing of the price of its products by the 
 government, had no backwardness in stating that 
 the steel manufacturers intended to hold an in-
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 81 
 
 ternational conference for the purpose of making 
 the steel trust world wide in its operations and 
 "to prevent destructive fluctuations of steel 
 prices." But the employes cannot be dodged. 
 To make the steel trust international and to fix 
 an international price for steel products may be 
 effective as against the U. S. Government, but 
 it does not touch the labor question, a matter 
 concerning which Judge Gary, though in other 
 matters so sturdy, was actually pathetic. 
 
 In fact, such an extension of the scope of the 
 steel trust and the creation of an international 
 machine for the fixing of prices and the manu- 
 facture of that staple article not only consoli- 
 dates the steel industry, it also consolidates and 
 makes international the labor in that industry^ 
 The antagonism between employer and employee- 
 is not diminished thereby. On the contrary, it 
 is precipitated, organized, and may be more read- 
 ily accentuated. As the steel industry becomes 
 more effective on the machine-process side, it 
 equally becomes more effective on the labor side. 
 
 As an illustration, the revolutionary trade 
 union attitude towards this manipulation of the 
 steel trust affairs may be gathered from the fol- 
 lowing editorial from "Solidarity:" 
 
 The evidence that the steel trust has not properly 
 reckoned with the revolutionary union movement is 
 seen in the trust's v^^iping out craft union divisions 
 from among its workers. Having thrown away its 
 craft union shield against the workers, the trust would 
 now take up the governmental shield against the middle 
 class. This is the fatalism forced upon the ruling class 
 by social evolution, and pointing unmistakably to the 
 near at hand doom of that class. The trust, in the 
 course of evolution, having brought about the condi-
 
 82 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 tions for social ownership and control of industry, 
 seeks to avert the inevitable, and only hastens it. Every 
 move it makes — progressive though it may be in con- 
 trast with a lower stage of economic development — 
 only shows more clearly its limitations of historical 
 development; and points unerringly to the next phase 
 of social evolution — industrial democracy — the rule of 
 the people through industry. The middle class has al- 
 ready met its doom ; the ultra capitalist class is about 
 to meet its. The working class is organizing indus- 
 trially the world over, to build the structure of the new 
 society within the shell of the old. Judge Gary's double 
 proposal, to fortify the trusts by national "governmental 
 regulation," and at the same time to place them on an 
 international footing, is but paving the way for the 
 international supremacy of the working class. Let 
 all revolutionary workers assist in this process by agi- 
 tation and organization of their fellow workers. (Soli- 
 darity, June 10, 1911.) 
 
 So that the hostiHty of the employe to the em- 
 ployer does not seem to have become mitigated 
 by such changes as the growth and triumph of 
 the machine-process have effected in the mind of 
 the opposing forces. On the contrary, the antag- 
 onism seems to have deepened and widened. The 
 result was only to be expected from the elimina- 
 tion of personal relations and the reduction of 
 the entire question to one of the ownership of 
 the tool. The early bourgeois said that it was 
 all a matter of contract, so that the laws and con- 
 stitutions of today stand as the witness of the 
 bourgeois necessities of yesterday. But contract 
 implies at least consent and the ability to make 
 contracts, both of which prerequisites are and 
 have always been conspicuously absent in the re- 
 lations of employer and employee. So that the 
 pretense of individual contract has come to be 
 ignored by degrees and the business agent makes
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 83 
 
 agreements for batches of men in accordance 
 with a standardized scale of payment, while the 
 employer purchases the labor power in batches 
 quite irrespective of the individual qualities of 
 the separate living receptacles of labor-power 
 which go to make up the sum total of the mass 
 of labor-power required. Both sides much pre- 
 fer this method. The large employer approves 
 of collective bargaining because it is all in the 
 direction of standardization and the business 
 agent prefers it because it gives him greater con- 
 trol over the men of the union and at the same 
 time allows him to gain a certain amount of fame, 
 if nothing else, by the successful arrangement of 
 contracts and working agreements. Now and 
 again there is a cry in favor of the "open shop," 
 which means the abolition of collective bargain- 
 ing, but such a demand rises for the most part 
 from the small business which is not yet involved 
 in the machine-process. Sometimes, however, it 
 proceeds from the greater concerns, but is then 
 used merely as an incident in bargaining in order 
 to impress the business agent with the necessity 
 of lowering his scale of demands. So far has 
 collective bargaining gone that the Civic Federa- 
 tion was formed in this country, largely for the 
 purpose of promoting it, and of bringing about 
 arrangements between the greater capitalists and 
 the union labor officials which would obviate 
 much of the trouble between employer and em- 
 ployee. 
 
 But this device, promising as it appeared, does 
 not seem to proceed satisfactorily. Hostility on 
 the part of the rank and file of the organized 
 workers pursues every effort at reconciliation
 
 84 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 with the employers because, in the very essence 
 of things, anything but hostiHty between the 
 owners of the tools of production and the work- 
 ers is in the nature of things impossible. Thus, 
 the United Mine Workers have recently de- 
 manded the resignation of John Mitchell from 
 the Civic Federation, or his expulsion from the 
 union. The latter, having the choice thus un- 
 compromisingly set before him, abandoned the 
 Civic Federation. It will be noted that the 
 United Mine Workers is one of the largest and 
 most important labor organizations in the coun- 
 try and that John Mitchell is very distinguished 
 as a labor leader who has succeeded in keeping 
 the enthusiastic support of the miners, and, at 
 the same time, gaining for a labor representative 
 in this country much admiration and quite an 
 unusual amount of attention. 
 
 In spite of collective bargaining and confer- 
 ences between labor leaders and capitalists, the 
 hostility between the parties on each side of the 
 machine process really increases in intensity un- 
 til it approaches actual conflict. Indeed, only 
 now are the forces of the opponents beginning 
 to come into the field. All former fighting has 
 been skirmishing, the conflict of isolated groups 
 who have carried on their struggles apart from 
 the main bodies and whose operations have but 
 slightly- interfered with the general process of 
 production and distribution. 
 
 In the aggregate, it may be conceded that the 
 amount of economic loss due to strikes and the 
 interruption of work by industrial disputes has 
 been very great. It may also be granted that 
 large numbers of employers have been bank-
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 85 
 
 rupted and that the economic position of thou- 
 sands of employees has been destroyed by the 
 same means. But such conflicts do not have 
 the effect of ehminating the combatants. The 
 proletarian who is reduced to a lower position 
 by virtue of the fact that his strike has failed, 
 who is driven out, with the probable loss of his 
 trade, and who becomes thereby an unskilled 
 workman, is not removed as a combatant ; he may 
 still find his place in the general fight which is 
 being waged round the machine. He may be 
 crushed and lose effectiveness as an actual 
 fighter, for men who have been badly beaten, 
 whether as capitalist or workman, seldom have 
 the requisite stamina remaining to constitute 
 them good fighters thereafter. His children may 
 be reduced in position also, but those children, 
 even the girls, to an ever increasing extent, are 
 obliged to earn their living in service to the 
 machine process, that indomitable modern fact 
 on each side of which are ranged those _ un- 
 slumbering and restless hates and antagonisms 
 upon which in reality depend the progress of 
 the modern world. That beaten proletarian is 
 still to reckon with, even in the person of his 
 children, so that the conflict cannot be terminated 
 by the defeat of the proletarian, at least in any 
 species of industrial conflict with which history 
 has made us familiar. 
 
 And what is true of the proletarian is true 
 also of the capitalist. To defeat and even to ruin 
 the small capitalist by industrial conflict is not 
 to weaken, it is actually to strengthen the cap- 
 italist body, by removing a useless factor and 
 by, therefore, tending to concentrate the cap-
 
 86 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 italist strength. To ruin the individual capitaHst 
 is the aim of capitalism itself. To that end all 
 plans and combinations are devised, all sorts of 
 fraudulent schemes are made, all manner of sud- 
 den attacks and intricate plans of campaign are 
 calculated and developed. The real process of 
 capitalism is toward the destruction of the in- 
 dividual capitalist that thereby capitalism may 
 be organized. 
 
 The Steel Trust, in the instance above quoted, 
 is the victor in an exterminating war carried 
 over a long period of time between coteries of 
 competing manufacturers. It comes laden with 
 the accumulated spoils of ruined steel manufac- 
 turers. It has reached its goal; it is fully or- 
 ganized. Thereupon, having attained its climax, 
 it ceases further from ruining individual manu- 
 facturers. It calls upon the government itself 
 to fix a price for steel; it having, in the first 
 place, secured to itself by virtue of the eco- 
 nomic power it has achieved, possession of the 
 government. Even then it hesitates to trust 
 the government of its own creation, but, mak- 
 ing an international agreement, brings this in- 
 ternational economic fact to bear upon its 
 national government. 
 
 This international economic fact has a greater 
 significance than the mere power which it is 
 capable of exercising over a national govern- 
 ment. It must mirror itself to the extent of its 
 potentiality in politics ; and an international 
 economic fact will be mirrored on no less than 
 an international scale. Does this, then, point 
 to an international state for some purposes, at 
 least, a governmental force transcending national
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 87 
 
 lines? No less. And, as the economic accom- 
 plished fact must not be endangered by the fric- 
 tion of factors and ingredients subordinate to 
 that fact, it also implies an international police. 
 It should not be overlooked that the most stren- 
 uous champion of international peace is Andrew 
 Carnegie, one of the most efficient instruments in 
 the creation of the steel trust. International 
 peace implies, in its turn, an international police, 
 responsible to an international controlling power, 
 which, having possession of the police power, is, 
 consequently, a government. The conclusion is 
 unavoidable. The dreams of internationalism, 
 which have been regarded as the most absurdly 
 ridiculous and ultra-poetic, become the most pro- 
 saic, and that most unwelcome, because unpa- 
 triotic, result is being realized through this eco- 
 nomic fact and its ramifications, and through 
 that alone. 
 
 But, the internationalism impending does not 
 immediately bring that peace which has been so 
 loudly proclaimed — it brings peace between cap- 
 italists, because itself is the result of their in- 
 terests becoming so unified and concentrated that 
 war grows impossible, even unthinkable. It 
 brings peace between the proletariats of the va- 
 rious countries, because the concentration, of 
 industry also tends to concentrate their interests 
 and to unify their purposes. It eliminates 
 national jealousies and antagonisms, tends to re- 
 duce to a minimum the inconveniences caused 
 by diversities of language, dissipates religious 
 disputes by the elimination of religion itself, 
 which, at icast, m its present form, cannot exist 
 concurrently with the machine process, and sub-
 
 88 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 stitutes for all the convolutions and intricacies 
 of international politics, with its jealousies and 
 intrigues, involving the proletarian class as a 
 subject class, the regularity and the smoothness 
 of the machine process. 
 
 As the capitalist functions on the international 
 field and in accordance with the development of 
 the machine process, the proletarian likewise so 
 functions in accordance with the same facts. It 
 is curious to note also that his international ac- 
 tion depends upon and is commensurate with the 
 development of the machine process and with 
 that alone. The development of what might be 
 called the international idea in the proletarian 
 movement is in itself an interesting study in 
 the effect of the machine process as contrasted 
 with a theoretical propaganda. 
 
 It was obvious very early that proletarians 
 being subjected everywhere to the tyranny of 
 capitalism had much in common, and that it was, 
 therefore, the greatest folly for members of the 
 working class to kill one another in international 
 wars, which in no way subserved their interests. 
 Hence, one of the very first acts of the early 
 Socialists, or rather "Communists," as the 
 Marxians at that time called themselves, was 
 to form an international group which they called 
 the International Workingman's Association. 
 This group made much noise, and caused con- 
 siderable perturbation among the more nervous 
 bourgeois and those in whom the glaring re- 
 ports of the capitalist press produced emotional 
 reactions. It was called the Red International. 
 It numbered in its ranks many men of inter- 
 national reputation and had more than its share
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 89 
 
 of talent and enthusiasm. It accomplished 
 nothing, however, of any note. Towards the 
 last it became a veritable cave of the winds, 
 where noisy and, frequently, empty disputes on 
 academic subjects frittered away the time and 
 energy of the members. Finally, the personal 
 antagonisms grew so intense as to be unbearable 
 and the Red International perished in the smoke 
 of its own controversies. 
 
 The sudden recrudescence of the SociaHst 
 movement in the political form in the early 
 eighties again caused a movement towards the 
 realization of the international idea. Accord- 
 ingly, the international Socialist political con- 
 gresses were constituted. Painfully«and with a 
 palpable effort towards respectability, these have 
 been gradually brought to assume a form more 
 and more resembling the parliamentary, until 
 now the leading parliamentary figures assume 
 as nearly a cabinet ministerial air as possible and 
 the congresses grow more and more like a 
 belated and uninteresting replica of an ordinary 
 parliament. Such congresses cannot inspire 
 either respect or faith. They are too obviously 
 exotic; the whole business seems calculated to 
 make good little bourgeois out of naughty little 
 proletarians ; it is palpably artificial and insin- 
 cere. The problems presented tend to grow 
 less and less vital with each passing congress, 
 so that the apologists are forced to find solace 
 in the fact that nothing essential comes up for 
 discussion, upon the ground that nothing funda- 
 mental remains to be discussed, all fundamentals 
 having been very satisfactorily settled. Both 
 these forms of the "international" are really
 
 90 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT ' 
 
 testimonials to the folly of trying to make things. 
 Socialism is international in its essence; there- 
 fore, argue the Socialists, "let us make an in- 
 ternational," and they proceed to make it. It 
 is the same old utopianism which has been so 
 much mocked and yet so steadily pursued, the 
 same fatuous reasoning which, beginning with 
 the postulate that socialism implies co-operation, 
 ends almost simultaneously with the hurried re- 
 solve to create forthwith a co-operative common- 
 wealth. 
 
 The machine process solves, naturally, those 
 problems which seem insurmountable and are 
 really so to those who essay to solve them, 
 either in terms of a priorism or by sudden leaps 
 into idealistic utopianism. We have seen only 
 in the present month (June, 1911) how the sail- 
 ors of some five nations have naturally and in- 
 deed almost instinctively pooled their interests, 
 and to what slight extent frontiers avail to keep 
 separate those whom the machine process has 
 declared shall be united. The Socialists have 
 been called, repeatedly, good prophets, but poor 
 performers. Let them take heart of grace ; they 
 will not be called upon to perform. The machine 
 process will do all the performing for them. 
 
 It may be seen, therefore, that there is no 
 escape from the conflict between the possessor 
 and the user of the machine. Fate seems to be 
 inexorable on that score. Given the machine, the 
 antagonistic forces muster on each side of it, 
 like Greeks and Trojans contesting for the body 
 of a hero, for the impelling purpose of the an- 
 tagonism is the ownership of the machine. That 
 conflict cannot be escaped. Partnership between
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 91 
 
 employer and employee is impossible, profit- 
 sharing on any scale worthy of the name is 
 unthinkable, and the instances where it is sup- 
 posedly practiced are, in reality, ludicrous in 
 the smallness of their scope and the magnitude 
 of their pretensions. State socialism or state 
 capitalism, two words for the same thing, does 
 not in the slightest degree mitigate the fact of 
 the hostility of the classes; on the other hand, 
 it merely tends to set the employees of the state 
 industry in revolutionary antagonism to the gov- 
 ernment, as we have seen in the case of the 
 French railways and in many other modern in- 
 stances of a similar nature. Furthermore, as we 
 have seen, the extension of the machine process 
 into the international realm effects nothing in 
 the direction of industrial peace, but merely 
 converts the whole world, in so far as the ma- 
 chine process spreads, into a great industrial 
 battle-ground, so that the industrial conflict loses 
 all traces of local character and becomes itself 
 international, resolving itself ultimately into a 
 struggle for the possession or the repression of 
 the international police. This is the result of 
 state socialism. Whatever form it may assume, 
 it converts a potentially revolutionary proletariat 
 into an actual revolutionary force. 
 
 For the present the militant proletarian cares 
 little about government or politics. In spite of 
 his instructors, he is shy, and all the lures of 
 the politicians have so far failed to move him. 
 But, he does care about his hours and wages 
 and he does regard with hostility the owner of 
 the machine with which he is compelled to work 
 and of the proceeds of his proportion of his
 
 92 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 group work with which he receives only a frac- 
 tion. 
 
 To deliver the machine into the hands of what 
 is called the state, is no solution of the evil. The 
 capitalists having the economic and, conse- 
 quently, the political power, will permit only of 
 government ownership or control when it is to 
 their advantage. We have seen many instances 
 of that in recent years. They will, as in South 
 Africa, not only allow, but actually cause the 
 government to take up, own and manage indus- 
 tries which are subsidiary and useful to the dom- 
 inant industry, control of which the capitalist 
 keeps. Or, they may, again, when it suits their 
 purpose, cause a sale of their industry to the 
 community, taking bonds therefor and becoming 
 investors instead of entrepreneurs. To the pro- 
 letarian an employer is still an employer, whether 
 he wear the guise of the state, or keep the top 
 hat and frock coat of the Victorian benefactor 
 of humanity. But, to rise in industrial revolt 
 against the state is to engage in a revolutionary 
 campaign, with all the risks belonging to such a 
 campaign. It might and probably would be 
 visited with extraordinary penalties. It is al- 
 ready judged in advance. Governmental postal 
 employes are denied the privilege of the forma- 
 tion of unions upon the ground that they are 
 governmental employes, that their abstention 
 from employment by strike and the like would 
 dislocate the whole community and that they 
 are not entitled to cause such discomfort to 
 other people. The governmental ownership of 
 railroads brings similar problems in its train and 
 there is little doubt that the action of the gov-
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 93 
 
 ernment would take the same course. This gives 
 rise to a whole series of complicated problems, 
 such as face the French government with regard 
 to the reinstatement of the railroad men who 
 were discharged for striking ; it inflames the pop- 
 ular mind against the government, and causes 
 the hatred of the working class to be directed 
 from the individual employer to the govern- 
 mental employer. It thus concentrates the pro- 
 letarian wrath upon one object which is corre- 
 spondingly the more easily overcome. The 
 result is, however, achieved not by a vote imply- 
 ing a change of ministry in the approved liberal 
 fashion, but by the industrial victory of the pro- 
 letariat, thus giving it the economic power which 
 thereafter receives political recognition. This 
 is a reversal of the generally accepted social 
 democratic doctrine, which first predicates polit- 
 ical victory, and then a new organization of in- 
 dustry in terms of the political victory, an idea 
 which has provoked the contemptuous criticism 
 of practical capitalistic entrepreneurs who, what- 
 ever may be their defects, are at least informed 
 as to the methods of conducting an industry. 
 
 That economic progress, whether it take the 
 form of increasing combinations, with the nec- 
 essary and unavoidable governmental control, or 
 the frank ownership of the machine by the state 
 or municipality, does not imply any diminution 
 of proletarian militancy, is quite obvious. There 
 does not, moreover, appear to be any means of 
 overcoming this militancy ; on the contrary, it 
 would seem destined to grow to its culmination. 
 
 The question thereupon arises whether such 
 a proletarian movement could be reasonably ex-
 
 94 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 pected io meet with success. We know, historic- 
 ally, that servile movements, as they have hith- 
 erto appeared, have not been successful; but, on 
 the contrary, that tragic failure has marked the 
 efforts of the working class to deliver itself from 
 the oppression of those who have exploited it. 
 As we have seen, however, the present condi- 
 tions are markedly different in important re- 
 spects from those which have gone before, and 
 have produced a type differing from its prede- 
 cessors not only in kind, but in opportunity. 
 
