Published:The New Review, vol. 1, no. 18. July 1913.
Transcription/Markup:Micah Muer, 2017.
In the working class movement there are great differences of opinion inregard to tactics, in regard to the best method of conducting the struggle forthe emancipation of the proletariat, and these differences often expressthemselves in acrimonious discussions and embittered internal conflicts. Thesedifferences can be cleared up and settled only by a thorough discussion of thefundamental principles of the class struggle.
The question involved is this: how can the proletariat conquer politicalsupremacy? Those who do not concern themselves with this question, who do notconsider it necessary for the workers to carry on a struggle for the conquest ofpower (anarchists and conservative workers) are disregarded here — weshall not concern ourselves with their opinions. To-day almost every militantworker knows that for him the political struggle is necessary. The bourgeoisiegained possession of political supremacy when it became the most important classof society. It is becoming to an ever increasing degree an economicallysuperfluous, a parasitical class, but like every declining class it utilizes itspower in the State to maintain its exploitation artificially. Marxism teachesthat the political power of a class is always rooted in its economic importance:if a new class presses to the front, the political supremacy must devolve uponit. Not automatically, however, but only through struggle. The necessaryconnection which, according to Marxism, exists between economic importance andpolitical supremacy, signifies that to a rising class there flow from society somany streams of increasing power that it is finally strong enough to overthrowthe exploiting class. Hence it is now the mission of the proletariat to wrestthe political supremacy from the hands of the capitalist class, for the economicrevolution from capitalism to Socialism is impossible as long as the state is atool in the hands of the capitalists. And hence the important all-absorbingquestion in regard to the method and manner in which the proletariat can winpolitical supremacy.
In the discussion of this question two tendencies appear which are in sharpcontrast to each other, even in America. On the one hand stands parliamentarismpure and simple, which wishes to win political supremacy by means of parliamentand elections. On the other hand stands Syndicalism which, in its pronouncedFrench form, will have nothing to do with the parliamentary struggle and wishesto conduct the struggle solely by means of the labor unions. These tendenciesare distinguished by the role which they allot in the struggle for supremacy tothe two forms of proletarian organization, the labor unions and the politicalparty. We may say of these two tendencies that they are correct in theirpositive activity, but incorrect when they believe that they can succeed withthat alone. Both lay stress upon a single side of the whole, and their methods,which are so sharply contrasted to each other, form narrow and one-sideddistortions of the tactics of the class struggle, which are based uponMarxism.
In all capitalist countries the political power is chiefly in the hands ofthe parliaments. In them the parliamentary majority can, if not entirely atleast to a high degree, rule the state and control legislation. Every politicalstruggle between the classes must become a parliamentary struggle. In thosecountries the working class also must be constituted as a political party, forceits way into parliament by participation in elections, and take part in theparliamentary struggles.
The German working class has furnished a practical example. When generaldiscouragement prevailed after the fall of the Commune, the steady advance ofthe German workers, the ceaseless increase in the number of their votes, showedthe Socialists of all countries a new way to the conquest of political power.While formerly the idea had always been to seize power suddenly by arevolutionary uprising, as in 1848 and 1871, here the revolution, the conquestof power, appeared as the final act of a gradual but irresistible, peacefuldevelopment based upon the law. Thus was formed the idea of theparliamentary conquest of power. Parliament is the legislative body.Whoever controls the parliamentary majority controls legislation and government.But parliament is elected by the people through universal suffrage. Hence theSocial-Democracy need only win by propaganda and education ever greater massesof the people; when it has finally won over the majority of the people —which it must succeed in doing, because the workers, whose interests itrepresents, form the majority of the people — then it has also themajority in parliament and employs legislation and the power of the state torevolutionize property and to abolish exploitation.
That is logically the fundamental idea of pure and simple parliamentarism.The conquest of political supremacy becomes a peaceful process, which so far asthe masses are concerned, consists only of propaganda and elections. It is thework of the Social-Democracy asa political party; other working classorganizations, even the labor unions, are unnecessary. According to thisconception, the difference between Socialist party and labor union consists inthis, that the labor union struggles for the amelioration of living conditionsunder capitalism, while the party strives for the abolition of capitalism. Thegoal and the significance of the labor unions lies in the present, those of theparty in the future; the labor unions have a reformistic, the party arevolutionary character. Practice also appears to confirm this contrast, for inthe party we continually discuss revolution and Socialism, politics, sociologyand philosophy, while in the unions we hear only of a few pennies more or lessin wages and of petty differences with the employer. In Germany this contrastexpressed itself in the early nineties, when the labor unions were painfullybuilding up their strength, in this way, that many Social-Democrats declared thework of the labor unions to be a dissipation of force, because they sought onlypresent amelioration, which was totally unnecessary since we would soon abolishcapitalism entirely and all forces must be reserved for this completeemancipation. Prominent political leaders declared at that time that the laborunions had no future in Germany and indeed were hardly necessary.
