It may be [he continues] that DeLeon has designs upon the Socialist party and expects to use the I. W. W. as a means of disrupting it in the interest of the Socialist Labor party, and if he succeeds it will be because his enemies in the Socialist party, in their bitter personal hostility to him, are led to oppose ... the revolutionary I. W. W. and support the reactionary A. F. of L....[467]
DeLeon's name was synonymous with revolutionary socialism—that socialism which rejects compromise, recognizes the social value of reform but refuses to deal in reform, and considers revolutionary industrial unionism as the indispensable basis of socialist political action and the revolutionary movement as a whole. DeLeon saw clearly the impending menace of State Socialism, particularly within the Socialist movement: and his whole program was an answer to that menace.... Nearly every American expression of revolutionary theory and action bears the impress of his personality and activity; and revolutionary unionism hails him as its philosopher and foremost American pioneer.[468] ... DeLeon's espousal of Industrial Unionism and the I. W. W. and his development of an industrial philosophy of action, constitute his crowning contribution to American socialism.[469]
DeLeon's personal character and intellectual leanings were curiously reflected in the party to which he so unselfishly gave the best years of his life. The Socialist Labor party is doctrinaire, unyielding, Jesuitical as was its leader. It has always seemed to be suspended after a fashion in an atmosphere charged with a kind of a pedantic essence of the Marxian dialectic. It is so impressed with the importance of its own "mutterings in the Marxian law," that when, for example, one of Fellow Worker Walsh's "blanket stiffs" asks what the western lumberjack is to do when he is "fleeced" for a three-day job, the party, metaphorically speaking, simply loses its temper and rails at him and all the rest of the "Overalls Brigade." The Socialist Labor party has been pretty accurately summed up by Fraina:
The S. L. P. ignored the psychology of struggling workers [he says]. Its propaganda was couched in abstract formulas; just as its sectarian spirit developed a sort of subconscious idea that revolutionary activity consisted in enunciating formulas. This sectarian spirit produced dogmas, intemperate assertions, and a general tendency toward caricature ideas and caricature action; and discouraged men of ability from joining the S. L. P.[470]
Since the first edition of this book was published some references to DeLeon have appeared in the dispatches from Russia. Robert Minor, in an interview with Nikolai Lenin, quotes him as declaring that "the American Daniel DeLeon, first formulated the idea of a soviet government, which grew up in Russia on his, DeLeon's idea." In the same interview Lenin is further quoted as saying: "Future society will be organized along soviet lines. There will be soviet [occupational] rather than geographical boundaries for nations. Industrial unionism is the basic state...."[471]
Additional light on the relation between Bolshevism and I.W.W-ism as conceived by Lenin appears from the following account given by Arthur Ransome:
Lenin said he had read in an English socialist paper a comparison of his own theories with those of ... DeLeon. He
had then borrowed some of DeLeon's pamphlets from Reinstein (who belongs to the [Socialist Labor] party which DeLeon founded in America), read them for the first time, and was amazed to see how far and how early DeLeon had pursued the same train of thought as the Russians. His theory that representation should be by industries, not by areas, was already the germ of the soviet system.... Some days afterwards I noticed that Lenin had introduced a few phrases of DeLeon's ... into the draft for the new program of the Communist [Bolshevik] party.[472]