 The proletarian cannot be eliminated. No 
 method has yet been found which will allow of 
 the operation of machinery and the production 
 of goods without the employment of human 
 energy. Moreover, no way has been discovered 
 to prevent the organization of workers around 
 the instrument of production. On the contrary, 
 given the machine, organization around that ma- 
 chine becomes imperative; it is practically auto- 
 matic and cannot be avoided. There is no way 
 either erf teaching or of compelling the proleta- 
 rian not to organize. 
 
 Again, the proletarian, albeit part of the ma- 
 chinery, from the capitalist point of view and, 
 notwithstanding the use of the terms "hands" 
 and "labor" as abstract expressions, to connote 
 his position from the capitalist standpoint, is no 
 abstraction. He is a human being possessing 
 brain, even as an employer, and amenable to 
 the cultural effects of the economic fact, as we 
 have seen, so that the almost instinctive organ- 
 ization round the machine becomes developed in 
 the course of the progress of the machine in- 
 dustry into conscious organization. Thus arises
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETALIAT 95 
 
 what may be termed an organization intelligence 
 which is as well able to grasp the mechanism and 
 the extent of the machine process as are the 
 capitalists themselves. 
 
 This development grows ever more rapidly, 
 so that the proleteriat of today, at least in the 
 persons of its most active members, who may 
 be called the thinking apparatus of his organiza- 
 tion, is gaining a breadth of view commensurate 
 with the scope of the machine process itself. 
 Anyone who has watched the growth of the la- 
 bor movement for a long period of years cannot 
 fail to be struck by the superior mental grasp 
 of the new industrial unionist as compared with 
 that of the old craft unionist. The tone even 
 of the craft journals, for the most part edited 
 by those who have not outgrown the obsolete 
 point of view, is dull and comparatively unin- 
 teresting. It seems to echo the voice of the 
 workman in a period anterior to the machine 
 process and is obviously the note of a less pro- 
 gressive and worse informed type. Naturally, 
 however, the ordinary man in the ranks of the 
 unionists does not possess any conspicuous su- 
 periority to the ordinary dividend drawer. They 
 are each most closely interested in the same 
 thing, how much each can get, the one in the 
 shape of dividends, the other in working as little 
 time for as much money as possible. And just 
 as the officers and industrial managers of the 
 dividend consumers are driven by the demands 
 of their clients to the exploitation of industry, 
 so the representatives of the wage workers are 
 on their part compelled incessantly to seek for 
 their clients shorter hours and higher pay, in
 
 96 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 fact, as far as possible, an ever-increasing share 
 of the product of the machine. Thus, the im- 
 possibihty of proletarian elimination implies of 
 necessity the continuance of the proletarian 
 struggle. 
 
 Not only is this the case, but the victory must, 
 in the long run, rest with the proletarian. For 
 the laborers, being men, continually demand 
 more and possess the human insatiability in the 
 pursuit of happiness, which means, as far as 
 history can be relied upon, the pursuit of material 
 ends. There is, on the other hand, a limitation 
 to the possibilities of capitalistic accumulation, 
 however distant. Capitalism reaches its climax, 
 the point beyond which it ceases to make gains, 
 then begin to recede and, finally, succumbs to 
 the attacks of the younger and more vigorous 
 element, which has been produced by itself, and 
 which is destined to destroy it. If this off- 
 spring of capitalism cannot avail to destroy and 
 reconstruct, the system still perishes, as has hap- 
 pened in anterior systems. It will be remem- 
 bered, however, that in none of the preceding 
 systems has a type been produced in any way 
 comparable with the modern machine process 
 proletarian type, either in revolutionary mental 
 constitution, generated and fostered by the sys- 
 tem itself, or in revolutionary possibilities pro- 
 ceeding from and dependent upon the system. 
 
 The whole capitalist process itself is based 
 upon the organized discipline and co-ordination 
 of the labor-force applied to the machine. The 
 very development of the machine process by its 
 intricacies and convolutions makes that prole- 
 tarian discipline ever more necessary. To break
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 97 
 
 the discipline is to break the operation of the 
 machine process, and that is to disturb the whole 
 mechanism upon which the capitalist depends 
 for his returns. This fact working upon the 
 mind of the proletarian has produced the modern 
 phenomenon of industrial unionism and the gen- 
 eral strike, both of which are designed for the 
 express purpose of interfering with the machine 
 process in the interest of the associated laborers. 
 Again, the very complications of the modern 
 machine render it more easily the prey of an 
 attacking force. A simple tool broken is easily 
 repaired; a single machine put out of gear may 
 likewise be soon made effective again without 
 seriously disturbing the routine of the shop. It 
 is quite ornerwise, however, with the exceedingly 
 complex modern machinery which depends upon 
 the harmonious working of hundreds or thou- 
 sands of interdependent parts the dislocation of 
 any one of which interrupts, of necessity, the 
 working of the machine. To give an instance : 
 it was discovered in Austria that the entire pas- 
 senger service of a railway might be seriously 
 disturbed by an organized strict following of the 
 rules by the ticket clerks. They were told to 
 strictly scrutinize all tickets issued. By precon- 
 certed arrangement to read every ticket issued, 
 they practically put the entire train service out 
 of gear. This vulnerability of the machine proc- 
 ess to united proletarian action has given rise 
 in its turn to the very recent phenomenon of 
 "Sabotage," a form of labor war, of which we 
 shall, no doubt, hear much more in the near 
 future.
 
 98 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 For many reasons, therefore, the potentialities 
 for successful revolt of the modern proletariat 
 are incomparably greater than those of a sub- 
 ject class in any prior period of history. When 
 it is borne in mind also that the economic facts 
 find their reflex in political action, and that the 
 modern state may easily, as we have seen, find 
 itself subject to proletarian revolutionary ac- 
 tivity, he would be very bold who would proph- 
 esy the same fate for the proletarian as has be- 
 fallen his revolutionary predecessors.
 
 Ill 
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 
 
 The argument of the average trade unionist 
 in support of his organization runs something 
 hke this : "My craft is my capital ; if the cap- 
 italist has the right to protect his money capital, 
 I have the right to protect my capital; that is, 
 my craft. My craft is just as much my prop- 
 erty as the capitalist's machinery is his prop- 
 erty and should be protected equally with the 
 machinery of the capitalist." Addressed to the 
 ordinary man in the street, and couched in the 
 language which church, school and forum have 
 made comprehensible by the multitude, it is quite 
 a telling apology for the right of combination, 
 the purposes of trade defense, and has, no doubt, 
 in its time performed marvels in winning con- 
 verts to the side of trade unionism. 
 
 It is so flattering. It informs the working 
 class that its members have capital, a statement 
 false on the face of it ; again, it misleads the 
 working class by the false premise that its mem- 
 bers have rights. The fallacy underlying both 
 false statements is that a member of the working 
 class is an actual member of modern society 
 with an interest in the state, and fully equipped 
 with all the panoply of modern citizenship, and 
 a stake in the community. 
 
 99
 
 100 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 The futility of such an argument will dawn 
 later upon the mind of the convert to trade 
 unionism. He will find that a craft is a form 
 of "capital" which cannot readily be invested. 
 Also, that he cannot place that form of "cap- 
 ital" in the safe deposit box and wait until there 
 is a demand for it. The painful discovery will 
 be made also, that if his craft is not being ex- 
 ercised, neither is he, the proprietor of the craft, 
 and that long abstention from activity threatens 
 not only the trade but the proprietor of it with 
 extinction. But the trade is the means of life, 
 it is the instrument by which the worker se- 
 cures himself in the hurly-burly which we call 
 organized society. The insurance of one's trade 
 is an insurance of the means of life. In a very 
 real sense the trade or craft becomes a property. 
 All, therefore, who have the same trade or craft 
 are interested in the preservation of that prop- 
 erty. The raising of the position of the trade 
 implies material benefit to the owners of 
 the trade, just as the increase in price of any 
 commodity tends to the benefit of those who do 
 possess that commodity and not to the benefit 
 of those who do not possess that property. 
 
 We find this to be the prevailing view of the 
 craft among all unionists. The justification of 
 the union lies in the preservation of the craft. 
 It is the moving cause for the institution of 
 unions and the determining factor in all union 
 disputes. The maintenance of the property 
 which the craft represents is the essential reason 
 of the formation of the union in the first place 
 and it is the object kept in view by business 
 agents and by trade union officials in all con-
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 101 
 
 troversies with employers, who naturally wish to 
 depress as far as possible the price of the com- 
 modity which they purchase. 
 
 Shylock's defense, "You do take my life when 
 you do take the means whereby I live," is the 
 stock argument of the unionist. The means of 
 the Jew was his supply of ready cash which he 
 put out to interest in the market, the returns on 
 which constituted his livelihood. The trade 
 which the craftsman follows is his property on 
 which he must get his returns. If the trade is 
 taken away the means of life in terms of that 
 trade are gone. The worker is deprived of his 
 property; the quality of his labor which enabled 
 him to make a union disappears, he has no spe- 
 cial commodity to offer for sale, such labor 
 power as he has for sale is ordinary labor power 
 possessing no distinguishing marks which allow 
 of the placing upon it of a special price ; he be- 
 comes an unskilled laborer, an ordinary human 
 being in place of the owner of a specific prop- 
 erty capable of being raised in price by organ- 
 ization and limitation of the market. 
 
 Herein lies a very important distinction. As 
 a skilled laborer possessing the commodity of 
 skilled labor and able to preserve or to enhance 
 the price of that commodity by contraction and 
 limitation of the market, he may be able to im- 
 prove the position of the possessors of that com- 
 modity, but that is the limit of his powers, even 
 of his desires. As an owner, he naturally cares 
 only to increase the value of his own wares; 
 with that instinct of self-preservation which 
 leads one to consider only himself in times of 
 strife, his attention is riveted upon his owtf 
 
 aNfVFRS!TY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
 
 102 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 craft and the maintenance of that craft. As a 
 result, we may see an actual improvement in the 
 position of members of a given craft without 
 any improvement in the position of labor as a 
 whole. In fact, that is precisely what we do see. 
 Trades unions may increase in power and influ- 
 ence, may have full treasuries, may keep up the 
 price of labor in their own sphere, and outside 
 that sphere the mass of laborers may still remain 
 in the same unfortunate position and the general 
 standard be no whit raised- 
 
 The first unions were mutual benefit societies 
 and were intended to perform for their members 
 much the same services as the friendly societies 
 do today. They had the same inconsequential 
 and ridiculous ritual and passwords, the mystic 
 grips, and emblems and mysteries of signs and 
 countersigns. They were intended to insure the 
 members in times of sickness and to provide de- 
 cent burial, functions which are still exercised 
 by many of the trade societies. 
 
 But the association of members of the same 
 trade, naturally, inevitably, indeed, led to the 
 consideration of the economics of the craft it- 
 self, and to action for the benefit of the craft. 
 
 At this stage the insurance features of trade 
 unionism tended to recede and aggressiveness 
 on behalf of the craft became more and more 
 conspicuous. The difiference between the mili- 
 tant unions who were constantly pressing their 
 demands at the point of production in the shop 
 and the old conservative mutual protective as- 
 sociations became more and more obvious. The 
 latter were regarded with approval by the em- 
 ployers and received the benediction of society.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 103 
 
 The former were anathema and courts and legis- 
 latures leagued together to prevent their devel- 
 opment. 
 
 But the unions developed because the form 
 of society in which they found themselves was 
 peculiarly adapted to their development. They 
 came into being in terms of the individualistic 
 conceptions of an individualistic age and based 
 their demands philosophically upon the same 
 ground as the basic law of the land regarding 
 property rights. They claimed their craft as a 
 property ; indeed, they claimed it as capital ; 
 they insisted upon their rights to receive as much 
 for their commodity as they were able to obtain 
 by dickering in the market; they made their 
 slogan "a. fair day's work for a fair day's wage," 
 frankly conceded the fact of a labor market and 
 offered their commodity for sale in that market. 
 But they took no higher ground than that. 
 
 Even in an age when "rights" was the catch- 
 word of the time, when the echoes of the old 
 bourgeois revolution were still heard in all de- 
 partments of public life and legislature and law 
 courts were noisy with the babble of "rights" 
 the unions took no higher ground than the "rights 
 of property." They did not even take the ab- 
 surd but high sounding "human rights" of the 
 humanitarians, they claimed nothing for them- 
 selves as Man, the only claim was in prosecution 
 of their demands for their property rights. The 
 fact that they could do nothing else is not per- 
 tinent here, neither is the further fact that by 
 virtue of these essential primary claims they 
 raised the position of labor from one of status, 
 as servant, to one of contract, as between pos-
 
 104 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 sessors of property. That they were compelled 
 to do this latter is evident, for, in spite of the 
 declarations of freedom of contract of the bour- 
 geois revolution, the relation of employer and 
 employee was regarded as one of master and 
 servant and the first attempts to regulate wages 
 on the side of the servant were considered as 
 subversive of all civil rule and particularly blas- 
 phemous and disturbing to all religion and the 
 proper order of things. 
 
 It must be insisted that the trade union move- 
 ment originated not as a movement of working 
 men, as working men, for the preservation of 
 the working class as such and for the develop- 
 ment of the proletarian, but as an association 
 of the possessors of certain specific property for 
 the benefit of that property and the owners of 
 that property. 
 
 In fact, the trade unionists took little heed of 
 the human as contrasted with the property owner 
 in their struggles. Even their own lives they 
 have considered as inferior to their property 
 rights. This is obvious from a history of the 
 organization of those who spend their lives in 
 dangerous occupations and whose life and limb 
 are risked in the pursuit of their daily bread. 
 We have had many strikes against lowering 
 of wages, many strikes for an increase of wages, 
 for the right to organize, for the right to boy- 
 cott, for every movement which tends to increase 
 the value of the specific craft property and to 
 make the control of that property more easy and 
 more efifective. But, how many strikes, on the 
 other hand, have been launched against condi- 
 tions of labor which imperil the life and limb of
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 105 
 
 the laborer? Futile appeals to the legislatures 
 with all the risk of adverse decisions in the 
 Courts, risks which have nearly always become 
 realities, have been the methods chosen by the 
 unionists to meet the intolerable conditions im- 
 posed by employers upon laborers. Compare the 
 maundering ineffectiveness in matters of life and 
 limb with the militancy, the self-denial, the en- 
 durance and the actual heroism shown by trade 
 unionists in defense of their property, when they 
 have been battling on behalf of wages and hours, 
 and the specific returns upon their invested ''cap- 
 ital," to wit, their craft. 
 
 There can be little question that the property 
 question has dominated the entire trade union 
 mind. 
 
 The unionist has looked at the problem, not 
 as a human, but as a property problem, and so 
 has been a true son of the capitalistic and in- 
 dividualistic age. He has never risen above or 
 beyond the conceptions of the times ; he has 
 been a trader, merely, with a trader's mind, not 
 the mind even of a larger trader. No light has 
 beaten upon his brain because his mind has been 
 concentrated upon the immediate returns for the 
 investment of that craft which he so pompously 
 has called his "capital." The cultural effects of 
 his organizations have been negligible ; he has 
 shown little tendency to pursue other than the 
 most banal material ends. With all his great 
 organizations the real upsurge of mankind, the 
 force and the dignity of the human movement, 
 have not, except on rare and striking occasions, 
 manifested themselves through him. It is the 
 misfortune of t-he trade unionist that he has had
 
 106 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 to operate in terms of his property and to dis- 
 play all the disturbing symptoms of the small 
 trader, who also agonizes in defense of his prop- 
 erty. 
 
 VANISHING PROPERTY 
 
 Security of property is impossible, for prop- 
 erty destroys itself. The whole bourgeois revo- 
 lution is made in terms of property ; the very 
 basis of the Republic, as of all modern states, 
 consists in the recognition of the rights of prop- 
 erty. In fact in its last analysis the vaunted 
 rights of man may be ultimately resolved into 
 rights of property. The inviolability of property 
 is the fundamental basis, and as the New York 
 Court of Appeals recently said, "The right of 
 property rests not upon philosophical or scientific 
 speculations, nor yet upon the dictates of natural 
 justice." The rights of property transcend the 
 rights of man; indeed, "Rights of property" is 
 the proper translation of "rights of man." 
 
 The development of rights of man into rights 
 of property has reached such a point that rights 
 of property alone survive, and as the Court 
 above gravely states at another place in the same 
 opinion without any apparent idea of the sig- 
 nificance of its own stupid gravity, "Under our 
 form of government Courts must regard all eco- 
 nomic, philosophical and moral theories, however 
 attractive and desirable they may be, as subor- 
 dinate to the primary question whether they can 
 be moulded into statutes without infringing upon 
 the letter or spirit of our written constitutions." 
 The admission is almost naive in its innocent 
 simplicity. Say the wise ones, in effect, our con-
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 107 
 
 stitutions rest primarily upon rights of property, 
 we know nothing and care less about rights of 
 man, we stand by the written constitutions which 
 are unmistakably the exponents of rights of 
 property, and if you desire to interfere with 
 those, you cannot do so except by upsetting the 
 constitution and the organic law of the present 
 system." It is quite true, all of it ; the bourgeois 
 intends to go out, as he came in, fighting for 
 rights of property. 
 
 We know very well, however, that the eco- 
 nomic system of which the rights of property is 
 the expression is a confiscatory system. By vir- 
 tue of economic development itself rights of 
 property are rendered nugatory and the whole 
 matter resolves itself with a question of rights of 
 stronger and bigger property. Against this tend- 
 ency all legal and constitutional guarantees are 
 no bulwark. On the other hand, the constitu- 
 tional declarations are made the very instruments 
 by which small property is confiscated. It is no 
 benefit to say that the constitution guarantees 
 rights of property, for the constitution, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, merely guarantees the right of the 
 economically strong to dispossess the econom- 
 ically feeble, or rather establishes the title of the 
 strong after he has already demolished the weak. 
 
 There is nothing more evident than the growth 
 of great property at the expense of little prop- 
 erty, for the cry of the small dispossessed is the 
 most notable social phenomenon of our time. 
 
 The small property has practically gone ; all 
 legal and constitutional provisions for its main- 
 tenance notwithstanding. The economic result 
 accomplished receives the benediction of the
 
 108 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 Courts, and the emblazoned standard of "Rights 
 of property" waves triumphantly over a field 
 strewn with the corpses of former property 
 owners. 
 
 The craftsman, therefore, who considers his 
 craft as property must not be surprised to learn 
 that his craft property follows the same course 
 as all other property and becomes subordinated 
 to the greater force and, indeed, destroyed by it. 
 
 The father apprentices his son to a trade, tell- 
 ing him that in the possession of a trade he has 
 more than money. "You may lose your money ; 
 but never your trade," says the father, deceiving 
 himself and his son thereby. Trades vanisK sud- 
 denly before new inventions and the consolida- 
 tion of industry, just as the property of the small 
 middle class disappears in face of the same mani- 
 festations of industrial progress. But just as the 
 possessor of small property congratulates him- 
 self upon that which marks him oflf from the 
 propertyless generality, so does the possessor of 
 a craft flatter himself that he is superior to the 
 "unskilled man." He belongs to another class, 
 he occupies a more exalted plane ; he is an "aris- 
 tocrat of labor," so that he forms his unions, 
 locks and double-locks the door to the union ; 
 limits apprenticeship ; takes every precaution 
 against an invasion of his craft and then sits 
 down in comparative security of possession, 
 trusting in his superior position to save himself 
 and his family in the midst of the vicissitudes 
 of the capitalistic system. 
 