This view of pure and simple parliamentarism, namely, that the conquest ofpolitical power was exclusively an affair of the party to be accomplished bymeans of elections and that the unions had merely a present-day significance,has spread from Germany to all other countries. Everywhere its supporters pointto the German example, to the mighty electoral victories and the colossal powerof the German Social-Democracy. But among the German workers themselves opinionshave steadily undergone a change since the beginning of the present century.Even earlier the majority of Social-Democrats had the feeling that after all therevolution meant a much more difficult and violent struggle than mere electoralfights. But when after the electoral victory of 1903 the threats of ouropponents to abolish the universal Reichstag suffrage became louder and louder,it became clear why the peaceful parliamentary conquest of power was impossible.It presupposes universal suffrage, and universal suffrage can simply beabolished by a parliament. But does this remove all hope of the acquisition ofpolitical power by the working class? No, for to such an attack upon universalsuffrage the workers can oppose other weapons. At the Congress of Jena in 1905the German party adopted a resolution that the working class would employ thepolitical mass strike against a reactionary attempt to abolish the Reichstagsuffrage and for the conquest of new political rights.
A form of suffrage is nothing rigid, unalterable or arbitrary; the suffrageis an object of struggles, and its form depends upon these struggles. In manycountries where there is no universal suffrage, the workers are fighting for it,while on the other hand the reactionary parties are scheming to rob the workersof their suffrage when it becomes dangerous to capitalist supremacy.
Herein lies the defect of the basic idea of pure and simple parliamentarism.Even now it is not true that the popular majority, through parliament, controlsthe state and the law. Not only in Germany, where the government is independentof the Reichstag and is supported by the Prussian Landtag, in which the workersare rendered absolutely powerless by a reactionary electoral law, but in allcountries the suffrage is either restricted, or else there exists alongside ofthe popularly elected parliament an aristocratic body, called House of Lords,Senate or First Chamber, which also passes upon the laws, or else the judgesexercise the right of interpreting the law. But even granted that there existsin a given country a completely democratic system of government, so that there aSocialist popular majority might win the supremacy merely by means of votes— is there anyone in the world who believes that the capitalist class willallow itself to be simply voted out of power without resisting? Would thebourgeoisie, which is convinced that Socialism signifies the end of allcivilization and the destruction of all human happiness, allow it to comepeacefully into power, bewitched by the sacredness of a legal formula created byitself? The law is never anything more than a means for the purposes of humaninterests; and hence the bourgeoisie, as long as it is in the majority, will usethe law to abolish, before it is too late, a universal suffrage that has becomedangerous. Over this, then, the struggle rages. Hence here, too, the struggleabout thefoundations of parliamentarism will bring the real decisionas to supremacy.
The defect of pure and simple parliamentarism lies in the fact that itconsiders the form of suffrage as something absolute and independent. Butprecisely like the entire constitution, the suffrage is merely an expression oftheactual relations of power in society. Constitution and suffragerest upon the actual society of human beings in which the classes, of various,power and importance, are struggling with each other over their diverseinterests. The social power of a class determines to what degree its interestsare represented in the constitution; in proportion as the social power of theworkers increases, they are in a position to win political rights or to defendold rights against the increasingly reactionary tendency of the bourgeoisie.When the proletariat fights for universal suffrage or resists an attack uponuniversal suffrage — no matter what the weapons which it employs,meetings, journalistic campaigns, street demonstrations, mass strikes —the result always depends upon the magnitude of the social power which it bringsto bear upon the struggle.
