And let it be said to their credit that never once anywhere have the socialists despaired of democracy. "Socialism and democracy ... belong to each other, round out each other, and can never stand in contradiction to each other. Socialism without democracy is pseudo-socialism, just as democracy without socialism is pseudo-democracy. The democratic state is the only possible form of a socialised society." [(9)] The inseparableness of democracy and socialism has served the organized movement as an unerring guide at every moment of its struggle for existence and of its fight against the ruling powers. It has served to keep its soul free from that cynical distrust of the people which is evident in the writings of the anarchists and of the syndicalists—in Bakounin, Nechayeff, Sorel, Berth, and Pouget. It has also served to keep it from those emotional reactions which have led nearly every great leader of the direct-actionists in the last century to become in the end an apostate. Feargus O'Connor, Joseph Rayner Stephens, the fierce leaders of Chartism; Bakounin, Blanc, Richard, Jaclard, Andrieux, Bastelica, the flaming revolutionists of the Alliance; Briand, Sorel, Berth, the leading propagandists and philosophers of modern syndicalism; every one of them turned in despair from the movement. Cobden, Bonaparte, Clémenceau, the Empire, the "new monarchy," or a comfortable berth, claimed in the end every one of these impatient middle-class intellectuals, who never had any real understanding of the actual labor movement. And, if the union of democracy and socialism has saved the movement from reactions such as these, it has also saved it from the desperation that gives birth to individual methods, such as the Propaganda of the Deed and sabotage. That is what the inseparableness of democracy and socialism has done for the movement in the past; and it has in it an even greater service yet to perform. It has the power of salvation for society itself in the not remote future, when it will be face to face, throughout the world, with an irresistible current toward State socialism. Industrial democracy and political democracy are indissolubly united; their union cannot be sundered except at the cost of destruction to them both.
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 class. 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 coöperatively owning a great railroad. The fashionable clubs of both city and country are almost perfect examples of group socialism. They are owned coöperatively 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 class in society, "the only class that is not a class"; [(10)] the only class so numerous that it "cannot effect its emancipation without delivering all society from its division into classes." [(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 multitude, 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."