 Suddenly, however, a new development of tech- 
 nique, the discovery of a new process, a new 
 combination of industrial forces and the craft
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 109 
 
 which was to provide our craftsman with the 
 means of existence in perpetuity becomes obso- 
 lete, an anachronism, and with it the c4-aftsman. 
 Thereupon also the union which he made to pro- 
 tect him in the possession of that craft property 
 also collapses, for if the craft disappears, it is 
 clear that the union must disappear with it. The 
 craftsman is bereft of all that constitutes prop- 
 erty, and of the organization upon which he relied 
 as a defender of that which can no longer be de- 
 fended, because it no longer exists. He is 
 stripped of everything that differentiated him 
 from the mass of workers. He has no longer the 
 force of organization, aggressive and protective, 
 aggressive as a weapon with which he might ex- , 
 tort terms from the opposing force at the point 
 of production, protective in that by its means 
 he was able to limit the market and to artificially 
 increase the price of his wares. With the loss 
 of his craft, too, go all the material advantages 
 which he possessed over the despised members 
 of the working class who had no craft and who, 
 therefore, had no basis for an exclusive organiza- 
 tion. He is stripped of his property as effec- 
 tively as any landed proprietor of France by de- 
 cree. He is bankrupt of his title of "aristocrat" 
 and falls perforce into the ranks of undifferen- 
 tiated and uncategorized laboring humanity. 
 
 There is, then, no more permanence in craft 
 property than in any other form of property 
 under the present economic conditions with their 
 continual growth and change, and the craft form 
 of organization becomes feeble and ineffective 
 with the passing of time.
 
 110 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 This ineffectiveness results not merely from 
 the fact that the craft unionism form of organ- 
 ization is unsatisfactory and incompetent to meet 
 the aggressions of the employers, but from the 
 fundamental and essential fact that the economic 
 basis of the craft union has been shaken and the 
 structure built on a supposedly solid foundation 
 has collapsed with the foundation upon which it 
 rested. 
 
 It cannot be too strongly insisted that the 
 weakness of the trade union movement is not 
 merely a weakness of organization. It proceeds 
 from the essential weakness of the economic 
 basis of the craft. The position of the craft 
 unionist is in this respect identical with that of 
 the small bourgeois, who pivots his political 
 philosophy also in terms of an ineffectual and 
 transitory property. 
 
 There is therefore a curiously complete simi- 
 larity in their political viewpoint, as well as in 
 their method of approach in the consideration of 
 social problems. It is no more than the reflex 
 of the old individualism which persists. The at- 
 tack of the greater capitalism, whether directed 
 against the small trader or the craft unionist, is 
 met by appeals to ethical sentiment, by stubborn 
 resistance, usually with obsolete weapons, and 
 frequently by stupid and absolutely valueless re- 
 criminations. All of which manifestations 
 proceed from the insecurity of the economic por- 
 tion of each of these elements, small business 
 and the craft union. 
 
 It is true that the persistence of certain classes 
 of hand labor and even their more complete de- 
 velopment may afford a basis for the persistence
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? Ill 
 
 of craft organization among a limited and com- 
 paratively insignificant portion of the working 
 class. For example, in the molding trade, when 
 the increased use of machinery also necessitated 
 a certain increase in the numbers of hand labor- 
 ers incident to the growth of trade, there was 
 even necessitated an extraordinary degree of skill 
 in that particular work due to the extension of 
 molders' products to fields which were formerly 
 occupied by forgings or other process work. It 
 is true, also, in all probability, that the above 
 consequences sprang from a scientific develop- 
 ment in which the machines were not the pre- 
 dominant factor. But to lay any stress upon 
 such a circumstance as showing the persistence 
 of craft labor is misleading in the extreme and 
 not in accordance with the facts. 
 
 The whole tendency of modern industry has 
 been away from the skill of the individual and 
 in the direction of merging individual skill in a 
 group product. Not only so, but the tendency 
 has been markedly towards the elimination of 
 personal individual skill in itself. Standardiza- 
 tion, which is a practical necessity in view of the 
 modern markets, means nothing short of the an- 
 nihilation of individual skill except in the initial 
 concept and its materialization in the original 
 model. 
 
 Skill, regarded as property, rests on a very 
 slender basis. Its supply is looked for less and 
 less in the masses of the working people. 
 
 On the other hand, the teaching of mechanical 
 arts in schools specially devoted to that purpose, 
 and the education of an increasing number in the 
 universities in the theory and application of me-
 
 112 THE MILITANT ^PROLETARIAT 
 
 chanics, mark a tendency for skill and initiative 
 to leave the ranks of the proletariat and to be- 
 come the property of those who may be denomi- 
 nated the officers of the industrial army. So far 
 has this gone that the saving of industrial effort 
 and the conservation of industrial energy is be- 
 coming almost a profession in itself. 
 
 We have recently read of various devices re- 
 sulting from experiments in the saving of waste 
 labor in industrial effort. These are the results 
 of observation and experiment among those not 
 actually engaged in the process of industrial pro- 
 duction; but their results upon those so engaged 
 are well worth at least a passing notice. They 
 tend to still further eliminate any advantage 
 which particular skill or even marked agility may 
 possess. When the movements are numbered and 
 when it is made an essential of the opportunity 
 to labor that the force employed upon a specific 
 task should carry out a specified number of actual 
 physical movements according to a schedule, that, 
 in fact, work should resolve itself into a method- 
 ical drill under the eye of an overseer, all in- 
 dividuality is of course obliterated. And with 
 the individuality goes the property. The posses- 
 sion of particular skill becomes more of a nui- 
 sance in the ordinary process than an advantage 
 and any tendency to individuality would be as 
 embarrassing to the conduct of a well managed 
 workshop as would be the display of such un- 
 welcome qualities in a private soldier. 
 
 So by the very tendency of economic develop- 
 ment the pitiful little property of the craft union 
 man is swept away.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 113 
 
 The tendency of the machine and the progres- 
 sive organization of labor to annihilate the prop- 
 erty of the trade unionist is of necessity recog- 
 nized by those members of the unions who pay 
 any heed to the effects of the present system 
 upon this organization. 
 
 The remedy suggested is that the machine may 
 be controlled by the union, and that the craft may 
 be preserved round the machine. In short, the 
 purpose is to organize the men engaged in work 
 on the machine in terms of the craft and to en- 
 deavor to preserve the vestiges of craft property 
 by means of the machine. But property to be 
 of value must be acquired, at least, at first. That 
 which all can possess is by no means property. 
 In fact the very essence of property lies in its 
 exclusiveness, and it is obvious that the machine 
 industry does not render the maintenance of any 
 such property at all probable nor even possible. 
 
 Machine industry in its essence consists of 
 the repetition of monotonous movements in terms 
 of the machine. The motions of the machine are 
 controlling and the individual is made subordi- 
 nate to the machine movement. It is very clear 
 that such motions are easily learned in compari- 
 son with those of individual handicraft and that 
 property in a trade of this description rests upon 
 a very slight and unstable basis. 
 
 The result is shown in the almost practical abo- 
 lition of the apprentice system which formed a 
 fairly complete defense against the invasion of a 
 trade by the unskilled labor element on the out- 
 side. 
 
 A machine-craft implies a self-wrecking con- 
 tradiction. This fact is very clearly apparent in
 
 114 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 Strikes when the machine is placed in the hands 
 of the unskilled men who constitute the effective 
 scab force upon which the employer relies at 
 such times. There is no use to endeavor to dis- 
 guise the fact that given a few weeks' instruction 
 the scabs are well able to take care of the rna- 
 chines and that if at the conclusion of the strike 
 they are allowed to work side by side with the 
 union men they become eligible members of the 
 union and are received as such. This has hap- 
 pened too often to be denied. 
 
 If the craft is to be regarded as property which 
 dift'erentiates its possessors from the general 
 mass of the working class how slight is that 
 property ! It is as though it were not. In fact, 
 it would be better for the members of the craft 
 who rely upon it, if it did not exist, for then it 
 would cease to constitute a barrier as now be- 
 tween them and the rest of their fellows. 
 
 The property of the craftsman in his craft is 
 therefore, a vanishing property. Reliance upon 
 it is out of the question; and pride in it as af- 
 fording a means of differentiating its possessors 
 from the mass of their fellows is little better than 
 an absurdity. It is, however, upon this property 
 notion that the whole fabric of craft unionism 
 depends. 
 
 REVOLUTIONARY UNIONISM 
 
 When the working class abandons the property 
 notion; in other words, when economic condi- 
 tions have so far reflected themselves in the 
 minds of the workers that they recognize the 
 property notion as no longer tenable, a complete 
 change of attitude towards society occurs.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 115 
 
 Property disappearing, Man leaps to the front 
 again and the craftsman faces the problem in 
 terms of Man. He does not arrive at such a 
 place in his mental development nevertheless un- 
 til conditions have actually put him there. Once 
 there, however, he finds his only way to security 
 through an attack upon the structure of society 
 which has deprived him of his property or of any 
 chance to secure property. He can only make 
 this attack by assaulting the enemy where he 
 meets him, namely, at the point of production in 
 the shop, for it is there that the contact is and 
 that the issue must be fought out. 
 
 The fight in the shop for the product is the 
 determinative fight of the future. Where the 
 workman wins in the shop, improves his eco- 
 nomic position, develops his fighting capacity and 
 builds up his organization every step taken by 
 him is a step towards ultimate victory. He 
 treads the upward path. There is no need to 
 speak of the political phase of the matter here, 
 as that receives consideration in the next chap- 
 ter, but it must not be overlooked that economic 
 victory is the essential ; without it the political 
 reflex is no reflex of a class necessarily victori- 
 ous, but may simply be the inefifective protest of 
 an economically incapable and losing class. To 
 tall in politics to redress the economic balance is 
 a useless attempt at a physical impossibility. The 
 first essential is victory in the shop, and such 
 victory as we have seen cannot be made in terms 
 of craft unionism with its inseparable small 
 property notion. 
 
 The fight in the shop raises the fundamental 
 question of the so-called contract of employment,.
 
 116 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 upon which depends the whole mass of legal and 
 legislative decisions and enactments proclaiming 
 the various phases of that contract and inter- 
 preting it from the viewpoint of the employing 
 class. The elimination of the property notion 
 destroys also the notion of contract, for without 
 property neither party has anything about which 
 to contract. 
 
 The idea of contract disappearing, there remain 
 without any further illusion or concealment two 
 contending classes, each of them striving for pos- 
 session of the product. Let this once appear to 
 the mind of the worker and his point of view 
 changes immediately. No longer does he regard 
 himself as an individual bargaining with another 
 individual bound by certain legal concepts and 
 swaddled in preconceived limitations as to what 
 constitutes his position relative to the other indi- 
 vidual. He sees himself on the contrary as a 
 member of a group, which group is engaged in a 
 struggle for the possession of certain products, 
 which are the materialization of the life-energy 
 of himself and the other members of the group. 
 The machinery and equipment on which he has 
 been accustomed to look as the property of the 
 other contracting party becomes in his eyes the 
 materialization of the life-energy of other groups 
 of workers like himself, which has found its way 
 into the hands of the enemy, the individual or 
 the group with whom he is battling for the pos- 
 session of the product. The fight then assumes 
 the aspect of a struggle not only for the posses- 
 sion of the product, but in addition for the pos- 
 session of the tools in the hands of the enemy, 
 which tools are, as we have said above, in their 
 turn the product of a working group.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 117 
 
 This point of view cannot be taught philo- 
 sophically. No amount of instruction will avail 
 to raise a question so apparently abstract and 
 implying a knowledge of the working of his- 
 torical forces as well as a grasp of the economic 
 situation into a practical question deliberately 
 conceived and pursued to victory. Only prac- 
 tical experience can achieve this result. The 
 mental structure of the proletarian is shaped in 
 accordance with the actual environment in which 
 he is, the unassailable and implacable facts of 
 which penetrate his brain and shape his impulses. 
 
 The property notion is not easily abandoned 
 for it implies a promise of personal growth and 
 of developing importance which cannot be read- 
 ily overlooked, but which are on the other hand 
 exceedingly fascinating. To rise above one's sta- 
 tion in Hfe, to obtain that which appears to be 
 wealth in comparison with one's evident existent 
 poverty, to become independent of "the chances 
 and changes of this mortal life" at least as far 
 as that important economic side is concerned, has 
 been the ambition of every ambitious lad who 
 has entered a trade. It is an ambition also which 
 has received the blessed sanction of social ap- 
 proval and which points a way to dizzy heights 
 of accomplishment. Is not history full of the 
 stories of the young artisans who have gone 
 forth with their craft as their sword like mod- 
 ern knights errant and have carved a path to 
 fame, fortune and independence? The whole 
 tradition of a century in poetry and fiction, in 
 ethical teaching and scholastic training has filled 
 the young man of the artisan class with the de- 
 sire to go and do all these things. It is with pain
 
 118 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 and difficulty, with the utmost regret and a Hnger- 
 ing and reluctant dissatisfaction that he surren- 
 ders the hope of conquering fate and a hostile 
 environment and becoming a small edition of 
 the Superman. 
 
 Just as with the small trader, so is it with the 
 artisan. The small "capital" which was to func- 
 tion as the Aladdin lamp and bring Genii to aid 
 them in their fight, to open glorious palaces for 
 them and to place at their disposal riches which 
 seemed to them incalculable proves to be no 
 "capital" at all, but a most elusive possession 
 destined perhaps in the long run to cause them 
 more heartache than joy. 
 
 Small trader and artisan are both subject to the 
 same economic law, they both occupy a precari- 
 ous foothold, every day sees numbers of their 
 class precipitated into the abyss of proletarianism 
 or common labor, and every day they find their 
 hold loosening and precipitation into the abyss 
 ever more likely. The process of development 
 brings them closer to the dispossessed, their in- 
 terests become more closely involved with those 
 who have lost hold or have never had it and they 
 begin to look at their economic problems rather 
 from the standpoint of the mass of the craftless 
 and their own probable position in that mass of 
 craftless than from their position as craftsmen, 
 destined to permanent superiority over their fel- 
 lows. 
 
 The same thing is true also, it may be paren- 
 thetically observed, of the small tradesmen who 
 are dependent for their living upon the custom 
 of the working class. They discover that their 
 interests are more closely bound up with those of
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 119 
 
 the working class than with their own class, that 
 consequently in increasing numbers they tend to 
 show their preference for the working class point 
 of view by voting the Socialist ticket at election. 
 When the proletarian attitude of mind is once 
 attained the revolutionary attitude is adopted as 
 a matter of course for the proletarian cannot be 
 otherwise than revolutionary. The proletarian is 
 a revolutionist of necessity, simply because he is 
 a proletarian. Hence those who adopt the prole- 
 tarian point of view are, as we have seen, neces- 
 sarily revolutionary. This revolutionary ten- 
 dency thereupon makes itself felt in the struggle 
 in the shop, or, as it grows endeavors to find a 
 means of expression in that struggle. But such 
 a means of expression cannot be found in the 
 old craft union. That truth was recognized quite 
 early in the revolutionary movement. Socialists 
 who had early caught the proletarian idea and 
 were correspondingly eager to try conclusions 
 with the capitalistic enemy, found in the pure 
 and simple trade union their greatest stumbling 
 block. The craft union was obviously of no 
 assistance to them in their struggle with the dom- 
 inant capitalism. The tendency of the craft 
 unions to negotiate agreements and contracts with 
 the employers, the constant reiteration of the stu- 
 pid lie that there is an identity of interest be- 
 tween employer and employed and the actual sup- 
 port of capitalistic interests in political matters 
 by the craft unions roused the revolutionary por- 
 tion of the working class to anger which in its 
 turn provoked recriminations from these in the 
 leadership of the craft unions so that the war 
 between the Socialists and the pure and simple, 
 i. e., alleged non-political trade unionists, in-
 
 120 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 creased in intensity from year to year and formed 
 the basis of a widely spread, bitter and exceed- 
 ingly vituperative controversy. 
 
 The result of this essential difference between 
 the point of view of the average craft unionism 
 and that of the revolutionary socialist was that 
 in many instances the latter ceased to lay any 
 stress upon unionism and in many cases even 
 denounced it as unnecessary and of no real value 
 to the proletariat. This still further added to 
 the tumult and the confusion and the non-politi- 
 cal unionists responded to the attacks of the 
 political proletarians with the charge that the 
 latter were opposed to organized labor and paid 
 no attention to the economic necessities of the 
 working class. In this charge there was for a 
 considerable period more than a grain of truth, 
 for the Socialists being wrapped up in the con- 
 templation of an ultimate ideal tended to be- 
 come more and more abstract and remote from 
 the actual fight of the proletarian. 
 
 The truth at last dawned upon these latter that 
 the unions were a necessity and that no parlia- 
 mentary action could take the place of the eco- 
 nomic fight at the point of production. Still this 
 discovery in itself was not sufficient, for a con- 
 siderable body in the Socialist movement there- 
 upon endeavored to make terms with the pure 
 and simple craft union movement without any 
 apparent understanding that the two movements 
 were contradictory and could not exist side by 
 side for any length of time. 
 
 Economic progress, however, as above briefly 
 described, was busy upon the minds of the craft 
 unionists, and just in proportion as the craft
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 121 
 
 property disintegrated did they become revolu- 
 tionary, and a totally different aspect of the 
 struggle between employ-er and employed began 
 to engross their attention. 
 
 The struggle began to take on a new form. 
 The property of the employer in the tools began 
 to be challenged and there arose a claim for 
 possession of the tools on the part of the workers 
 which has so far practically declared itself in the 
 new tactic known as Sabotage. This consists in 
 the partial crippling of plants and in interfer- 
 ence with the process of production by tampering 
 with that factor in production, the absolute title 
 to which was granted by former unionists to be 
 in the capitahst class. Now that title is denied; 
 and though the Courts may enforce the title of 
 the capitalist in his constant capital, his tools and 
 machinery, it is obvious that the Court decree is 
 of no avail as against the practical and wide- 
 spread interference with the capitalist's quiet pos- 
 session, which would be manifested in any organ- 
 ized Sabotage movement. 
 
 The intricacy of the factors of production and 
 the general tendency towards consolidation in 
 mechanical processes have tended to destroy the 
 property of the craftsman ; on the other hand to 
 considerable extent the property of the capitalist 
 is jeopardized. This property becomes more 
 liable to attack by the workers and more vulner- 
 able at their hands. The conduct of great indus- 
 trial enterprises, the successful carrying on of 
 work in coal mines and in great factories where 
 the entire business is dependent upon a source 
 of power, where the cost of production is calcu- 
 lated to a nicety and where delay or interruption
 
 122 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 or the non-co-ordination of inter-dependent parts 
 of machinery impHes not only an immediate 
 money loss but tends to the annihilation of the 
 business itself, if continually repeated, places the 
 safety of the capitalist property and the making 
 of capitalist profits more and more in the hands 
 of the working class. 
 