The social power of the workers is constantly increasing, and this forms thesure foundation of our future victory. The development of capitalism increasesthe mass of the proletariat, concentrates it into great factories and makes thewhole of society dependent upon its labor. These masses are gaining ever clearerpolitical insight, class-consciousness and Socialist knowledge; in that wayalone do they become a fighting force against capitalism. These masses arewelded ever closer together into organizations, in which each individualsubordinates himself to the will and the interests of the whole, and therebyalone will the workers, who as individuals are powerless, become a powerful,effective body. Upon these factors, mass and importance, class-consciousness andknowledge, organization and discipline, depend all successes in the classstruggle. If they had reached their highest perfection, the end of capitalismwould already be here. The further a knowledge of Socialism has spread among themasses, the more votes do we win in the elections. Where union struggles arewon, it is due to the solidarity, the unshakable cohesion of the rank and fileand to their self-sacrifice in the interests of the whole. And in the strugglesfor suffrage also, in street demonstrations and mass strikes, success dependsupon the degree in which the workers exhibit firm discipline and a clearconsciousness of their purpose, and are not confused or provoked by the enemy,but hold together as a solid mass in which each subordinates himself completelyto the whole. Therefore we must lay the greatest stress upon increasing thispower of the proletariat; the lasting gain of all struggles consists in the factthat by the growth of intelligence and organization the firm foundation of thefuture supremacy of the proletariat is built up. The question of the conquest ofpolitical power brings us to the question when the social power of the workerswill be great enough to completely overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie.
Now herein lies the meaning of parliamentarism. Whoever considers theparticipation of the workers in the parliamentary struggle, in the sense of pureand simple parliamentarism, as the effort to win the supremacy by mere votes,must, as soon as he realizes its impossibility, swing to the opposite extreme.He must say to himself: What is the use of all the parliamentarism and all thevoting? Is not all this infinite labor, this effort entailing immensesacrifices, this immense amount of money for the elections, simply thrown awayif the bourgeoisie, when we are near our goal, can simply nullify every resultby a decree of parliament, by a modification of the suffrage law? Hence is itnot simply an immense error for the Socialist parties everywhere to regard theparliamentary-political struggle as the main part of its work? The statementsmade above answer these questions. If universal suffrage is abolished and theSocialist deputies vanish from parliament, the result of the earlier work is notlost thereby. The real result is theSocialist thought of the popularmasses, and that does not disappear. The basis of our strength, the realpower of the proletariat is not affected, but must now exert its activity in newways, according to new methods. In the electoral struggle — this thespokesmen of the German Social-Democracy have always emphasized — theelectoral seats are only the apparent goal; the main purpose is to gain as manyadherents as possible, to spread Socialist teachings further among the masses,at the moment when political interest is the greatest; the activity of therepresentatives in parliament is only a means to the same end, to enlighten themasses more and more through the practice of the daily political struggle.
The value of parliamentarism does not lie in the fact that it is a means ofwinning political power peaceably and without further revolutionary struggles,but in the fact that it has proved itself to be themost advantageous meansfor developing and increasing the power of the proletariat. That is thereal lesson which the German example teaches us; the German workers were thefirst to show the world how universal suffrage and the parliamentary struggle— when rightly conducted, hence not like the British Labor party, forinstance — can serve to make the working class great and strong. If to-daythe German working class movement is the foremost in the world, this is chieflydue to its excellent fighting methods.
In the parliamentary struggle the classes appear in their real nature. Notonly the industrial employer with whom the unions are struggling, but all thegroups of the bourgeoisie — high finance, the colonial capitalists, theagrarians, the merchants — are represented and form a bourgeois totalitywhich rules the state. There not only the question of wages, but, the entiresystem of exploitation with all its ramifications, social legislation,militarism, taxes, the whole public life, are upon the regular order ofbusiness. The representatives of the workers fight there over each individualquestion with the representatives of the bourgeoisie; for the interests of theworkers are opposed to those of the bourgeoisie in all respects — taxes,factory regulation, housing, schooling, colonial policy, militarism,administration of justice. Hence the activity of the parliamentarians does notconsist in making speeches on the future society, but in ceaseless struggle overpractical questions of the moment, and their Socialism consists inbringing each question into its proper relationship to the entire capitalistsystem and to the entire Socialist conception of life. For that reason theeffect of their activity is in the highest degree enlightening to the widestcircles; their criticism of the capitalist parties opens the workers' eyes;wherever the parliamentary discussions are followed, political insight isincreased, men realize better and better the nature of capitalism, and interestin Socialism is awakened. This parliamentary activity, to which the electoralbattle is added each time as a conclusion and a commencement, is more effectivethan the ordinary propaganda — which none the less is necessary —first, because it is exercised in a place where everyone in the whole countrysees it and hears it, and secondly, because it is a practical and stubbornstruggle for interests of the moment and hence makes a stronger claim upon men'sminds.
