Violence and the Labor Movement Part 14

In adopting, then, the methods of education, of organization, and of political action the socialists rest their case upon the decision of democracy. They accept the weapons that civilization has put into their hands, and they are testing the word of kings and of parliaments that democracy can, if it wishes, alter the bases of society. And in no small measure this is the secret of their immense strength and of their enormous growth. There is nothing strange in the fact that the socialists stand almost alone to-day faithful to democracy. It simply means that they believe in it even for themselves, that is to say, for the working cla.s.s. They believe in it for industry as well as for politics, and, if they are at war with the political despot, they are also at war with the industrial despot. Everyone is a socialist and a democrat within his circle. No capitalist objects to a group of capitalists cooperatively owning a great railroad. The fashionable clubs of both city and country are almost perfect examples of group socialism.

They are owned cooperatively and conducted for the benefit of all the members. Even some reformers are socialists in this measure--that they believe it would be well for the community to own public utilities, provided skilled, trained, honorable men, like themselves, are permitted to conduct them. Indeed, the only democracy or socialism that is seriously combated is that which embraces the most numerous and most useful cla.s.s in society, "the only cla.s.s that is not a cla.s.s";[10] the only cla.s.s so numerous that it "cannot effect its emanc.i.p.ation without delivering all society from its division into cla.s.ses."[11]

In any case, here it is, "the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority,"[12]

already with its eleven million voters and its fifty million souls. It has slowly, patiently, painfully toiled up to a height where it is beginning to see visions of victory. It has faith in itself and in its cause. It believes it has the power of deliverance for all society and for all humanity. It does not expect the powerful to have faith in it; but, as Jesus came out of despised Nazareth, so the new world is coming out of the mult.i.tude, amid the toil and sweat and anguish of the mills, mines, and factories of the world. It has endured much; suffered ages long of slavery and serfdom. From being mere animals of production, the workers have become the "hands" of production; and they are now reaching out to become the masters of production. And, while in other periods of the world their intolerable misery led them again and again to strike out in a kind of torrential anarchy that pulled down society itself, they have in our time, for the first time in the history of the world, patiently and persistently organized themselves into a world power.

Where shall we find in all history another instance of the organization in less than half a century of eleven million people into a compact force for the avowed purpose of peacefully and legally taking possession of the world? They have refused to hurry. They have declined all short cuts. They have spurned violence. The "bourgeois democrats," the terrorists, and the syndicalists, each in their time, have tried to point out a shorter, quicker path. The workers have refused to listen to them. On the other hand, they have declined the way of compromise, of fusions, and of alliances, that have also promised a quicker and a shorter road to power. With the most maddening patience they have declined to take any other path than their own--thus infuriating not only the terrorists in their own ranks but those Greeks from the other side who came to them bearing gifts. Nothing seems to disturb them or to block their path. They are offered reforms and concessions, which they take blandly, but without thanks. They simply move on and on, with the terrible, incessant, irresistible power of some eternal, natural force.

They have been fought; yet they have never lost a single great battle.

They have been flattered and cajoled, without ever once anywhere being appeased. They have been provoked, insulted, imprisoned, calumniated, and repressed. They are indifferent to it all. They simply move on and on--with the patience and the meekness of a people with the vision that they are soon to inherit the earth.

FOOTNOTES:

[AG] The vote for Belgium is estimated. The Liberals and the Socialists combined at the last election in opposition to the Clericals, and together polled over 1,200,000 votes. The British Socialist Year Book, 1913, estimates the total Socialist vote at about 600,000.

[AH] Above data taken from International News Letter of National Trade Union Centers, Berlin, May 30, 1913.

[AI] "The general strike," Engels said, "is in Bakounin's program the lever which must be applied in order to inaugurate the social revolution.... The proposition is far from being new; some French socialists, and, after them, some Belgian socialists have since 1848 shown a partiality for riding this beast of parade." This appeared in a series of articles written for _Der Volksstaat_ in 1873 and republished in the pamphlet "_Bakunisten an der Arbeit_."

AUTHORITIES

CHAPTER I

[1] Macaulay, Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays: The Earl of Chatham, p. 3.

[2] Bakounin, _OEuvres_, Vol. III, p. 21. (P. V, Stock, Paris, 1912-1913.)

[3] _Idem_, Vol. II, p. xiv.

[4] _Idem_, Vol. II, p. xlvii.

[5] _L'Alliance de la Democratie Socialiste et l'a.s.sociation Internationale des Travailleurs_, p. 121. (Secret Statutes of the Alliance.) A. Darson, London, and Otto Meissner, Hamburg, 1873.

[6] _Idem_, p. 125. (Secret Statutes of the Alliance.)

[7] _Idem_, p. 128. (Secret Statutes of the Alliance.)

[8] _Idem_, p. 11. (The Secret Alliance.)

[9] _Idem_, p. 129. (Secret Statutes of the Alliance.)

[10] Bakounin, _op. cit._, Vol. II, p. viii.

[11] _L'Alliance_, etc., p. 95.

[12] Bakounin, _op. cit._, Vol. II, p. viii.

[13] _Idem_, Vol. II, p. xxiii.

[14] Quoted in _L'Alliance_, etc., p. 112.

[15] _Idem_, p. 117.

[16] _L'Alliance_, etc., p. 129. (Secret Statutes of the Alliance.)

[17] _Idem_, pp. 128-129. (Secret Statutes of the Alliance.)

[18] _Idem_, p. 132. (Secret Statutes of the Alliance.)

[19] _Cf._ Guillaume, _L'Internationale; doc.u.ments et souvenirs_ (1864-1878). Vol. I, p. 131. (edouard Cornely et Cie., Paris, 1905-1910.)

[20] _Cf. Idem_, Vol. I, pp. 132-133, for entire program.

[21] Bakounin, _op. cit._, Vol. V, p. 53.

[22] _L'Alliance_, etc., pp. 64-65.

[23] _Idem_, p. 65 (quotations from The Principles of the Revolution).

[24] _Idem_, p. 66 (The Principles of the Revolution).

[25] _Idem_, p. 68 (The Principles of the Revolution).

[26] _Idem_, pp. 90-92.

[27] _Idem_, pp. 93-94.

[28] _Idem_, pp. 94-95.

[29] _Idem_, p. 95.

[30] Guillaume, _op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 60.

[31] _Idem_, Vol. II, pp. 61-63.

[32] _Idem_, Vol. III, p. 312.

CHAPTER II

[1] Guillaume, _op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 90.

[2] Lefrancais, _Memoires d'un revolutionnaire_, p. 348 (Paris).

[3] Guillaume, _op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 92 (Oscar Testut).

[4] _Idem_, Vol. II, p. 92.