 What prevents the practice of Sabotage upon a 
 large scale? Nothing but the surviving notion of 
 contract ; nothing but the persistence of the no- 
 tion that the tools and machinery are the property 
 of the employing capitalist, the survival of the 
 old contractual and rights of property idea which 
 the process of economic development is fast 
 eliminating from the mind of the worker. From 
 the idea of Sabotage or interference with the 
 property of the employer for a specific immediate 
 purpose, to the actual custody of the machinery 
 in pursuit of a revolutionary policy is not a very 
 long step ; it is, moreover, a very natural one, and 
 then what becomes of the employer? He there- 
 upon is shown to be what he really is, an incu- 
 bus, who can be abolished not only with impu- 
 nity, but with actual advantage. There is little 
 doubt of the growth of the practice of Sabotage 
 in Europe and the conclusion is inevitable that it 
 will make its appearance here also, and will ap- 
 peal to increasing numbers of workmen as the 
 conflict between employer and employee grows 
 more intense. 
 
 Sabotage, of course, has no justification from 
 the point of view of contract. If the labor rela- 
 tion is a contractual relation, and the title of the 
 employer to tools and instruments of labor is 
 conceded and if it is also conceded that the
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 123 
 
 worker has property in his craft then Sabotage 
 must of necessity be justly subject to the repro- 
 bation which is bestowed upon it by the respect- 
 able. But if the revokitionary point of view is 
 taken and the property of the employer as well 
 as the craft property of the employee are put out 
 of sight as untenable, if it is admitted that the 
 contract of employment is in reality employment 
 under duress, then a totally different conception 
 of things arises in consequence of this new point 
 of view. 
 
 Sabotage appears as a disagreeable incident in 
 a revolutionary campaign, unjustifiable under 
 conditions which exclude the revolutionary no- 
 tion, but perfectly justifiable in terms of the rev- 
 olution. A similar case is the cutting off the 
 tails of cows which has been prevalent in some 
 parts of Ireland as a protest against landlord 
 aggressions, and to prevent interference with the 
 return of the peasant to the soil. It may be noted 
 in passing that the attacks upon this Irish form 
 of sabotage are made upon the ground of the 
 destruction of property which causes more indig- 
 nation among the bourgeois than the suffering of 
 the animals. 
 
 Sabotage does not, however, of necessity imply 
 an active interference with the machinery of pro- 
 duction, nor such manifestations as might come 
 under the gen&ral head of malicious mischief 
 according to the Code. It may take the form 
 of passive resistance and may go no further than 
 the deliberate delaying of work by exaggerated 
 observance of rules actually made by the man- 
 agement of the business and necessary in their 
 broad interpretation of its successful conduct.
 
 124 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 Thus at the time of writing there are at Trieste 
 three thousand railway men who are using the 
 system of strict apphcation of the rules of the 
 service with the result that a daily loss estimated 
 at three hundred thousand francs is inflicted by 
 this insidious and almost intangible method of 
 attack. The results of this demonstration are 
 here described in the following words : 
 
 No less than 3,000 persons are applying this system 
 at Trieste, and inflict a daily loss of 300,000 francs on 
 the state and capitalists. The results are already felt, 
 especially in the port of Trieste, where the unloaded 
 goods are piled up, as there is no more place in the 
 docks. Such a disorder and obstruction reigns, that 
 carts and vans cannot reach the quays. At the rail- 
 way station at Trieste is the sarhe condition; the lines 
 are occupied by goods-trains which cannot start be- 
 cause the officials declare that, according to the rules, 
 those trains are overloaded and composed of bad roll- 
 ing stock. More than 400 railway trucks have already 
 been refused for this reason by the officials. Pas- 
 senger trains are delayed and cannot enter the stations. 
 The post also works with the utmost scrupulous slow- 
 ness. The postoffices are besieged by large crowds of 
 merchants who have to wait while the officials are deal- 
 ing with letters and parcels according to all the rules. 
 Complaints of the public have no effect. The ambulant 
 postmen, who have to transfer the mailbags to the 
 trains, refuse to accept any mailbags from postmen 
 who have not, according to regulations, their papers 
 of identification on them. As it is seen, the Austrian 
 officials know how to carry out this passive resistance 
 against the government. The losses of the trade are 
 enormous, and yet, it seems that the strike has not 
 reached its full development, as the latest news from 
 Istria states that the officials of the coast of Istria 
 are ready to join the movement. The officials of the 
 Slavonian railways have published an appeal to the 
 railwaymen to apply strictly the rules of the service, 
 and the Lombardian railway emploj^es have issued a 
 declaration of solidarity with their comrades at Trieste,
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 125 
 
 whom they are ready to support. (Solidarity, April 
 8, 1911.) 
 
 There are those who see no distinction between 
 the modern sabotage and the old machine smash- 
 ing. But the very evident and essential dif- 
 ference shows in reality the distance that the 
 proletariat has traveled since the Thirties. Ma- 
 chine smashing was a protest of the defeated 
 followers of the cottage industry against anni- 
 hilation by the new machines. Their wrath, in- 
 flamed by the ignorance and superstition which 
 their narrow life in small rural communities had 
 engendered and developed, blazed into fury at 
 the devildoms of the new machinery. Their feel- 
 ings, moreover, were worked upon by the rural 
 clergy, who, representing the interests of the then 
 dominant squirearchy, denounced the inventions 
 as ungodly and the work of the evil one. Ma- 
 chine smashing was a brutal, ineffective and 
 stupid attempt at staying the advance of science 
 and industry. It can only be sympathetically 
 explained by taking into account the sufferings 
 of individuals in a transition stage, for society 
 with a frank brutality consigned that portion of 
 the population which was unable to adapt itself 
 to the new regime to starvation and hopeless 
 misery. It must be remembered also that the 
 machine industry engendered a number of related 
 evils such as child-labor, the separation of fam- 
 ilies, the breaking up of the group on which the 
 cottage industry depended and the destruction of 
 village life. Sabotage on the active side, how- 
 ever, is a demonstration in favor of the working 
 class at the point of production, and is made not 
 in terms of the individual, but for the benefit of
 
 126 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 the class. The motive is a class motive, not an 
 individual one. Moreover the action is directed 
 against the machine, not as a machine, but as the 
 property of the employer and is in reality a 
 claim on the side of the laborer to at least part 
 ownership of the machine, i, e., the tool of 
 production. 
 
 Whereas machine smashing was an episode in 
 an early stage of economic development, when 
 the industrial understanding of the masses was 
 still crude, Sabotage is the product of a ripe 
 experience in industrial life. It comes as the 
 expression of a new idea of class interests as 
 directed against what is recognized to be a 
 hostile class. It marks the arrival of a certain 
 portion of the proletariat at a stage when it is 
 able to contemplate the conquest of the means of 
 production ; and to take practical steps not con- 
 sistent with a recognition of the contract of em- 
 ployment and the industrial possession of the 
 employer of the tools of production as his own 
 property. As such it marks a notable attack upon 
 the fundamentals of the existing regime. 
 
 It may be conceded that in many of its mani- 
 festations it is insignificant and almost contempt- 
 ible in its smallness, that it may be used for in- 
 defensible ends and to gratify private spite, but 
 the same objections may be directed against all 
 such manifestations, and the fact remains thai 
 sabotage, that is, organized, intelligent, well di- 
 rected sabotage, may be a most valuable weapon 
 in the hands of the fighting proletariat. 
 
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 
 
 A much more important and recent devel- 
 opment of revolutionary unionsm is the general
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 127 
 
 strike notion. This notion has advanced pro- 
 gressively and has spread over ever widening 
 areas. First mooted at the International in 
 Geneva in 1866, it has been brought before the 
 International Congresses of the Socialist Parties, 
 where it has always been defeated. But the no- 
 tion has made headway even among political 
 Socialists and today it receives almost universal 
 approval as a means of achieving political ends 
 or preventing international war. Much of the 
 early opposition to it was due to the exigencies 
 of the fight between Socialism and anarchism, 
 and the latter, being entirely non-parhmentary, 
 naturally took up the general strike as an effect- 
 ive idea. But since the conflict between Socialist 
 and anarchist is now practically at an end and 
 the controversial heat has subsided, even the 
 political Socialists are ready to admit that polit- 
 ical movement without industrial support is not 
 sufficient, and thus the general strike has become 
 rehabilitated, at least for the purpose of supple- 
 menting political action. 
 
 It is not easy to conceive that such a sweeping 
 and all-controlling affair as a general strike, suc- 
 cessfully organized and properly carried out, can 
 be relegated to the dust heap. In fact, later 
 developments of the labor movement have shown 
 a marked tendency to consider it as a practicable 
 method for enforcing the will of the proletariat, 
 at least in such matters as international war. 
 So that it is almost safe to assume that the ex- 
 pression "general nonsense," applied to the gen- 
 eral strike by the German Social Democrats in 
 the Brussels Congress in 1891, is not likely to 
 be repeated.
 
 128 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 In 1902 a demonstration occurred at Barcelona 
 which closely resembled the general strike in 
 that particular place, and soon thereafter a val- 
 iant attempt was made in Belgium which included 
 three hundred and fifty thousand men. This 
 latter was an example of the political "mass- 
 strike," as it was intended as a demonstration 
 towards the gaining of universal suffrage. Both 
 of these efforts failed. The proponents of the 
 idea blamed the Social Democrats for the fail- 
 ures and the latter on their part laid it at the 
 door of the anarchists. The fact seems to be 
 that neither accusation is correct. The organiza- 
 tion of the workers had not gone far enough 
 to render such strikes successful. But the move- 
 ment in favor of the general strike did not cease, 
 on the contrary. Sweden and Holland both ex- 
 perimented in the same direction later, with the 
 same results, though the action took on a broader 
 scope and the co-ordination of the various parts 
 was obviously better than on preceding occasions. 
 
 In the general strike in Hungary in 1904 the 
 government intervened and called the strikers to 
 the colors by the mobilization of reserves to 
 whom no less than eleven thousand strikers be- 
 longed. Arnold Roller, to whose pamphlet in 
 "The Social General Strike" (Bauer, New York) 
 the writer of this is indebted, says on this point : 
 "This again proves that the propaganda of the 
 general strike must be supplemented by anti- 
 military propaganda," and seems thereby to admit 
 that the general strike by itself is not altogether 
 a reliable weapon, for if anti-militarism must be 
 taught so effectively that the soldiers will refuse 
 to obey the order to come to the colors, before
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 129 
 
 the general strike can be successful, it is obvious 
 that it can only come about as the result of 
 effort which has already succeeded in rendering 
 great masses of the proletarian revolutionary. 
 In other words, the general strike v^^ould appear 
 to be a culmination rather than a means. 
 
 This seems to be a very reasonable conclusion 
 in view of the factors of a general strike. If 
 it is to last for any length of time it implies not 
 only a co-ordination and control which have as 
 yet not been developed even in the most ad- 
 vanced countries, but a definiteness of final pur- 
 pose which has by no means as yet made itself 
 clear to the mind of the masses of the proletariat. 
 As a revolutionary proceeding directed towards 
 the attainment of a political object it is conceiv- 
 ably a very useful weapon, for the ruling class, 
 weighing in the balance concessions in liberalism, 
 which have probably been granted in other coun- 
 tries without any particular harm befalling those 
 in economic control, against actual economic loss 
 and dislocation of business on a great scale, will 
 be not unlikely to yield. In fact, the general 
 strike thus devoted to a political end can hardly 
 fail of success. Its practical probability, how- 
 ever, for such a purpose comes rather under the 
 head of politics. The recent great English strikes 
 mark the highest point yet reached. 
 
 It is sufficient to state here that the chief advo- 
 cates of the general strike do not regard it as 
 a piece of political mechanism, but as a self- 
 sufficient revolutionary demonstration terminat- 
 ing the present industrial form and leading to 
 the substitution for it of another. In fact, the 
 statement is made that the social general strike
 
 130 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 means the emancipation of the proletariat ; in 
 other words, the general strike is the revolution. 
 Taking this view it will be seen that the general 
 strike is an end, which may indeed never be 
 reached, but the very contemplation of which 
 tends to bring the proletariat more closely to- 
 gether and to abolish dividing lines, whether of 
 craft, or of country. For the general strike in 
 its completeness implies the international general 
 strike. 
 
 Concomitant with the growth of the general 
 strike notion other processes are at work which 
 tend to cause that notion to take a position rela- 
 tive to them, and thus prevent the general strike 
 from standing out as a single absolute against 
 a background of industrial tyranny. In fact, 
 the general strike advocate who sees in it the 
 great, sole, and infallible remedy is like all ped- 
 dlers of panaceas — somewhat in danger of be- 
 coming a quack. The general strike is a con- 
 summation of an ideal which, like most other 
 ideals, may never find its consummation, but 
 which in its life brings into being other and more 
 important forces than the ideal itself. Its very 
 failures have proved its tremendous efficacy as 
 an educational means. It has caused a complete 
 overhauling of the machinery of trade organiza- 
 tion; it is rapidly educating the minds of the 
 workers to a comprehension of the real merits 
 of the struggle in which they are engaged, and 
 it has been an agency in the creation of new 
 forms of labor organization which cannot but 
 have a most important effect upon the future.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 131 
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM 
 
 Out of the discussion on the general strike 
 arose a new concept of unionism, which is des- 
 tined to play an ever more considerable part in 
 the industrial history of the modern world. The 
 general strike notion, once adopted, the question 
 of its feasibility led naturally to the overhaul- 
 ing of the weapons in labor's arsenal, with a view 
 to the determining of their fitness for the end 
 in view. 
 
 Such a discussion did not proceed from a 
 priori reasoning, it came about, as always, from 
 the actual economic circumstances confronting 
 the working class. The development of industry 
 with its great interrelations of productive ma- 
 chinery, and its concentration of capital ; the sep- 
 aration of the functions of capitalist and entre- 
 preneur which had necessarily developed from 
 the formation of the corporation and the joint 
 stock company; the always persistent and some 
 times tragically sudden elimination of the crafts 
 by the discovery of new methods of manufac- 
 ture, in short, the wholy body of industrial 
 changes, which together constitute the latter day 
 greater capitalistic revolution, necessitated a 
 change in working class tactics, if that class were 
 not to be entirely submerged. 
 
 The political revolt, as demonstrated in the 
 political Socialist movement, v;as disappointing 
 in results, and the political wrangles were already 
 beginning to wear on the patience of the prole- 
 tariat. Great figures emerged from the ranks 
 of the political fighters and played their parts 
 on the stage of politics, but the general condition
 
 132 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 of the masses did not seem to be improved 
 thereby. 
 
 The notion thereupon spread rapidly that the 
 workers would be obliged to take up the cudgels 
 in their own behalf on the economic field and the 
 interest of the proletariat began to be turned 
 from political to economic organization. 
 
 It was not at all remarkable that this should 
 have occurred first in the Latin countries. Neither 
 political Socialism nor craft unionism had gained 
 any very strong foothold in these countries, 
 largely because of the backwardness of develop- 
 ment of industry. France in particular had 
 passed through characteristically strange experi- 
 ences with the labor representation in the cham- 
 ber. Under these circumstances the general 
 strike notion flared into prominence and became 
 the subject of heated discussions, until in 1895, 
 the Confederation Generale du Travail came into 
 existence and what has since become known as 
 French syndicalism began to play its very im- 
 portant role in industrial matters. Henceforward 
 syndicalism and industrial unionism became im- 
 portant subjects of discussion in labor bodies 
 throughout the world. 
 
 Its main argument rests upon the concentra- 
 tion of modern industry which has rendered the 
 craft form of organization obsolete as a fighting 
 weapon. It is precisely the craft form which has 
 become thoroughly established in the English 
 speaking countries and the dislodgment of it as 
 the typical figthing labor organization constitutes 
 the main point of conflict in labor circles at the 
 present day. The essentials of the craft form of 
 organization, with its weaknesses and limitations,
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 133 
 
 have already been discussed. Owing, however, 
 to the tendency of governing bodies to perpetu- 
 ate themselves, owing also to the jurisdictional 
 disputes which arise in the craft organizations 
 and to the craft "patriotism," which springs 
 from them, the repair of these defects is very 
 difficult of accomplishment. A bristling hedge 
 of conservatism guards the existing organizations 
 directly a criticism is made. The union officials, 
 dreading the result of a transformation of the 
 organization upon their salaries and position, 
 vehemently denounce any tendencies towards 
 such changes. Only the working of the actual 
 facts upon the minds of the masses of the union 
 members can effect any result. The effect of the 
 facts is, however, unavoidable and time is work- 
 ing its changes in the union labor psychology so 
 that we see a constantly growing tendency even 
 in the ranks of the conservative craft unions to 
 abolish the limitations of craft unionism and to 
 take on a form constantly more closely approxi- 
 mating industrial unionism. 
 
 In the Latin countries, however, this obstacle 
 of craft unionism has not to any great extent ex- 
 isted. Neither, on the other hand, had polit- 
 ical manipulation tended to mislead the workers 
 into paths of political meandering, much more 
 to the advantage of the small bourgeois than to 
 that of the proletarian. 
 
 This lack of experience has its advantages as 
 well as its drawbacks, for it enables the proletar- 
 iat to go straight to the point at issue and to 
 develop on the economic field directly that 
 strength upon which it must rely when it comes 
 to blows with the greater capitalism. It may be
 
 134 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 objected that in the neglect of the poHtical mani- 
 festation the Latin SyndicaHst movement over- 
 looks manifold advantages, and minimizes the 
 importance of political action. This is probably 
 true, but the fact remains that it is much more 
 important to develop the economic strength in 
 the industrial struggle than to develop a prema- 
 ture political manifestation which under all the 
 circumstances of the case is bound to function 
 more as a small bourgeois than as a proletarian 
 product. The political reflex is bound to come; 
 it is a reaction which cannot be avoided; given 
 the economic impulse the political effect takes 
 place to the full extent of the power of that im- 
 pulse. Without the economic impulse on the in- 
 dustrial field we get no proletarian political re- 
 flex, we may, and indeed, do get small bourgeois 
 reactions, but without industrial organizations 
 we cannot possibly get proletarian political man- 
 ifestations. 
 
 But more than all these abstract considera- 
 tions, which, after all, appeal more to the student 
 than to the man in the street, with the ordinar}'^ 
 workman, who is more concerned with getting 
 his daily wage than with anything more remote, 
 actual practical results count. The average trade 
 unionist finds himself confronted by a very un- 
 comfortable situation. His security which has 
 up to the present depended upon the utility of 
 the strike and the boycott is imperilled by the 
 declining efficacy of these weapons against the 
 present organization of employers. The strike 
 of a craft is impotent against an aggregation of 
 crafts of which that one craft is merely an iso- 
 lated factor. The pick of the skilled unionists,
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 135 
 
 with large treasuries and with a fairly complete 
 control of the labor situation, as they have 
 thought, find themselves rudely challenged when 
 the call to action comes and the fancied superior- 
 ity ebbs away before the actual situation. Men- 
 aced on the one hand by the overpowering 
 strength of their organized enemies, their craft 
 eaten away from under their feet by the encroach- 
 ments of the industrial processes which have, lit- 
 tle by little, destroyed their standing ground, and 
 surrounded by a hungry crowd of out of work 
 "unskilled" men whom the very process of ma- 
 chine development has converted into highly 
 skilled, at least as regards their effectiveness in 
 keeping the works going during a time of strike, 
 they confront a situation as novel as painful. 
 It is no wonder then that in the hour of defeat 
 they examine the structure of their organization 
 and endeavor to discover the reasons for their 
 failure. They find it in the fact that they are 
 unable to contend against the industrial power 
 of the masters in terms of the craft union. 
 