Naturally the parliamentary struggle only has that effect when it is properlyconducted, as a class struggle of the workers and for the politicalenlightenment of the masses. Where the parliamentarians look upon themselves aslittle gods who by means of their higher "political capacity" forge victoriesfor the workers, and make deals with the other parties behind the scenes orbecome quite openly the tail of a bourgeois party — there the effect ofparliamentarism is just the reverse, it is injurious. There it arouses in theworkers illusions as to their enemy, the bourgeois classes; it destroys theirself-confidence, their consciousness that they can be emancipated only throughtheir own strength, it brings disillusionment and discouragement, and creates ananti-parliamentary tendency in those very workers whose feelings arerevolutionary. However, it is not parliamentarism itself, but the falseopportunistic tactics which are to blame for the harm; hence a struggle forcorrect parliamentary tactics, radical, Marxian tactics, which consist chieflyin the criticism of such parliamentarians, is entirely necessary in the interestof the party.
Hence if the real revolutionary significance of parliamentarism consists inthe fact that it constantly increases the power of the proletariat —namely, its class-consciousness, its knowledge, its unity — and hencecreates the conditions prerequisite to the revolution, it follows that otherfighting methods may possess the same revolutionary significance. Hence therelation between the Socialist party and the labor unions is quite other than isassumed by pure and simple parliamentarism.The labor union has just asgreat a revolutionary significance as the political party, for itcontributes just as much to the social power of the proletariat. The laborunions unite the proletariat in great organizations, in which the commonstruggle against the employer takes the place of individual competition forjobs. Alone the worker is absolutely helpless; only as a collectivity, as agreat organization the members of which act unitedly in the common interest, canhe improve his working conditions. The practice of wage struggles shows thatsuccess is great in proportion as discipline and solidarity are great, aspersonal egoism is repressed in the interest of the whole, and as the latterdetermines the actions of each. Therefore the labor union movement isthegreat school of organization and discipline; it uproots narrow egoism,which believes in its ability to rise at the expense of fellow-men, and teachesthe workers through ever new experiences that the individual can rise onlytogether with his fellows, only as a member of a collectivity, and hence thateach has only to further the interests of the collectivity. Naturally that onlyholds true where the labor union is actually fighting against the capitalists,and not where, as in the old conservative trade unionism, peaceable agreementsare the goal, and harmony between capital and labor is the guiding rule of anarrow trade egoism. But where they regard their activity as a struggle, as apart of the great class struggle of labor against capital, they constantlyincrease the most important element of proletarian power; they are building thefoundation of our future victory by making new men out of the workers, whothrough their rigid discipline, their strong organization spirit are capable ofoverthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie.
Syndicalism derives its vital force from this fact, that the unions havegreat revolutionary value for the overthrow of the political supremacy of thecapitalists. It derides pure and simple parliamentarism, which believes itselfcapable of effecting the social revolution by means of the ballot. Such aviolent change, the greatest revolution which the world has ever seen, whichwill reach to the root of all conditions, is simply to consist in this, that ona certain day men cast certain ballots in a box! Merely this easy, safe motionof the hand, and by the magic power of the ballot — because then theelected representatives will simply abolish capitalism by law — the wholeweight of slavery and exploitation falls from the shoulders of the workers! Butevery man can understand that the yoke which has burdened humanity for thousandsof years cannot be so easily and painlessly cast off; a very different effortwill be necessary for that. In order that the workers may emancipate themselvesthey must first become entirely new men, capable of conquering in hard-foughtbattles, in which they stake their very existence. Such men are only produced bythe militant practice of the labor unions. Hence the activity of the laborunions is a sort of revolutionary gymnastics, the exercise of power andcapabilities which are necessary to the revolution. While according to pure andsimple parliamentarism the workers have merely to vote at elections and need donothing else, since everything, the real struggle against the other parties andagainst the capitalists as well as the making of laws, will be cared for bytheir elected representatives, Syndicalism emphasizes the fact that the workersthemselves must act, that only the direct struggle against the capitalists, onlythe direct action of the workers themselves can make them strong and capable ofthe conquest of power.