 Those who have been forced from the position 
 of craftsmen into the ranks of the unskilled by 
 the operation of the same forces also are made 
 aware of their whereabouts. They are unasso- 
 ciated. The crafts are iron to their endeavors 
 to join the union ; they are confronted by the 
 gates and enclosures which the so-called skilled 
 have raised about themselves to maintain their 
 hold on the market. The body of which they 
 form a part is unorganized ; it is a horde seeking 
 food and shelter where it best can, self -devour- 
 ing, in great part a roaming horde. But a horde 
 may be organized. Given the proper stimulus
 
 136 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 which can impel the individuals of the horde to 
 seek a common end and the secret of organization 
 is discovered. Henceforward the horde becomes 
 an organized body and all the better organized 
 and the more enduring in that it has suffered the 
 hardships and known the adversities of poverty 
 and lack of organization. 
 
 Common labor, with no differentiating quali- 
 ties, common unskilled labor, is the fundamenetal 
 of such an organization, which must obviously 
 permit of the widest possible extension and ful- 
 fill the deepest and most intimate needs. 
 
 This opportunity for the organization of the 
 unskilled occurs really only in the industrial form 
 of organization. The crafts, it is true, are en- 
 deavoring to organize the migratory unskilled 
 labor, but they must fail because the crafts can 
 never allow the unskilled the necessary voice in 
 labor affairs. The unskilled man approaches the 
 question from an entirely different standpoint 
 than that of the craftsman. His attitude is natur- 
 ally and unavoidably revolutionary, for he has 
 nothing to conserve. Hence his presence in the 
 same oraginzation with the craftsman, organized 
 in the craft union, is distressing to the latter, for 
 the unskilled will make demands which the 
 craftsman cannot agree that the unskilled man 
 can have, and the unskilled man, by virtue of 
 his basic position, can, if he be organized, upset 
 the entire trade structure and bring the crafts- 
 man, willy-nilly, along with him. This explains 
 the following dialogue between the writer of this 
 and a prominent trade union leader. 
 
 Q. Are you organizing the unskilled? 
 
 A. No.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 137 
 
 Q. Why? 
 
 A. Because if we organize them they will 
 want something right away and then we shall 
 be in a bad fix. 
 
 Q. Are you organizing the foreign laborers? 
 
 A. No. 
 
 Q. Why? 
 
 A. Because they have no vote, and for the 
 same reasons that we are not organizing the un- 
 skilled generally. 
 
 This, which is a bona fide conversation, ex- 
 plains the attitude of the craft union man to 
 the unskilled laborer. It could not be otherwise 
 in his present view of the functions and ends of 
 unionism. 
 
 But directly there is an attempt made at indus- 
 trial organization a new point of view becomes 
 necessary. All grades of workers in the in- 
 dustry must be brought in and from the point 
 of view of the control of the industry all are 
 equally important. Hence there comes about a 
 gradual levelling up of the lower grades of labor 
 with no levelling down of the higher. Indeed, 
 the problem is to at least maintain the best level 
 for the skilled and raise that of the unskilled, 
 the very antithesis of the existing plan which en- 
 deavors to reap benefits for the skilled without 
 improving the position of the unskilled, and thus 
 keeps in reserve a hungry army, ready to rush 
 in and devour in times of strikes and bad trade. 
 It will be thus readily seen that the industrial 
 union is revolutionary. This is clearly shown 
 in the literature of the movement. Thus, to quote 
 from the INDUSTRIAL SYNDICALIST, pub- 
 lished in England, of which Tom Mann is the 
 editor :
 
 138 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 THAT IT WILL BE AVOWEDLY AND CLEAR- 
 LY REVOLUTIONARY IN AIM AND METHOD. 
 
 Revolutionary in method, because it will refuse to 
 enter into any long agreements with the masters, 
 whether with legal or state backing, or merely volun- 
 tarily ; and because it will seize every chance of fight- 
 ing for the general betterment — gaining ground and 
 never losing any. 
 
 Again, on the same point, Eugene V. Debs, in 
 his letter to Tom Mann of July 10th, 1910, pub- 
 lished in the publication above referred to, says : 
 
 Industrial evolution has made industrial unionism 
 possible and revolutionary education and agitation must 
 now make it inevitable. To this end we should bore 
 from within and without, the industrial unionists within 
 the old unions working together in perfect harmony 
 with the industrial unionists upon the outside engaged 
 in laying the foundation and erecting the superstruc- 
 ture of the new revolutionary economic organization, 
 the embryonic, industrial democracy. 
 
 The difficulties we have encountered on this side 
 since organizing the Industrial Workers have largely 
 been overcome and I believe the time is near at 
 hand when all industrial unionists will work together 
 to build up the needed organization, and when in- 
 dustrial unionism will receive such impetus as will 
 force it to the front irresistibly in response to the 
 crying need of the enslaved and despoiled workers in 
 their struggle for emancipation. 
 
 The economic organization of the working class is 
 as essential to the revolutionary movement as the sun 
 is to light and the workers are coming more and 
 more to realize it, and the triumph of industrial union- 
 ism over craft unionism is but a question of time, and 
 this can be materially shortened if we but deal wisely 
 and sanely with the situation. 
 
 It appears everywhere aiso that industrial 
 unionism is partly the result of discontent with 
 the effects of political socialism, as so far shown 
 in the actions of the political socialist parties.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 139 
 
 The French and the ItaHan papers and pamphlets 
 naturally take this view, as they have always 
 been anti-parliamentary, having come under the 
 anarchist influence early in their development, 
 for owing to the industrial backwardness of 
 the Latin countries the propaganda of Bakounin 
 was always preferred to that of Marx by the 
 revolutionary element. But the Northern and 
 Teutonic countries are showing very much the 
 same feeling and there is a growing dissatisfac- 
 tion with such parliamentary representation as 
 the proletariat is supposed to have had at the 
 hands of the regular official socialists. Tom 
 Mann, who is promoting the idea of industrial 
 unionism in England and is careful to say that 
 industrial unionism is not anti-political, says, 
 however, it is non-political. In his pamphlet 
 "PREPARE FOR ACTION" (vol. 1, No. 1), 
 The Industrial Syndicalist, July, 1910, Guy Bow- 
 man, 4 Maude Terrace, Walthamstow, London, 
 pubHshed), he says: 
 
 Those who have been in close touch with the move- 
 ment know that in recent years dissatisfaction has been 
 expressed in various quarters at the results so far 
 achieved by our Parliamentarians. 
 
 Certainly nothing very striking in the way of con- 
 structive work could reasonably be expected from 
 the minorities of Socialists and labor men hitherto 
 elected. But the most modern and fair minded are 
 compelled to declare that, not in one country but in 
 all, a proportion of those comrades who, prior to be- 
 ing returned, were unquestionably revolutionary, are 
 no longer so after a few years in Parliament. They 
 are revolutionary neither in their attitude towards ex- 
 isting society nor in respect of present day institu- 
 tions. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that many 
 seem to have constituted themselves apologists for 
 existing society, showing a degree of studious respect 
 for bourgeois conditions, and a toleration of hour-
 
 140 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 geois methods, that destroys the probabiHty of their 
 doing any real work of a revolutionary character. 
 
 I shall not here attempt to juggle with the quibble 
 of "Revolution or Evolution," — or to meet the conten- 
 tion of some of those under consideration that it is 
 not revolution that is wanted. "You cannot change 
 the world and yet not change the world." 
 
 REVOLUTION IS THE MEANS OF, NOT THE ALTERNA- 
 TIVE TO, EVOLUTION 
 
 I simply state that a working class movement 
 that is not revolutionary in character is not of 
 the slightest use to the working class. 
 
 In defining the characteristics of French Syn- 
 dicalism to which the Industrial unionism of 
 the English speaking countries looks for much 
 of its inspiration, Tom Mann says in the pam- 
 phlet above quoted : 
 
 They are, for the most, anti-patriotic and anti-mili- 
 tarist, e. g., they declare that the workers have no 
 country and are not prepared to fight in the interests 
 of a bureaucracy; but most distinctly are prepared to 
 fight for the overturn of capitalism in France and else- 
 where. They are "non" not "anti" parliamentary. 
 
 The preamble of the Industrial Workers of 
 of World, which in 1905 took up a definite posi- 
 tion with regard to political action, was in 1908 
 revised at Chicago to read : "That to the end 
 of promoting industrial unity and of securing 
 necessary discipline within the organization, the 
 I. W. W. refuses all alliances, direct or indirect, 
 with existing political parties, or anti-political 
 sects, and disclaims responsibility for any indi- 
 vidual opinion or act which may be at variance 
 with the purposes herein expressed." This atti- 
 tude has been variously interpreted. Some have 
 held it to be anarchistic and antagonistic to polit-
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 141 
 
 ical action. Others, whose opinions Tom Mann 
 voices in the following words explanatory of the 
 above quotation (Industrial Syndicalist, Vol. 1, 
 No. 6) : "This meant that they were neither 
 pro nor anti-political, and that they took up an 
 industrial position only." 
 
 Herve, in "La Guerre Sociale," has explained 
 more than once that he is not opposed to polit- 
 ical action as such, and in fact would use his 
 vote under circumstances in which he fancied 
 that it would be of any value to proletarian revo- 
 lutionary action. 
 
 The following bold statement is made by the 
 English Industrialists (Industrial Syndicalist, 
 Vol. I, No. 8): "Parliamentary Action is sec- 
 ondary in importance to Industrial Action; it 
 is industrial action alone that makes political 
 action effective ; but with or without Parliament- 
 ary action industrial Solidarity will insure eco- 
 nomic freedom, and therefore the abolition of 
 capitalism and all its accompanying poverty and 
 misery." 
 
 William D. Haywood, perhaps the most pow- 
 erful of the advocates of Industrial unionism in 
 the United States, says (International Socialist 
 Review, May, 1911) : 
 
 There is this justification for political action, and 
 that is to control the forces of the capitalists that they 
 use against us ; to be in a position to control the gov- 
 ernment so as to make the work of the army ineffective; 
 so as to totally abolish the secret service and the force 
 of detectives. That is the reason that you want the 
 power of government. That is the reason that you 
 should fully understand the power of the ballot. 
 
 Now, there is not anyone, Socialist, S. L. P., Indus- 
 trial Worker, or any other working man or woman, no 
 matter what society you belong to, but what believes
 
 142 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 in the ballot. There are thousands — I am one of them 
 — who refuse to have the ballot interpreted for them. 
 I know, or think I know, the power of it, and I know 
 that the industrial organization, as I stated in the 
 beginning, is its broadest interpretation. I know, too, 
 that when the workers are brought together in a 
 great organization they are not going to cease to 
 vote. That is when the workers will begin to vote, 
 to vote for directors to operate the industries in 
 which they are all employed. 
 
 The claim is also made for Industrial union- 
 ism, thai it is working class socialism as dis- 
 tinguished from what may be denominated the 
 petit-bourgeois socialism which has so far dom- 
 inated the councils of the Socialist Parties in this 
 country and in Europe. E. J. B. Allen (Vol. 1, 
 No. 5, Industrial Syndicalist) says on this point: 
 
 Industrial unionism is working-class socialism ; it is 
 the only logical form of working-class organization 
 able to cope with the conditions that have been inau- 
 gurated by the great development of machinery, and 
 the minute subdivision and simplification of industry 
 attendant thereto. The industrial unionist seeks to 
 unite all the workers of an industry into one union, 
 and to establish a complete co-operation of all the 
 industrial organizations, with the object of not only 
 obtaining the best results in the daily wage-wars, but 
 also to effect their emancipation from the system of 
 wage-slavery. 
 
 The union movement is the only one capable of unit- 
 ing the workers as a class on the grounds of their 
 economic interests. The real interests of the workers 
 are the full proceeds of their labor, their productive 
 energ>' ; and this necessarily means the taking into pos- 
 session of the mines, railways, factories, and mills, 
 by those who operate them. 
 
 We have seen that labor legislation is of little use 
 without an adequate organization to see that the reform 
 regulations are properly enforced. We have seen, fur- 
 ther, that an adequate organization can enforce re- 
 forms, whether on the statute book or not.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 143 
 
 Many working class representatives have been 
 elected to public bodies, and after some time have 
 passed "to the other side of the barricade;" the indus- 
 trial union is the only safeguard against wholesale 
 treachery that the workers can have. It is the bul- 
 wark alike against a state bureaucracy or a military 
 despotism. 
 
 It thus appears that the Industrial Unionism 
 is contemplated as a form of labor organization, 
 which involves political consequences of the most 
 sweeping character, and which, while not laying 
 stress upon parliamentarism, contemplates the ac- 
 quisition of real political power as a matter of 
 course. It is therefore considered by its advo- 
 cates not only as an instrument for the attain- 
 ment of vast industrial and economic ends, but 
 as a means for the gaining of real political power 
 by obtaining that economic power on which in 
 the last analysis all political power admittedly 
 rests. 
 
 The notion of mutualistic group co-operation, 
 which the anarchists proposed to substitute for 
 the competitive system, has, of course, disap- 
 peared with the competitive system, and the no- 
 tion of a domination of the great industrial 
 manifestations of the modern world carries with 
 it and necessarily implies the notion of the world 
 domination. 
 
 To this end industrial unionism, by virtue of 
 its inherent internationalism, of necessity largely 
 contributes. Anti-militarism has been stated to 
 be an essential element in the French form and 
 will undoubtedly appear wherever industrial 
 unionism manifests itself. But internationalism 
 is absolutely incomprehensible to the craft 
 unions. Their small trade view, with their nar-
 
 144 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 row and prejudiced regard of the interests of 
 the workers in the mass, render such a breadth 
 of comprehension as is imphed in international- 
 ism impossible to them. The same stupid nar- 
 rowness pervades the Socialist supporters and 
 representatives of the craft unions, that is to 
 say, practically the entire official body of the 
 Socialist Party in this country. It was gener- 
 ally whispered that the United States delegation 
 at the last International Socialist Congress at 
 Copenhagen had been largely instrumental in 
 preventing the proper development of the war 
 against war campaign in the Socialist movement. 
 The following statement by Robert Rives La 
 Monte (International Socialist Review, May, 
 1911) on that point is very illuminative and in 
 view of the known influences at work in the So- 
 cialist Party may be unhestitatingly accepted. 
 
 At the International Congress at Copenhagen our 
 comrades, Edward Vaillant, of France, and Keir Hardie, 
 of England, went to the root of the matter by intro- 
 ducing an amendment to the Peace Resolution, declar- 
 ing that in the event of war the Socialists in the coun- 
 tries involved should and would do their utmost tc 
 bring about a general strike in the transportation in- 
 dustries and in those industries providing the muni- 
 tions of war. 
 
 This amendment received such strong support from 
 France and England that bad the American delegation 
 taken a strong stand in its favor, it is possible it 
 would have been passed. But the American delega- 
 tion took no such stand. It was not built that way. 
 It did not want to "i-ecognize the principle of the gen- 
 eral strike." It was afraid of "playing into the hands 
 of the Impossibilists." It apparently Ijelieved that the 
 best way to follow Comrade Hillquit's advice to "dis- 
 card the revolutionary phrases for revolutionary ac- 
 tion," was carefully to avoid both.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 145 
 
 The very idea that such International action is 
 sufficiently feasible to be worthy of serious con- 
 sideration is in itself a victory. But it is notably 
 a victory which the craft unionists cannot pur- 
 sue. It is not only impossible for them but in- 
 conceivable by them. The attitude of mind pro- 
 duced by a contemplation of the necessities and 
 limitations of craft unionism is, speaking with- 
 out regard to necessary exceptions, practically 
 and essentially unchangeable. . It is this which 
 makes the development of the already established 
 craft unions into industrial unions almost un- 
 thinkable. The future and the great things of the 
 future are quite incompatible with the survival 
 of the craft union notion while at the same time 
 they harmonize well with the fundamental doc- 
 trines of industrial unionism. 
 
 Wherever we turn in the examination of in- 
 dustrial unionism we find the same great field 
 of vision and the same implied action upon the 
 part of a united proletariat. It is this fact which 
 gives industrial unionism such a promise of the 
 future, which transforms it from a mere machine 
 for raising wages and diminishing hours into an 
 engine of human liberation. The essential dif- 
 ference and vital distinction between the small 
 bourgeois and the modern proletarian are obvious 
 in the different regard which craft unionism and 
 industrial unionism turn upon modern industrial 
 relations. To the former the contract of employ- 
 ment is the impassable gulf which must be rec- 
 ognized as permanent, therefore, all there is in 
 life for the proletarian is to bargain shrewdly, 
 to make smart and clever turns of trade, to gain 
 a little here, to knock off a little there. Indeed,
 
 146 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 the representative of the craft unonist becomes 
 by virtue of that unerring instinct which mokes 
 the common people hit on just the right word, 
 the "business agent" of the union, the dickerer in 
 general for the members of the craft. 
 
 How different is the socialist conception which 
 underlies industrial unionism and which compels 
 the industrial unionist to take every possible step 
 looking to his final acquisition of the product 
 and the tools of production. The aim glorifies his 
 course; internationalism, the anti-military cam- 
 paign, an ever widening confederation of labor, 
 more comprehensive, more human, follows in 
 the wake of the industrial movement ; it becomes 
 pregnant with the greatest promise to humanity. 
 It transforms the labor movement from an un- 
 co-ordinated scramble for isolated small bar- 
 gains into a coherent and harmonious interna- 
 tional progress towards a definite goal. 
 
 The pettiness and cheapness inherent in the 
 craft union disappear in the splendor of the 
 promise which is unfolded to the worker in the 
 program of industrial unionism. 
 
 It is doubtful if any movement in history has 
 required as much from its apologists as has the 
 craft union movement. The vice of small busi- 
 ness has beset it, the ambitions of the small trader 
 have been mirrored in the ambitions of the craft 
 union leader. Being hucksters they could not 
 avoid the huckster disposition. Their personal 
 ambitions have been not with their class, but out- 
 side their class. The union leaders have there- 
 fore used their working class as a stepping stone 
 by which to lift themselves into a more comfort- 
 able and secure position, consequently the whole
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 147 
 
 craft union movement has been marked by a 
 succession of personal treacheries on the part of 
 labor leaders. The inherent brutality implied 
 in the craft union point of view has caused its 
 exponents to neglect the weaker elements of so- 
 ciety and to ignore the claims of that suffering 
 portion of the proletariat whose needs are par- 
 amount. 
 
 The very term, industrial unionism, implies the 
 opposite of all this. The industrial structure com- 
 prises all the factors ; the woman worker, the 
 unskilled, the migratory, the roustabout, are all 
 part and parcel of the industry at which, for 
 the time being, they happen to be employed. 
 They are not derelict, they are component and 
 necessary factors in the composition of the work- 
 ing class, specific and indestructible elements in 
 the particular industry in which they take part. 
 No matter if the form of the industry changes, 
 they change with it. An unskilled laborer of today 
 may be one week engaged in labor work at a 
 foundry and during the next week may be labor- 
 ing in the building trade. Such a man is impos- 
 sible in the craft organization. It is true that 
 some steps have been made to incorporate him in 
 the American Federation of Labor, under the 
 charter of the United Laborers, but, as we have 
 seen elsewhere, the existence of an unskilled 
 labor union is incompatible with the structure 
 of the A. F, of L. To the industrial unionist such 
 a person presents no problem at all. He falls 
 into his category spontaneously, being at one 
 time under the metal trades jurisdiction and at 
 another under that of the building trades, and 
 all the time under the great combined industrial
 
 148 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 organization. So simple is the idea, so obviously 
 practical. Yet, a few years ago the very thought 
 would have been impossible. Its practicability 
 has resulted from the development of industry 
 itself from that operation of industrial processes 
 which have rendered the industrial form of or- 
 ganization at once the most obvious and the most 
 essential. 
 
 It is thus that in Industrial Unionism we get 
 the first real attempt at a realization of that 
 class war which has been so vehemently and so 
 vainly proclaimed for so long. The gathering 
 together of a band of small bourgeois and craft 
 unionists into a group, denominating that group 
 a political party, singing the Marseillaise, indif- 
 ferently, badly, and declaring a class war has 
 almost reached its limit of entertainment. 
 
 With this sort of revolution goes, too, the 
 touching faith in the state as an employer. Mu- 
 nicipal ownership and State ownership, trans- 
 lated into the dulcet expressions. "Municipal 
 Socialism" and ''State Socialism" are being 
 found out. The sweating exposed in govern- 
 ment industries, the failure of the government 
 to be even a "good employer," a failure equally 
 conspicuous in Europe as in the United States 
 has given the government ownership advocates 
 pause. The most striking and illuminative oc- 
 currence, however, was the French Railroad 
 Strike of 1910, when the government did not 
 hesitate to call the striking workmen to the col- 
 ors as reservists and to exercise its military 
 functions in support of its tyrannical behavior 
 as an employer of labor. Under such condi- 
 tions there is little wonder that the Municipal
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 149 
 
 and State ownership political campaigns cease to 
 excite notable interest on the part of the work- 
 ing class. 
 
 The conflict is to be converted into a class war 
 beginning at the point of production. The in- 
 dustrial Unionist favors the ever widening de- 
 velopment of that conflict until overwhelming 
 forces are brought into the field. Thus W. F, 
 Hay (Industrial Syndicalist, Vol I, No. 5) says: 
 "We must prepare for action ; while we shall 
 still find possibly that conciliation has its uses 
 for us, just as diplomacy has for a nation, yet 
 behind that diplomacy there must be force ! — 
 force strongly organized, conscious of its mis- 
 sion and its strength — force so applied and driven 
 home by constantly increasing pressure that the 
 masters will have to give to force what they 
 deny to justice. We must organize in such a 
 way that no matter how few men are involved 
 at first, if a principle is at stake we must make 
 the area of the struggle rapidly larger and larger, 
 until such vast interests are involved as to com- 
 pel a settlement in our favor." 
 
 So that the industrial unionism terminates as 
 it began in the general strike idea. Its culmina- 
 tion is the general strike and the successful gen- 
 eral strike is the means of the social revolution, 
 in fact, the successful general strike may be 
 called the social revolution itself. 
 
 Perhaps the American organization, the In- 
 dustrial Workers of the World has the most 
 complete recognition of the functions and aims 
 of industrial unionism. This naturally arises 
 from the fact that the craft unions are in pos- 
 session of the field m the United States and in
 
 150 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 order to make its position sufficiently clear the 
 I. W. W. must state it accurately and concisely. 
 The Preamble to the Constitution of the I. W. 
 W. reads as follows : 
 
 The working class and the employing class have 
 nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as 
 hunger and want are found among millions of working 
 people and the few, who make up the employing class, 
 have all the good things of life. Between these two 
 classes a struggle must go on until the workers of 
 the world organize as a class, take possession of the 
 earth and the machinery of production, and abolish 
 the wage system. 
 
 We find that the centering of the management of in- 
 dustries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trades 
 unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of 
 the employing class. The trade unions foster a state 
 of affairs which allows one set of workers to be 
 pitted against another set of workers in the same 
 industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage 
 wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing 
 class to mislead the workers into the belief that the 
 working class have interests in common with their 
 employers. 
 
 These conditions can be changed and the interest of 
 the working class upheld only by an organization formed 
 in such a way that all its members in any industry, 
 or in all industries, if necessary, cease work when- 
 ever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, 
 thus making an injury to one an injury to all. 
 
 Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's 
 wages for a fair day's work, we must inscribe on our 
 banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the 
 wage system." 
 
 It is the historic mission of the working class to do 
 away with capitalism. The army of production must 
 be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with 
 capitalists, but also to carry on production when cap- 
 italism shall have, been overthrown. By organizing 
 industrially we are forming the structure of the ne\v 
 society within the shell of the old.
 
 WHAT IS A UNION? 151 
 
 Knowing, therefore, that such an organization is ab- 
 solutely necessary for our emacipation, we unite under 
 the following constitution. 
 
 The constitution provides for an organization 
 composed of actual wage workers. The real 
 basis of the organization is the Local Industrial 
 Union to be composed of "All the actual wage 
 workers in a given industry in a given locality 
 welded together in trade or shop branches, or as 
 the particular requirements of the said industry 
 may render necessary." 
 
 A further development of this fundamental 
 unit consists in the National Industrial Unions, 
 whose functions are thus described ; "Whenever 
 there are more than five local industrial unions 
 in any one industry having a joint membership 
 of three thousand or more National Industrial 
 Unions shall maintain all communications be- 
 tween Local Industrial Unions and General 
 Headquarters until such time as the Department 
 to which the National Industrial Union belongs 
 is organized." 
 
 The Industrial Department consists of "Two 
 or more National Industrial Unions aggregat- 
 ing a membership of not less than 10,000 mem- 
 bers. The Departments shall have general super- 
 vision over the affairs of the National Industrial 
 Unions composing same, provided the general 
 Executive Board shall have power to control 
 these departments in matters concerning the 
 welfare of the general organization." 
 
 The Departments are designated as follows: 
 
 Department of Mining Industry. 
 Department of the Transportation Industry. 
 Department of Metal and Machinery Industry,
 
 152 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 Department of Glass and Potterj' Industry. 
 
 Department of Food Stuffs Industry. 
 
 Department of Brewery, Wine, and Distillers' Indus- 
 try. 
 
 Department of Floricultural, Stock and General 
 Farming Industries. 
 
 Department of the Building Industry. 
 
 Department of the Textile Industries. 
 
 Department of the Leather Industries. 
 
 Department of the Wood Service Industries. 
 
 Department of Miscellaneous Manufacturing. 
 
 Thus we get an organization which differs 
 in all essentials from the trade union as hereto- 
 fore known. The craft element serves not as 
 the essential unit but as subsidiary to the in- 
 dustrial essential unit. Not that the craft is re- 
 fused recognition. On the contrary it is dis- 
 tinctly provided that the local industrial unions 
 are to consist of workers organized either ac- 
 cording to the trade or according to the shop 
 as may be most suitable under the circumstances 
 of the particular case. 
 
 It is exceedingly improbable that the exact 
 lines of organization as here laid down will be 
 followed without deviation. In fact, many 
 important structural changes will unquestionably 
 be made. But in its general scope, and as re- 
 gards elasticity, subordination, discipline, and 
 all the elements of successful proletarian or- 
 ganization it is indubitably much superior to any 
 of its predecessors. 
 
 The Industrial Union, at least for the present, 
 and as far into the future as we are now able 
 to see must stand out as the essentially, prole- 
 tarian organization ; upon which in some form 
 or another the working class will have to rely 
 more and more in its conflict with the industrial 
 overlords. ^.
 
 IV 
 
 POLITICS 
 
 Politics is generally defined as the science of 
 government. This smacks somewhat of the Ren- 
 naissance when princes amused themselves with 
 what they called politics, and practiced a devious 
 and complicated art which bore some relation to 
 the obscure and generally disreputable trade of 
 diplomacy. Where a privileged class is en- 
 trenched in power, or the members of a privi- 
 leged class are so organized that they control the 
 government, politics is an art or game allowing 
 of the playing for stakes, in the shape of office, 
 and making a pleasurable and exciting pastime 
 for those whose leisure is assured by virtue of 
 their economic security. 
 
 The existence of a limited class enjoying the 
 suffrage and the consequent accentuation of fam- 
 ily importance contribute to make the holding of 
 office more secure and politics a dignified pur- 
 suit. Under such circumstances we find that 
 certain very able individuals are produced; that 
 the arts of political controversy and oratory are 
 cultivated and that the game proceeds according 
 to certain well observed regulations. That, in 
 short, politics has its etiquette as, indeed, even 
 military art has under such circumstances. Such 
 an attitude was naturally rendered so much the 
 easier by the interesting fact that gentlemen in 
 question seldom hurt one another but the in- 
 
 153
 
 154 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 feriors paid in their persons and in their prop- 
 erty for the game played by their superiors, 
 
 England and the United States, particularly, 
 the Southern States, in the earlier stages of na- 
 tional development, furnish abundant examples 
 of this attitude in political affairs. The great 
 figures of the dominant political parties strut 
 across the stage of history ; their very manner 
 is the same ; the style of speech is moreover al- 
 most identical and both English and American 
 political leaders sought their models in the class- 
 ical statesmen and orators who were produced 
 under conditions economically very similar to 
 those which made the landholding class in Eng- 
 land and the Southern aristocracy in this Coun- 
 try for a time the governing power. Numerous 
 instances to the same effect may be found in 
 European history. It may be safely stated that 
 where a class is supreme and has no immediate 
 fear for its future eminence, and where that 
 class practically controls the avenues of public 
 distinction, politics is an art or game 
 manipulated for the pleasure and exhilaration of 
 members of the dominant class. 
 
 It is a game played, however, within certain 
 limits, for the dominant class takes good care 
 never to imperil its own interests. The joust- 
 ings of the rivals are confined within narrow 
 lists and none but gentlemen can wear armor 
 and ride curvetting horses in face of the vulgar. 
 It is the art of manipulating governmental power. 
 It frequently under the circumstances above de- 
 scribed, is no more than the struggle of rival in- 
 dividualism for position and is practically always 
 so where the contest for political supremacy of
 
 POLITICS 155 
 
 rival economic classes has not become sufficiently 
 obvious to cause the elimination of the personal 
 question in a fight for actual existence. 
 
 Such a condition of society as we have been 
 considering implies that the democratic point in 
 development has not been reached. It necessi- 
 tates a limited superior class. 
 
 But when in the course of economic and con- 
 sequently of governmental development we ar- 
 rive at the stage of democracy, the term politics 
 begins to take on another and more sinister 
 meaning than heretofore. 
 
 This secondary meaning is given in the dic- 
 tionaries as "The management of a political 
 party." This, however, implies something more 
 intellectual and subtle than what we term politics 
 at the present day and is in reality a sort of 
 statesmanship which consists in the shaping of 
 material to conscious political ends, an art which 
 has become almost lost owing largely to the 
 rapidity with which modern conditions change 
 their mutual relations by reason of the revolu- 
 tionary character of the economic substructure- 
 scientific processes, technic, mechanical develop- 
 ment, and the like. 
 
 This secondary meaning of politics is there- 
 fore nothing more than the art of marshalling 
 votes. Government in a democracy, no matter 
 what its real basis, must rest ostensibly at least 
 on a popular basis, that is, on a voting majority, 
 and as there is a demand for those who are 
 able to so manipulate public opinion or lack of 
 opinion, or whatever else tends to set a majority 
 of people voting in a given direction at a given 
 time, the supply is provided to meet the demand
 
 156 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 and the politician as we know him in this most 
 modern of democracies steps upon the scene. 
 
 The object of modern poHtics is the marshall- 
 ing of votes. But as we have seen, there are 
 conflicting economic classes and therefore con- 
 flicting economic ends to be secured which of 
 necessity imply conflicting governmental con- 
 cepts. So the votes are marshalled in the inter- 
 est of the governmental needs of the dominant 
 economic class. The interests of the various 
 sections of the dominant class may not be identi- 
 cal, in fact they seldom are, but give rise to 
 the play of politics in a modern democracy some- 
 what analogous to the play of politics hereto- 
 fore described under conditions prior to the ad- 
 vent of a democracy. 
 
 The whole of the capitalistic era has been 
 filled with just such conflicts. Conservative and 
 Liberal, Republican and Democrat, what are they 
 but representatives of the diverse interests of the 
 various sections of the capitalist overlords, play- 
 ing, however, within a limited sphere, so that 
 the political manoeuverings do not threaten the 
 actual persistence of the overlordship ? 
 
 The essential, therefore, of political action is 
 an economic basis ; one must discover an eco- 
 nomic foundation for a political party, and no 
 other foundation will do. But when once that 
 economic basis is found or declares itself, forth- 
 with and automatically a political party forms 
 itself upon that economic basis. It may not 
 always be a political party as we generally use 
 the expression, that is, an organized voting body, 
 whose avowed purpose is the employment of 
 recognized constitutional methods for the pur-
 
 POLITICS 157 
 
 pose of obtaining governmental power, but it 
 will be a political party in the sense that it aims 
 at control of the government whether it uses 
 votes for that purpose or not. In the slang 
 phrase of the platform it becomes a revolution- 
 ary or an evolutionary political party. (A popu- 
 lar but quite idiotic distinction.) 
 
 In a democracy it naturally becomes a voting 
 political party, and so far, modern democracy 
 is a great advance in that it forms a ready 
 way of determining the relative strength of op- 
 posing forces without recourse to physical con- 
 flicts. When an inferior economic class has de- 
 veloped sufficient strength to be effective that 
 class obtains the ballot and the struggle is trans- 
 ferred from the physical force plane to that of 
 voting. 
 
 Even when the class in question has no ballot 
 it obtains the suffrage as soon as its display of 
 economic strength is sufficient to render its ac- 
 quisition a matter of course, or its support is 
 necessary to an economic superior. 
 
 Perhaps the case of the chartists is one of the 
 most conspicuous in this connection. A proleta- 
 rian uprising based upon an economic condition. 
 i. e., the status of a wage-working class under 
 a regime of free competition and laissez-faire 
 eventuated in an abortive uprising for the pur- 
 pose of securing a political leverage. It will be 
 observed that the demands of the chartists were 
 purely political demands and that the insurrec- 
 rectionists failed to achieve their object. The 
 cause of the failure was. of course, lack of ma- 
 terial to achieve. The legitimacy of the demands 
 and their politico-ethical significance were in-
 
 158 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 dubitable, for very nearly all of them have been 
 since admitted and have become statute law. 
 Why then did the chartists fail? The fact is 
 that though they had an economic basis for their 
 pohtical demands they had no material economic 
 power with which to enforce those demands. 
 
 Deprived of the ballot and unable to operate 
 in the field of actual pohtics they turned to poli- 
 tics indirectly, that is," they set to work upon the 
 formation of economic organizations ; pure and 
 simple trade unions. In the formation and con- 
 duct of these unions they eschewed politics, they 
 ceased to take any notice of actual politics in 
 their economic organizations, in fact they made 
 rules in these organizations against the discus- 
 sion of politics. But they developed their eco- 
 nomic power; they came into conflict with the 
 economic power of the capitalistic overlords in 
 the shop and won victories, step by step, achiev- 
 ing power which forced their opponents to take 
 notice of them and which made their economic 
 position in the state more and more positive. 
 
 Just as certain as their economic power grew 
 so also did political recognition grow with it. 
 The franchise which they had vainly sought by 
 insurrectionary means became theirs as soon as 
 the economic force which they wielded became 
 sufficiently great to render the denial of it prac- 
 tically impossible. The reflex in politics was 
 complete ; so that the very economic movement, 
 which they had differentiated from a political 
 movement was in itself indirectly political and 
 resulted in the franchise, the entry of the class 
 into political action proper, and the formation of 
 a labor party, which functions as the political
 
 POLITICS 159 
 
 representative of the economic interests of the 
 same class which so unsuccessfully pursued the 
 demands of the charter, a craft union labor po- 
 litical party. 
 
 That the victory was not more complete, and 
 that the labor political movement does not func- 
 tion in terms of the proletariat is consequent 
 solely from the fact that the initial economic 
 movement was not proletarian but a movement 
 in the direction of craft protection. The political 
 efifect does not transcend the original economic 
 cause; it reflects no^more than the actual eco- 
 nomic power. In this case the actual economic 
 power was that of the craft trades unions and 
 that certainly was very completely reflected even 
 to the recognition of its personal representatives 
 as cabinet ministers and in many other minor 
 political and magisterial offices. 
 
 The same results are seen still more clearly in 
 the later political development in Australia, in 
 fact, practically every advanced country bears 
 marks in its political life of the growth and de- 
 velopment of the trade union. 
 
 The phrase "To go into politics" on the part 
 of the working class has arisen in a discussion 
 of the question as to whether political economic 
 action is more advisable. There are no grounds 
 for discussion on this subject. 
 
 It is obvious that the working class will first 
 function economically, that is, at its point of 
 contact with the opposing class in the shop ; but 
 such conflict will have assuredly political re- 
 sults ; they are unavoidable. Economic action 
 will mirror itself more and more in political 
 action as it develops strength, and as the ambi-
 
 160 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 tion, indeed necessity, to control becomes more 
 and more evident with economic success. 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 The political struggle is for the purpose of 
 gaining governmental power. 
 
 The government is the machinery by which 
 the dominant economic class is enabled to con- 
 trol the resources of the community over which 
 it presides. Government implies power of tax- 
 ation and control of the armed forces. The one 
 supplements the other, and both are exercised 
 by the class in possession of the government. 
 
 There is nothing new in this, it is a statement 
 as old as knowledge of the functions of govern- 
 ment. Yet it seems to be most difficult for the 
 average man to grasp the notion in its entirety. 
 He has always been taught that government 
 is the will of the people, and yet he finds a 
 government which is manifestly not the will of 
 the people. He is brought into collision with 
 the governmental powers in a fashion which 
 he cannot conceive as being possible did govern- 
 ment represent the will of the people, or to be 
 more concise, his will. 
 
 The tyranny, the stupidity, and the actual bru- 
 tality of government and the representatives of 
 government, fill him with dismay and indigna- 
 tion and forthwith he conceives government to 
 be that against which the attack should be di- 
 rected — the accursed thing, and he is ready to 
 step upon the slippery slide of anarchism. 
 
 The government which should be close to the 
 average man according to the democratic theory 
 and which should mirror his ideas and hopes, ap-
 
 POLITICS 161 
 
 pears to be something distinct and distant. It 
 seems to have its own entity and to occupy an 
 exalted sphere, to be clothed with thunder and 
 armed with relentless authority. It is anything 
 but the echo of the voice and aspirations of the 
 plain people who make up the mass of the 
 nation. 
 
 If government appears thus to the average 
 American, what must it seem to the man who 
 perforce is brought into collision with it? To 
 the out-of-work tramping in search of employ- 
 ment and without means or resources, the 
 vagrant in the eyes of the law ; the government is 
 an enemy which will seize and imprison him. 
 It is a power which will set him to work at en- 
 forced labor without pay for sixty or ninety 
 days, and then will loose him upon the com- 
 munity in no better condition than before and 
 just as much an object of governmental attack 
 as ever. 
 