The defect of Syndicalism consists in this that it regards the entireparliamentary action of the Socialist party as no more than pure and simpleparliamentarism. Hence it can only gain ground (and must necessarily gainground) where the practice of the Socialist party gives occasion for thismistake. Wherever reformism prevails in the party, a reformism that playspolitics in the same manner as the bourgeois parties, co-operates at times withthose parties, and regards parliamentary party strifes, successes and trickery,and not the enlightenment of the workers, as the highest aim — thereanti-parliamentary Syndicalism must come into being as a protest, in which isincorporated the natural class feeling, the instinctive hostility of theproletariat against the whole of bourgeois society. Hence it has chieflydeveloped in France as a reaction against the bloc policy and the "Socialist"Ministers, who have endeavored to restrict by government regulations the freeactivity of the labor unions. But it was unable to gain ground in Germany,because there everyone sees that the parliamentary policy of the party hasalways been a part of the class struggle of the proletariat.
When Syndicalism rejects parliamentary action, it renounces one of the mostimportant and necessary means for the building up of proletarian power. It iscertainly correct, and we so stated above, that to overthrow the supremacy ofcapital the working class requires a tremendous power of organization,revolutionary sentiment and rigid solidarity, which things can only be the fruitof prolonged labor union struggle. But still more is necessary. Because the ruleof capital is concentrated in the power of the state, in the politicalinstitutions, the workers must not merely regard these with hostile eyes, butmust also thoroughly understand their nature; if they are to conquer this strongcitadel of capitalism, they must know well the function of the state, theprofound and many-sided influence of politics upon society, the influence ofgeneral ideas upon the political actions of men. The bourgeoisie has in thestate immense intellectual and material means of power, with which the workersmust become familiar if they are to be able to attack them. Where knowledge andpolitical insight are lacking, the most convinced and staunchest revolutionarybecomes all too easily the victim of the shallowest political treachery. Only bycontinual participation in all political struggles, attentive following ofpolitical actions, political education of many decades, can there be developedin the workers a knowledge and a political maturity and confidence sufficient tothe conquest of power.
But this repudiation of the political struggle is not the worst defect ofSyndicalism. For it is conceivable that, side by side with the party but withoutapproval of its work, it might devote itself to its own task — theorganization of the workers into labor unions, while the party at the same timetook charge of the political struggle and political education; and then it wouldplay a useful part. But the case is far worse, for due to the very attitude ofSyndicalism toward parliamentarismit is incapable of building up theorganization of the masses. The reason is that by its rejection ofparliamentarism, it allots to the labor unions the task of political struggleagainst the state and thereby diverts them from their real duty.
When labor unions wish to engage in the political struggle and for thatpurpose, as in England, send representatives of their interests to parliament,they constitute themselves a political party. It depends upon conditions how farthis party develops into a Socialist party with revolutionary aims. ButSyndicalism will have none of such participation in politics on the part of thelabor unions. It regards the state, together with the government and parliament,merely as an organ of bourgeois rule, a means to oppress the workers, againstwhich the workers must direct their struggle from without, by means of theirorganizations. The labor unions, as the real working class organizations, are toconduct the revolutionary struggle against the power of the state, until suchtime as their ever-increasing strength enables them to overthrow it. The aim isindeed fine, but the trouble is that it will never be reached in that manner.For in this struggle the labor unions must neglect to a large extent their realduty, the struggle for immediate amelioration of living conditions, so that theygrow not at all or very little, and hence do not attain to the necessarypower.
The masses of the workers are not attracted by revolutionary watchwords andfar-reaching aims; they must first slowly learn their significance. At first theSocialist party consists of a nucleus of workers of especially revolutionarytendency, but it grows by attracting to itself increasing numbers of the masseswho become impressed with the fact that the party represents their interests inall questions of detail. And only after they have been won over by thispractical work for small improvements do they gradually learn to understand ourgreat revolutionary aims and to become enthusiastic over them. The same holdstrue of the labor unions. They only gather together the working masses bystruggling tirelessly for the improvement of working conditions and defendingagainst the employer the most immediate interests of the workers. Syndicalism,which believes it possible to attract them by revolutionary programs,presupposes in the workers an intelligence and an insight which can only be theresult of a prolonged participation in the class struggle; hence its watchwordsrepel rather than attract the undeveloped masses. For not only insight, butself-confidence and courage also, without which no revolutionary vigor ispossible, are an outgrowth of organization. The working masses, oppressed,powerless, and hence timid and fearful, will become bold and energetic only whenand because they feel behind them the power of a great organization, thesolidarity of an entire class, and then only does there awaken in the masses thebold feeling that they are capable of grappling with the whole mighty power ofthe bourgeois state.