 To the ordinary workman who by reason of 
 his poverty, is helpless to rebel against robbery 
 of his wages or against the destroying conditions 
 in which he is obliged to work, government looms 
 up as a colossal monster. 
 
 He blames government ; and the anarchist lec- 
 turer who translates hatred of government in 
 the heart of the outraged workingman into words 
 can always gain the applause and frequently 
 the adherence of the latter. 
 
 Yet to attack government is folly. Govern- 
 ment is an intangible thing and is impervious to 
 attack. In fact the anarchists themselves who 
 are not satisfied with talk but actually desire to 
 accomplish something, direct their attack from
 
 162 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 government to the persons composing govern- 
 ment and we get the useless propaganda of the 
 deed. This only tends to render the threatened 
 government officials angry so that they resort to 
 methods of reprisal against which the rebellious 
 are unable to contend, for lack of material power. 
 
 For it must be forgotten that the basis of 
 government is material power. To strike at the 
 government or at governmental officials and not 
 to strike at the material power in terms of 
 which government exists is a futility. 
 
 Government rests upon the necessities of a 
 superior economic class and cannot be reached 
 except through an attack upon the economic 
 position of that class. As soon as the fact of 
 the illusory nature of governmental power is 
 grasped it is seen at once that there is no need 
 to attack governments or governmental officiafs, 
 that it is waste effort in fact, even if nothing 
 worse. 
 
 Terrorism does not terrify for any long period 
 and is by no means a satisfactory method of dis- 
 posing of enemies for the simple reason that it 
 is too expensive for the terrorists. It cannot 
 be denied that governmental power may be 
 shocked to a certain extent by terrorism, and 
 that governmental action against the revolution 
 may even be checked momentarily by the con- 
 fusion due to some blow delivered under the 
 proper conditions. But no such blow can be 
 effective nor can it produce even temporary re- 
 sults unless there is a large body of public 
 opinion behind it and a fighting organization 
 which will render the persistent striking of such 
 blows probable. However, when a revolutionary
 
 POLITICS 163 
 
 movement has attained these dimensions there 
 is Httle need for such manifestations as are 
 embraced in the propaganda of the deed, and as 
 a matter of fact they seldom occur. Terrorism 
 is in itself an admission of weakness, a confes- 
 sion that the economic power of the revolution- 
 ary body is not such that it has been able to 
 develop a political representation, either in the 
 form of a vast economic organization able to 
 operate successfully within a given sphere, or a 
 political party which is able to bring direct pres- 
 sure upon a government by virtue of the position 
 which its power gives it. It need not be here 
 insisted that one of these manifestations of eco- 
 nomic power would imply the other, that both 
 would exist simultaneously and therefore there 
 would be no necessity for any attack upon gov- 
 ernment. The only demonstration would be 
 against the governing class and would consist on 
 the one hand of knocking out its economic props 
 by industrial conflict, and on the other of directly 
 embarassing the governmental functions by po- 
 litical action, i e., demonstrations in the repre- 
 sentative bodies and in public tending to dis- 
 credit and to harass the exercise of those f auc- 
 tions. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that the most vio- 
 lent controversial attacks upon government de- 
 livered by the anarchists may be fully admitted 
 and yet the movement towards the overthrow of 
 that tyranny not advanced one iota thereby. The 
 young and impetuous, the foolish theorists and 
 the propagandists of the deed dash their head 
 against the intangible thing in vain. Govern- 
 ment is phantom-like, one cannot tell where it
 
 164 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 begins and where it ends. It is pervasive ; it 
 resembles the aura which it is said by some sur- 
 rounds each human being. One conceives a dis- 
 Hke to the aura of an enemy and proceeds to 
 demoHsh that aura. A blow at the aura, how- 
 ever, penetrates that most elusive and delicate 
 atmosphere, and the list coming into contact 
 directly with the proprietor of the aura, the latter 
 retaliates in proportion to his strength. Thus 
 the aura smasher finds that he cannot break 
 that particular emanation without trying conclu- 
 sions with the person from whom it emanates. 
 The same argument applies with equal force 
 to what is generally called direct action. The an- 
 archistic element in the labor movement im- 
 patient against all governments detests and de- 
 spises parliamentary action. It resents the slow- 
 ness and the tortuousness of political methods 
 and suspects every development which has the 
 flavor of parliamentarism. In this attitude it has 
 the approval of a much larger proportion of 
 the working class of the country, than is usually 
 suspected, for there is in the ordinary American 
 laboring man a distinct tendency to individual- 
 ism developed from the history of the country 
 itself. The political exposures and scandals 
 which have attached themselves to administra- 
 tions of all kinds ; the shuffling, the doubling 
 and the actual dishonesty of the professional 
 politicians have filled the mind of the proletariat 
 with detestation of the very name of politics. 
 This attitude may not only be admitted but 
 may frankly be confessed to be justified by 
 events. But, even so, what steps are to be taken, 
 other than the same slow and painful steps which 
 have been heretofore followed?
 
 POLITICS 165 
 
 The answer "Direct Action" leads us nowhere, 
 for it still places us face to face with the ques- 
 tion what is Direct Action? If it means the 
 strike in the shop and all the other manifesta- 
 tions that go with the strike, they are with 
 us now. 
 
 To try to subordinate the strike and boycott 
 and to place them in an inferior position to the 
 political action movement, is to fail to compre- 
 hend the very basis of the proletarian revolt. 
 Political action is a by-product. Thereal essen- 
 tial fight is the one to be carried on in the shop 
 and the political party with its parliamentary 
 action cannot be other than the reflex of the 
 actual political fight. "Direct Action" in the 
 shape of the ecenomic struggle is the very life- 
 blood of the revolutionary movement, but such 
 direct action can no more escape being mirrored 
 in the political manifestations of the time than 
 a man can escape his shadow. 
 
 What "Direct Action" is it proposed shall take 
 the place of the political struggle and eliminate 
 the political factor? The general strike? But 
 the general strike cannot take place without a 
 long period of preliminary contests. A general 
 strike does not leap into the field; it is the prod- 
 uct of painfully and carefully prepared indus- 
 trial organization. It implies that many minor 
 industrial conflicts have occurred before the gen- 
 eral strike makes its appearance and each one 
 of the minor conflicts will have mirrored itself 
 in politics and will have produced proponents 
 of the strike in the various political bodies. Such 
 a result is unescapable, given a democracy, a 
 prime essential of the social revolution. For, at
 
 166 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 leasts as far as we know, the development of the 
 proletariat to the point of becoming a revolu- 
 tionary force implies the development of modern 
 industry with its by-products of popular educa- 
 tion, suffrage, and the other concomitants of the 
 regime of liberalism. 
 
 To declare that any form of direct action can 
 be independent of political results is to state an 
 obvious absurdity for results will follow auto- 
 matically. Not only so, but the economic facts 
 which in their turn form the justifying basis 
 of the so-called "Direct Action," will have re- 
 flected themselves in the political world in pro- 
 portion to the degree of importance of those 
 facts as compared with the other economic facts, 
 all of which taken together form the economic 
 milieu of a given society at a given time. Kaut- 
 sky recognizes this when he says in "The Road 
 to Power" (p. 95 Samuel A. Block, Chicago), 
 "Strikes in those branches of industry that are 
 dominated by employers' associations and which 
 play an important part in the general economic 
 life tend more and more to take on a political 
 character. On the other hand, opportunities 
 come with increasing frequency in the purely 
 political struggle (for example, battles for the 
 suffrage) in which mass strikes may be used as 
 an effective weapon." 
 
 "So it is that the unions are compelled more 
 and more to take up political tasks. In England 
 as in France, in Germany as well as in Austria, 
 they are turning more and more towards politics. 
 This is the justified kernel of the syndicalism of 
 the Romance countries, unfortunately, however, 
 ■is a result of its anarchistic origin this kernel
 
 POLITICS 167 
 
 is buried in a desert of anti-parliamentarism. 
 And yet this "Direct Action" of the unions can 
 operate effectively only as an auxiliary and rein- 
 forcement to and not as a substitute for parlia- 
 mentary action/' 
 
 The second paragraph does not apply to this 
 country, and it is more than doubtful if it applies 
 to Great Britain or France. In Germany, where 
 the bourgeois political conditions are not yet de- 
 veloped in their entirety, the political struggle 
 occupies the center of the stage. It is not, how- 
 ever, a working class political struggle but an 
 effort of the actual economic values of the bour- 
 geoisie to mirror themselves in the national poli- 
 tics. The unions turn more and more towards 
 politics because their economic fight compels it, 
 they must demonstrate their economic values on 
 the political field. The conclusion to the para- 
 graph therefore, is not correct. "Direct Action" 
 is not an "auxiliary and reinforcement" to par- 
 liamentary action. It is the impulse and neces- 
 sary stimulus to parliamentary action. Without 
 "Direct Action," in the sense of economic move- 
 ment there can be no proletarian parliamentary 
 action ; on the other hand economic action cannot 
 avoid reflecting itself in parliamentary action. The 
 most recent and convincing fact in support of 
 this view is the action of the French parliamen- 
 tary party at the time of the syndicalist railroad 
 strike. The "Direct Action" carried on by anti- 
 parliamentary syndicalists found, in spite of the 
 instigators of the strike, a parliamentary ex- 
 pression, the parliamentarians, on their part, in 
 spite of the fact that they were smarting under 
 parliamentary losses due to the abstention of
 
 168 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 direct actionists from the polls at the preceding 
 election were compelled to act as the representa- 
 tives of the economic power of the direct action- 
 ists, and by their political action to render service 
 to the latter on the political field. 
 
 The two manifestations are inseparable. The 
 attempted exclusion of one or other would be 
 impossible. If there is any degree of relative 
 importance the balance would incline to the eco- 
 nomic side, as the necessary preliminary to any 
 political action. 
 
 To shake the economic foundations of the gov- 
 erning class and at the same time to encroach 
 upon the machinery of government in the hands 
 of that class is obviously the present work of 
 the proletarian. 
 
 GOOD AND BAD POLITICIANS 
 
 Says old Machiavelli, "As sovereignty may be 
 attained in two ways, without being indebted 
 either to fortune or to virtue, it is proper that 
 I should here detail them both ; though the ex- 
 amination of one of them might perhaps be more 
 appropriately placed under the article republics. 
 The first is pursued by usurpers who attain 
 power by nefarious means, and the second by 
 such private individuals who are raised by their 
 fellow citizens to the dignity of princes of their 
 native country." 
 
 The attainment of power by nefarious means 
 is the chief criticism of the present conditions at 
 the hands of the respectable. The quaint para- 
 graph above quoted makes clear the distinction 
 between the ideal and what actually occurs. 
 
 The method of political distinction in a repub- 
 lic is supposed to be and has always been taught
 
 POLITICS 169 
 
 to be the raising by their fellow citizens of pri- 
 vate individuals, by reason of their virtues, to 
 conspicuous positions. 
 
 But there are usurpers who attain power by 
 nefarious means and against them are launched 
 all the thunders of the respectable. 
 
 Politics must be cleansed or the republic will 
 perish, say the Puritans. They maintain that 
 American institutions are as nearly perfect as 
 human ingenuity can devise, but the existence of 
 bad men nullifies the beneficent operation of the 
 institutions. Hence the Augean stables must be 
 flushed and none but good men returned to 
 office. The call for good men has resounded 
 through the land. 
 
 In one sense, this cry justifies the criticisms 
 passed upon governmental institutions and is a 
 recognition of the truth of charges made by 
 the muckrakers and a confession of the political 
 abuses which have followed in the train and be- 
 come the most notorious advertisement of the 
 greater capitalism. 
 
 The latter of the two methods of obtaining 
 political distinction as given by Machiavelli is 
 the one ostensibly aimed at in a representative 
 democracy. Private individuals who are raised 
 to dignity by their fellow citizens form, or should 
 form in the estimation of political idealists the 
 governing body, and should have the machinery 
 of government in their hands. Thi^ moral histre 
 is supposed to supply the place of social and 
 class prestige which have been the accompani- 
 ments and ornaments of administrative officials 
 in monarchical countries.
 
 170 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 Given a small community in which the people 
 are at about the same social and economic level, 
 such a community as was predicated in the for- 
 mation of the republic and the ideal, barring ac- 
 cidents and limitations, is not far from being 
 practically realized. Keen struggles for political 
 power in a community where the contestants are 
 well known, where their private life as well as 
 their public record are matters of general in- 
 formation would naturally be carried on within 
 certain well defined bounds. In this respect po- 
 litical strife in a small and comparatively poor 
 community would approximate very closely in 
 standard to political strife among the members 
 of a highly favored class like the English gov- 
 erning class of the eighteenth century. 
 
 There would be, moreover, a distinct ethical 
 advantage in the case of the republic. Among 
 the members of the superior caste ordinary 
 morals indeed were held secondary to established 
 position and intellectual ability. In the republic 
 the necessity of appeal to the average man who 
 may not so readily detect intellectual superiority 
 but is sensitive to the prevailing ethical code, 
 necessitates a demand for men who are able to 
 go before the mass of ordinary citizens void 
 of ofifense in the general public estimation. This 
 was unquestionably the case in the early days 
 of the republic. The standard of public morals 
 was fairly high and in the well settled and es- 
 tablished communities political life was decorous 
 enough. It is easy of course to point out ex- 
 amples of bribery and corruption, of manipulat- 
 ing votes, and of all the little tricks which are 
 inseparable from contests in which only the
 
 POLITICS 171 
 
 strictest watching can prevent men from taking 
 advantage of one another. But there was no 
 wholesale corruption. Such cheating as there 
 happened to be was small and local and consisted 
 of the petty frauds which members of a com- 
 munity engaged in small business would be likely 
 to practice on one another. 
 
 When we arrive at the point, however, where 
 there is a conflict between the law and the eco- 
 nomic interests of a rising class a new condition 
 arises. Then ability to break the law becomes a 
 commodity which has a distinct value in the 
 market, and a premium is placed upon the un- 
 ethical. Thereupon arises the professional poli- 
 tician, in the bad and modern sense. 
 
 The trade of professional politician is looked 
 upon with some scorn under any circumstances. 
 Such scorn is, however, traditional and is a sur- 
 vival of the opinion held by a class rich enough 
 to make an avocation of politics and which 
 therefore despised those who demanded pay for 
 political services. 
 
 In a social state where poor men are eligible 
 for political position a bare living, at least, must 
 be provided for those who give their time and 
 ability to political life. Politics thereupon, be- 
 comes a trade but not necessarily an evil trade. 
 Where, however, the funds provided for the 
 maintenance of politicians are not sufficient to 
 enable them to maintain the appearance of pros- 
 perity essential to their social position, the pro- 
 fessional, who, after all, must make his career 
 in the life which he has marked out for himself 
 as his chosen vocation, becomes inclined to sup- 
 plement his income by irregular and dishonest
 
 172 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 additions. He thus becomes an object of mer- 
 chandise and offers his services to those who 
 having specific pohtical work to do are ready 
 to pay for it. 
 
 This is already an acknowledged fact that in 
 the United States and all sorts of remedies are 
 proposed. One of the most favored of these 
 is to increase the pay of politicians to the point 
 where they would not be so likely to succumb 
 to temptation at the hands of the wealthy. This 
 is a remedy favored strongly by the fairly pros- 
 perous who, judging the pay of professional 
 politicians, in comparison with their own eco- 
 nomic standards find it ludicrously inadequate. 
 But the majority of the electorate on the other 
 hand are inclined to think the salary of a pro- 
 fessional politician quite comfortable in com- 
 parison with their own economic circumstances 
 and would oppose any wholesale increase in the 
 salaries of public officials as extravagance and 
 as tending to the formation of favored class of 
 public servants with incomes and social position 
 much above the average of their constituents. 
 This too was exactly the condition which was 
 sought to be avoided at the institution of the 
 government, and the tradition still prevails to 
 such a degree that it is doubtful whether it 
 can ever be upset. 
 
 Moreover, there does not seem to be any rea- 
 son to suppose that an increase in the economic 
 rewards of officials would tend to greater hon- 
 esty in their part, as there is no probability that 
 the public service could ever offer salaries at all 
 commensurable with the rewards which the 
 greater capitalists would hold out for the per- 
 formance of specific political work.
 
 POLITICS 173 
 
 Such work must of necessity, it will be ob- 
 served, be in contravention of the law. Other- 
 wise it would not be so rewarded, as tne ordi- 
 nary legal business of the greater capitalism 
 would naturally be transacted without the ne- 
 cessity of additional pay, to political representa- 
 tives. 
 
 The solution of the corruption of politics lies 
 in one of two directions, therefore, either the 
 greater capitalism will so completely control 
 affairs that the laws will mirror its economic- 
 necessities and the constitutions be so inter- 
 preted that those necessities have legal sanction, 
 or the greater capitalism must vanish. 
 
 The former of these alternatives would result 
 in the formation of a dominant political caste as 
 in England. The career of politics would cease 
 to become a profession and would be what it 
 formerly was in England, an amusement of the 
 dominant class and we should have a condition 
 of affairs very similar to the eighteenth century 
 in England in which the sons of the dominant 
 class took an active personal interest in politics, 
 held high official portions and controlled the ex- 
 ecutive, legislative, administrative, and judicial 
 offices. There is no question that under such 
 conditions the more sordid phenomena of poli- 
 tics would tend to disappear, that actual bribery 
 and corruption of politicians would cease and 
 that the ambitions of personal leaders would be- 
 come the motives of immediate political action. 
 
 Some such solution of the present conditions 
 is sought by the "better classes" who openly ex- 
 pjress their desire that the existing type of poli- 
 tician should be changed and impress upon the
 
 174 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 young men of their own class the necessity ot 
 taking up pohtics and removing the poHtical 
 management from the hands of the demagogues. 
 A beginning in that direction has been made in 
 some quarters and the advent of the new type 
 has been hailed with derisive epithets such as 
 "Silk-stockings." 
 
 But the limited suffrage was one of the chief 
 reasons for the continued possession of power 
 by the limited aristocratic group above men- 
 tioned. Today those who are advocates of se- 
 lectness in politics eagerly discuss the limitation 
 of the voting power and complain that the suff- 
 rage rests upon too broad a basis. In fact, dis- 
 tinct steps have been taken looking to a limita- 
 tion of the suffrage in various parts of the coun- 
 try. But such a limitation is inconceivable in 
 this or any other modern community. The bour- 
 geoisie has brought the suffrage in its train as 
 a necessary and unavoidable concomitant of its 
 own progress, and the enfranchised voters will 
 march at the funeral of the bourgeoisie. The 
 revival of a privileged aristocratic class in pos- 
 session of the economic power and at the same 
 time in exclusive control of the political offices 
 is at the present date in the world's history an 
 impossibility and may be left out of our calcula- 
 tions. 
 
 The alternative, the elimination of the greater 
 bourgeoisie, can only be accomplished in terms 
 of the triumph of the proletarian, for the pro- 
 letarian is the only force which can furnish the 
 motive power for the destruction of that latest 
 form of economic tyranny.
 
 POLITICS 175 
 
 Granted the victory of the working class the 
 conditions of present day politics would not be 
 very likely to operate and such matters as the 
 graft of politicians could not very well arise. 
 