The revolution will be prepared only by the small detail work of the present,which does not constantly have the word revolution upon its lips.It maysound paradoxical, yet it can be confidently asserted that a labor unionmovement which pursues revolutionary aims is in reality not revolutionary; onlya labor union movement which places before itself no revolutionary goal canreally be revolutionary; for only when it employs all its forces upon itsown task, the struggle for the improvement of working conditions, can it gatherthe working masses together into great organizations and thus contribute to therealization of the conditions necessary to the revolution. The best example ofthe latter is furnished by the German labor union movement which, because of itsvery restriction to the economic struggle against the employer, has grown in ascore of years into a mighty organized power which will be of the greatestimportance in the future revolutionary struggles in Germany.
Where syndicalistic tendencies showed themselves in the I. W. W., theirmembership groups opposing parliamentarism as "too little revolutionary" anddesiring to conduct the revolutionary struggle by means of the labor unions— there they necessarily became small debating clubs, which intoxicatedthemselves upon revolutionary catch-words, but were without any realsignificance for the revolutionary development. But the I. W. W. was reallyrevolutionary, that is to say, important to this development, wherever itentered the field as a militant labor union, led the masses of unskilledlaborers in the struggle against their exploiters, and hence awakened in theirhearts class-consciousness, solidarity, a sense of organization, self-confidenceand pride. Here lies its great revolutionary duty: it should organize the massesof these hitherto neglected workers. This is, naturally, not accomplished by thesudden uprising of a formerly immovable mass, as in the successful struggles atMcKees Rocks and at Lawrence. These form merely the beginning, the firstawakening, and they must of themselves lead to renewed and greater struggles.The capitalists will seek, gradually and by indirection, to take back that whichwas won; through their agents they will seek to divide the workers upon nationaland religious lines, to discourage and to depress them, and with partialsuccess. Then that which was won in the first onslaught must be held by stubbornfighting; then it will be found that the spirit of organization, which seemedsuddenly to spring into being with wonderful strength, can only be firmly weldedby long practice, in which the workers arm themselves in advance and fight as apermanent organization, and sometimes even suffer defeats, but ever renew thestruggle.
It appears clearly from our statements what position the Socialist partyshould assume, according to the Marxian theory, toward the labor unions. Evenwhere these labor unions will have nothing to do with Socialist teachings, itmust not oppose them as an enemy and seek to injure them. For they do not workin the direction of revolutionary development by conducting a Socialistpropaganda — if they conduct an anti-Socialist propaganda, this must beopposed and an effort made to hinder it, — but only by accomplishing welltheir own task, conducting the labor union struggle for better workingconditions. It is only when they neglect their own duty, when misled bybourgeois dreams of harmony, they avoid the struggle, so that the workers sufferconstant defeats due to false union tactics and are thrust down ever lower, itis only then that there can be good grounds for replacing the old unions bybetter organizations. This has always been the Socialist party's attitude towardthe American Federation of Labor; it does not originate in a weak opportunism,but in a clear perception of the independent importance of the labor unionmovement in building up the power of the proletariat. The craft solidarity ofconservative trade-unionism, which at the same time is craft egoism, is merelyan insufficient beginning of the necessary spirit of organization; but it shouldnot for that reason be destroyed by splits in the organization and by conflicts;on the contrary, it should be broadened into a general class solidarity.
In America the power of the proletariat is slight. Although the capitalisticeconomic life exhibits highly developed forms, the class-consciousness andorganization of the workers are still immature; bourgeois ideas andindividualism still have possession of their minds. But everything indicatesthat the immediate future will bring great advances: the increase in the numberof our votes in elections, the great mass struggles of the unskilled workers,the internal changes in the old labor unions, are all signs of this evolution.The great duty of the Socialist party is to urge forward this evolution byproper tactics. But that can only be accomplished by keeping itself free fromthe narrowness of pure and simple parliamentarism as well as from the narrownessof Syndicalism. Only by means of a revolutionary struggle on all fields, astruggle which upholds in the legislature as well as in the workshop, all theimmediate interests of the workers, and which at the same time is filled withthe spirit of Socialism, a class struggle upon the solid foundation of Marxianscience, can the power of the proletariat constantly increase and become capableof overthrowing the rule of capital.
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