 The matter of good and bad politicians is a 
 present day question, transitory and of no par- 
 ticular interest to the proletarian. 
 
 Between good and bad politicians the choice 
 of the proletarian voter is frequently confined 
 to the latter. The so-called good government 
 leagues and political purity leagues are most fre- 
 quently opposed to the working class, and the 
 latter suffer more conspicuously at their hands 
 than at the hands of the bad politicians. Thi^ 
 arises from the fact that those organizations 
 are generally controlled by the middle classes 
 and small bourgeois who find their immediate 
 economic interests in antagonism to the interests 
 of organized labor. They resent the demands 
 of organized labor, in fact, they cannot afTord 
 to accede to them and maintain their position in 
 face of the economic pressure to which they are 
 subjected in their competition with the greater 
 capitalism. Hence it comes about that, generally 
 speaking, the condition of labor is worse in 
 those regions where the small bourgeoisie is in 
 power. The most sweeping municipal ordinance 
 against trade union activities was passed in Los 
 Angeles, a town notoriously under the domina- 
 tion of the small bourgeoisie. In the same State, 
 California, which is admittedly an advanced com- 
 munity from the labor standpoint, armed scabs 
 were allowed freely to walk about in Oakland, 
 a town under the influence of the small bour- 
 geois. Many other such instances could be given.
 
 176 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 Generally speaking, there is an antipathy be- 
 tween the good politicians and the laboring class, 
 arising from a more or less conscious under- 
 standing on the part of the workers of their 
 economic interests. So an open appeal to ethics 
 in political matters is generally rebuffed by the 
 labor vote, to the disgust of the respectable, who 
 regard the attitude of the worker in this matter 
 as evidence of his irredeemable obtuseness on 
 moral questions. 
 
 The question of good government continually 
 arises at election times but can be dismissed eas- 
 ily for it does not concern the working class. 
 The shame of city governments and the corrup- 
 tion prevailing in the legislatures are the con- 
 cern of the bourgeois alone ; they do not reflect 
 upon the proletariat, and the latter suffers noth- 
 ing from their persistence, neither does he gain 
 anything by their removal under the present 
 conditions of society. 
 
 The only salvation of the worker lies in his 
 independent political attitude, that determined 
 isolation from capitalist politics which is the re- 
 sult of his economic isolation, and his invincible 
 antagonism to all that the present system implies. 
 
 His political actions are neither ethical nor 
 unethical ; they depend upon no bourgeois con- 
 ceptions as to what constitutes good or bad 
 politics. They are aimed frankly at the acquisi- 
 tion of power and derive their propulsion from 
 the immediate economic needs of the proletariat 
 as displayed in its industrial movements. 
 
 MAKING A POLITICAL PARTY 
 
 The reflex of industrial action in politics 
 is so automatic that it needs no deliberately con-
 
 POLITICS 177 
 
 striicted political party for its manifestation. In- 
 deed where such a party is made with the in- 
 tention of giving representation to an economic 
 interest it fails of its purpose. 
 
 The reason of this failure lies in the fact that 
 such a party is constructed by those who are 
 dominated by theoretical views upon the abstract 
 questions involved in the matters at issue. In 
 so far as those views coincide with the material 
 necessities of a sufficiently large number of peo- 
 ple to constitute a distinct economic class they 
 will receive recognition at the hands of one or 
 another of the recognized political factions ; al- 
 ways provided that the satisfaction of the de- 
 mands implied in the economic movement does 
 not transcend the limits of political action neces- 
 sary for the maintenance of the existing eco- 
 nomic regime. 
 
 There are many instances of parties having 
 been brought unnecessarily into the field only to 
 be absorbed later by one or other of the recog- 
 nized political parties. Such parties have served 
 rather as an advertisement of the actual demand 
 for certain economic charges, but as soon as 
 that demand has become sufficiently loud, poli- 
 ticians anxious for office have yielded more or 
 less acquiescence and the party which began 
 with a flourish of trumpets has disappeared with 
 an almost astonishing celerity. 
 
 If the demand exists politicians will not fail 
 to meet it, in fact not to do so is essential 
 folly in politics. Such political demands as can 
 be conceded are conceded by the ordinary poli- 
 ticians who depend upon the Supreme Court and 
 a written constitution to drive back any of the
 
 178 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 black sheep measures which may have strayed 
 from the fold of respectability. 
 
 The economic necessities of the farming class 
 and a portion of the small bourgeoisie which 
 mirrored themselves in the Populist movement 
 persisted. They apparently failed of political 
 recognition, because the Democratic Party un- 
 dertook to represent them and the smaller Peo- 
 ple's Party became merged in the Democratic 
 Party. The Democratic Party failed to achieve 
 victory in that the party of the greater capital- 
 ism, the Republican, reflected a more powerful 
 economic force and the party of the small bour- 
 geoisie succumbed to superior strength. 
 
 Did then the political demands of the small 
 bourgeoisie and the farmers not receive recog- 
 nition? They did. A number of the political 
 changes which they required have been carried 
 out and are now being carried out by the reform 
 wing of the Republican Party. It would be 
 hard to find a better example of the automatic 
 political registering of the demands of an eco- 
 nomic class. Initiative, referendum, recall, di- 
 rect primaries, and a number of political changes 
 which in the estimation of that class were essen- 
 tial to the political well being of its members have 
 all been conceded, and when the Democratic Party 
 failed the Republican Party itself produced the 
 exponents and the champions of the smaller bour- 
 geois demands. To a certain extent even their 
 economic demands apart from mere changes in 
 the machinery of government have received 
 recognition and the various recent attacks upon 
 the transportation companies, for example, all 
 bear witness to the political expression of the 
 economic necessities of the small bourgeoisie.
 
 POLITICS 179 
 
 The Socialist Party came into being ostensibly 
 as a proletarian party, but in reality representing 
 but one portion of the working class, the skilled 
 labor element, which as we have seen verges on 
 the edge of the small bourgeoisie. The Socialist 
 Labor Party, its predecessor, had detected the 
 now much more evident truth, that the organized 
 American working class as it appears in the dis- 
 tinctive organization, the American Federation 
 of Labor, is not in reality that portion of the 
 American proletariat which can be relied upon 
 for revolutionary proletarian action. 
 
 The Socialist Labor Party thereupon endeav- 
 ored to bring into existence a revolutionary 
 uionism which might function as an economic 
 organization and whose political exponent the 
 Socialist Labor Party might be. This was all 
 perfectly correct from a theoretical standpoint, 
 but it had the essential weakness of being a 
 creation by fiat. Lassalle says that no one makes 
 revolutions; neither, in fact, does any one make 
 industrial movements or political parties. They 
 grow, and they grow not according to schedule. 
 At any rate it is sufficient to say at present that 
 the Socialist Labor Party took a position which 
 development and the process of political change 
 have shown to have been theoretically correct. 
 
 The Socialist Party was formed of those mem- 
 bers of the Socialist Labor Party and others who 
 had progressed no further in their intellectual 
 sociological grasp than the point of view of the 
 economic interests of the organized skilled la- 
 borer. Out of this element in addition to the 
 thoroughly whipped and correspondingly discon- 
 tented small bourgeoisie the Socialist Party was
 
 180 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 formed. The demand for its existence has been 
 evidenced by its growth, it has become more 
 and more the exponent of the economic concepts 
 of the skilled artisan, the small storekeeper, the 
 unsuccessful professional man, and all that 
 heterogeneous mass of discontented and dis- 
 satisfied which finds no other political expres- 
 sion. 
 
 The platform of the Socialist Party therefore 
 represents the hodge-podge demands of the dis- 
 contented. As a Socialist Party and claiming to 
 represent the proletariat as a whole it attracts 
 to its ranks those who find in a clear proletarian 
 platform the only solution of the problems in- 
 herent in the present economic system. As the 
 representative of the smaller bourgeoisie and 
 the skilled organized labor of the American Fed- 
 eration of Labor the Socialist Party must more 
 and more endeavor to realize actual political 
 power in terms of the economic interests which 
 brought it into being and which sustain it. Be- 
 tween these elements there is of necessity con- 
 flict and the gulf is unbridgable. 
 
 The exponent of the proletarian doctrine be- 
 comes the advocate of the industrial form of or- 
 ganization and would confine the platform of 
 the party to a revolutionary statement, leaving 
 the rest free for the development of conditions 
 and the handling of proletarian interests in ac- 
 cordance with the progress of the economic fight. 
 
 The official wing, however, of the Socialist 
 Party as the representative of a non-revolution- 
 ary body, i. e., the skilled artisan element and the 
 small bourgeoisie, feels that it must produce 
 actual political results, must win elections, must
 
 POLITICS 181 
 
 gain administrative control, and in fact must op- 
 erate, as these officials declare, as a live and 
 efficient political expression. In this respect, 
 however, the Socialist Party suffers a serious han- 
 dicap. In so far as its aims are not revolutionary 
 its program can be more or less readily adopted 
 by one or other of the ordinary political parties 
 vi^hich can take over the demands of organized 
 labor and the smaller bourgeoisie as the demands 
 of the Populists have been shown to have been 
 taken over. A larger party can do this the more 
 readily as it can give more plausible promises of 
 accomplishment. That such a party actually car- 
 ries out some of its promises has been shown in 
 the last legislature of California where the re- 
 form Republican wing, without having received 
 conspicuous trade union support at the preceding 
 election, nevertheless actually accomplished and 
 endeavored to accomplish more legislation on 
 behalf of the trade unions than the Socialist 
 Party in its State platform was able to promise 
 them. Under such conditions it will be seen that 
 the Socialist Party will find it no easy matter 
 to compete with the older parties in the effort 
 to secure the organized labor vote as long as the 
 demands of organized labor are kept within the 
 frontiers of the admittedly respectable. 
 
 Were the continued existence of the Socialist 
 Party dependent upon its present attitude to- 
 wards the pure and simple labor unions and 
 the small bourgeoisie its term of life would be 
 brief for the reasons above stated. How brief, 
 a recent incident in California politics will show. 
 The Socialist Party candidate for mayor won 
 the election at Berkeley, a town of some forty
 
 182 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAl 
 
 thousand inhabitants and the seat of the State 
 University upon a platform of pubHc ownership 
 of public utilities. Immediately afterwards the 
 official Republican wing at Oakland, a consid- 
 erable town in close proximity to Berkeley and 
 with a much larger population than Berkeley, 
 proclaimed that their candidate for mayor stood 
 upon a platform practically identical with that 
 of the Socialist candidate for Berkeley. Directly 
 the Socialist Party puts up a popular platform, 
 that is, a platform which will receive the ap- 
 proval of the small bourgeoisie, the politicians 
 counter upon it with the explanation that they 
 are Socialists too and will do all that the Social- 
 ists promise. This makes it hard for the Social- 
 ist Party and it would speedily go the way of 
 all minor propaganda parties like the People's 
 Party were it not for the following reason: 
 
 The Socialist Party by its claim to be a pro- 
 letarian party and its outward acceptance of the 
 Socialist doctrines of the class struggle in addi- 
 tion to its role as apostle of the craft union and 
 the small bourgeoisie, becomes the natural refuge 
 of the proletarian and the industrial unionist. 
 
 This accommodation of two diverse elements, 
 while producing unrest and dissension in the 
 party is in reality its salvation. The elimination 
 of the proletarian element would leave the party 
 rudderless, and at the mercy of those leaders 
 whom inclination or personal ambition inclines 
 to the opportunistic role. The presence of this 
 proletarian element which is always active, vig- 
 orous and influential, in proportion as the eco- 
 nomic conditions of the locality allow it to be so, 
 makes the impassable gulf between the Socialist 
 Party and the ordinary politician. The oppor-
 
 POLITICS 183 
 
 tunist sees this and frequently endeavors to 
 make the SociaHst Party correspond in form 
 more closely to the ordinary political parties, 
 but the revolutionary proletarian always objects 
 to any loosening and in this way the Socialist 
 Party manages to maintain its existence and ac- 
 tually to develop an increasing independence in 
 spite of the fact that the majority of people 
 would undoubtedly support most of its immedi- 
 ate proposals and in fact do so when they are 
 made by a recognized party other than the So- 
 cialist. 
 
 As the industrial movement grows and the 
 contest with the employing class develops on the 
 new plane the political reflex of that industrial 
 action finds itself in the Socialist Party. No 
 matter that the Socialist Party has a reform plat- 
 form at the present time, no matter if it flirts 
 with the small bourgeoisie and is inclined to 
 the craft unionism. Directly the conflict comes 
 at the point of contact in the shop the Socialist 
 Party is bound to take the proletarian side in that 
 conflict and to challenge the legal basis of the 
 existing system, to become in fact as in name 
 a revolutionary political movement. This can- 
 not be avoided. It has been shown repeatedly 
 in European politics and it will of necessity 
 occur here. Without industrial action the Social- 
 ist Party would be but a somewhat uninteresting 
 symptom of trade union and petit-bourgeois dis- 
 content. With industrial action it of necessity 
 becomes transformed into a fighting and revolu- 
 tionary political organization. 
 
 Thus the future, even the political future, is 
 really dependent upon active, intelligent and 
 revolutionary industrial organization and action. 
 
 tflVfVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIBR/s
 
 Books by Karl Marx 
 
 Marx is the greatest of Socialist writers; study him 
 lui yourself if you want to understand the principles 
 of Socialism and qualify yourself to explain them to 
 others. His most important books may now be had 
 in English at the following prices, postage included: 
 
 Capital, Volume I. The Process of 
 
 Capitalist Production. Cloth, $2.00. 
 
 Capital, Volume II. The Process of 
 Circulation of Capital. Cloth, $2.00. 
 
 Capital, Volume III. The Process of 
 Capitalist Production as a Whole. Cloth, 
 $2.00. 
 
 A Contribution to the Critique of 
 Political Economy. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
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 Proudhon. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
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 Germany in 1848. Cloth, 50c. 
 
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 paper, 10c. 
 
 The Communist Manifesto, by Marx 
 and Engels. Cloth, 50c. ; paper, 10c. 
 
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 troduction by Frederick Engels. Paper, 
 25 cents. 
 
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 Bonaparte. Paper, 25c. 
 
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 1 18 West Kinzie Street. Chicago
 
 Don't Talk Socialism 
 
 without first studying. It is too big a subject to 
 learn from one booklet. But it costs only a little 
 in time and money to get a clear imderstanding 
 of the subject. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL SOCIALISM, by William D. 
 Haywood and Frank Bohn, is the best general ex- 
 planation of Socialism for beginners. Price 10 
 cents. 
 
 SHOP TALES ON ECONOMICS, by Mary E. 
 Marcy, shows how the unpaid labor of the wage- 
 worker makes profits for the capitalist, and why 
 no reforms can benefit the working class. Price 
 10 cents. 
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE, by Karl Kautsky, 
 ■)ne of the greatest Socialist books ever writen, ex- 
 plains the whole structure of capitalist society 
 
 and of the Socialist Republic of the future. Cloth, 
 
 50 cents; paper, 25 cents. 
 
 The Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kansas. 50 cents 
 a year, is the greatest Socialist weekly in the 
 world, with a circulation of more than half a 
 miTEon, 
 
 The International Socialist Review is the only 
 great illustrated magazine advocating Socialism. 
 $1.00 a year, 10 cents a copy. This and the 
 Ibooks named above are published by 
 
 CHARLES H, KERR & COMPANY 
 
 JI8 W. Kiiuie Street :: Chicago
 
 DEBS 
 
 His Life, Writings and Speeches. 
 
 Socialists are not hero- worshipers. We 
 do not put our faith in leaders. Methods 
 of class warfare do not come from the 
 brains of the isolated scholar, but from 
 the brains and experience of fighters. 
 
 That is why we publish the life, writ- 
 ings and speeches of Eugene V. Debs. 
 He has never set himself up as a leader 
 of the labor movement. But by choice 
 of it, joy in it, love of it, he has remained 
 a part of the movement itself. Sepa- 
 rate him from the revolutionary work- 
 ing class movement and you lose Eugene 
 V. Debs. He is bone of its bone, flesh 
 of its flesh. His very life, his hopes 
 and aims are interwoven into the very 
 mesh of the labor movement. 
 
 All his writings that he thinksiworth 
 preserving are included in this book, 
 which also tells the story of his life and 
 work. 
 
 Two large editions have been sold at $2.00 a copy. 
 But Debs does not wish to make money from the 
 book; he wishes to carry the message of socialism 
 to an ever growing circle of readers. He has there- 
 fore authorized our co-operative publishing house 
 to bring out a new, neat, compact library edition, 
 illustrated, and containing over 500 pages, at a 
 dollar a copy, postpaid, with special prices to com- 
 rades who buy in quantities and put their energy 
 into finding new readers. We will send five copies 
 by express prepaid for $3.00 or twenty copies by 
 express prepaid for $10.00. Address 
 
 Charles H. Kerr &. Company 
 
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 The International Socialist Review 
 
 is now the largest and best socialist maga- 
 zine in any language or country. It is the 
 only illustrated magazine that is of, by and 
 for the working class. Each month it gives 
 the latest news of the Class Struggle from 
 all over the world, with vivid photographs 
 from each new scene of action. Not a dull 
 page in the whole magazine. The ablest 
 writers in the organized socialist move- 
 ment are among its contributors. Edi- 
 torially it stands for a clear, uncompromis- 
 ing working-class movement, both at the 
 polls and in the shops. Monthly, $1.00 a 
 year, 10 cents a copy. Some news dealers 
 sell it, but the safe and sure way to get 
 each issue promptly is to use the blank 
 below. 
 
 CHABIiES H. KERR & COMFAlTSr, 
 
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 Enclosed find one dollar, for wlLich please mail 
 the International Socialist Review one year. 
 
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 Socialist Speakers 
 ^Vanted 
 
 The Socialist Party will need thousands of 
 speakers within the next year, and only a few 
 hundred are even fairly prepared for this work. 
 Ignorant speakers do far more harm than good. 
 We must have speakers with a clear understanding 
 of what socialists want and how they propose 
 to get it. 
 
 Nothing but study will make yon a competent Socialist 
 speaker, but you can save time and money by starting 
 with tlie right literature, and not learning things you 
 will soon have to unlearn. We publish nearly all the 
 standard socialist books. We advise that you start 
 with these, reading them in about the order named: 
 
 Revolution, Jack London $0.05 
 
 Introduction to Socialism, Richardson 05 
 
 Industrial Socialism. Haywood and Bobn .10 
 
 Science and Socialism, LaMonte 05 
 
 Rerolutionary Unionism, Debs 05 
 
 Shop Talks on Economics, Mary E. Marcy .10 
 
 Value, Price and Profit, Marx 10 
 
 WageLaborand Capital, Marx 05 
 
 Socialism, ^Utopian and Scientific. Engels. .10 
 Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels. .10 
 
 The Class Struggle, Kautsky 25 
 
 The Art of Lecturing, Lewis 50 
 
 International Socialist Review (one year) . 1.00 
 
 Total $2.50 
 
 Remit S1.50, ask for Soap-Boxer Combination, and we 
 will send you this entire lot of literature postpaid. By 
 the time you have read it thoroughly you will know 
 more than most of the people who are making Socialist 
 speeches at present, and you will be in a position to 
 select additional books to suit your needs. Don't delay, 
 fill out the blank below, get the literature and begin 
 studying. 
 
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 once your SoapcBozer Combination of social- 
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