"There is 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 power of government so as to make the work of the army ineffective.... 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 isn't any one, Socialist, S.L.P., Industrial Worker, or any other working man or woman, no matter what society you belong to, but what believes in the ballot. There are those—and 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 have 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."
In the recent pamphlet, "Industrial Socialism," Mr. Haywood and Mr. Frank Bonn develop the new unionism at greater length. Their conclusions as to politics are directed, not against the Socialist Party, but against its non-revolutionary elements:—
"The Socialist Party stands not merely for the Political supremacy of labor. It stands for the Industrial supremacy of labor. Its purpose is not to secure old age pensions and free meals for school children. Its mission is to help overthrow capitalism and establish Socialism.
"The great purpose of the Socialist Party is to seize the powers of government and thus prevent them from being used by the capitalists against the workers. With Socialists in political offices the workers can strike and not be shot. They can picket shops and not be arrested and imprisoned.... To win the demands made on the industrial field it is absolutely necessary to control the government, as experience shows strikes to have been lost through the interference of courts and militia. The same functions of government, controlled by a class conscious working class, will be used to inspire confidence and compel the wheels of industry to move in spite of the devices and stumblingblocks of the capitalists....
"Socialist government will concern itself entirely with the shop. Socialism can demand nothing of the individual outside the shop.... It has no concern with the numberless social reforms which the capitalists are now preaching in order to save their miserable profit system.
"Old age pensions are not Socialism. The workers had much better fight for higher wages and shorter hours. Old age pensions under the present government are either charity doled out to paupers, or bribes given to voters by politicians. Self-respecting workers despise such means of support. Free meals or cent meals for poverty-stricken school children are not Socialism. Industrial freedom will enable parents to give their children solid food at home. Free food to the workers cuts wages and kills the fighting spirit."
The American "syndicalists" are not opposed to political action, but they want to use it exclusively for the purposes of industrial democracy.
While Messrs. Haywood and Bohn by no means take an anarchistic position, they show no enthusiasm for the capitalist-collectivist proposals that present governments should take control of industry. They are not hostile to all government, but they think that democracy applied directly to industry would be all the government required:—
"In the shop there must be government. In the school there must be government. In the conduct of the great public services there must be government. We have shown that Socialism will make government democratic throughout. The basis of this freedom will be the freedom of the individual to develop his powers. People will be educated in freedom. They will work in freedom. They will live in freedom....
"Socialism will establish democracy in the shop. Democracy in the shop will free the working class. The working class, through securing freedom for itself, will liberate the race."
Even the American "syndicalists," however, attach more importance to economic than to political action. Hitherto revolutionary Socialists have agreed that the only constructive work possible under capitalism was that of education and organization. The "syndicalists" also agree that nothing peculiarly socialistic can be done to-day by political action, but they are reformists as to the immediate possibilities of economic action. Here they believe revolutionary principles can be applied even under capitalism. Even the conservative and purely businesslike effort to secure a little more wages by organized action, they believe, can be converted here and now into a class struggle of working class vs. capitalists. What is needed is only organization of all the unions and a revolutionary policy. With the possibilities of a revolutionary union policy when capitalism has largely exhausted its program of political reforms and economic betterment and when Socialism has become the political Opposition, I deal in following chapters. But syndicalists, even in America, say revolutionary tactics can be applied now—Mr. Haywood, for instance, feels that the only thing necessary for a successful revolutionary and Socialistic general strike in France or America to-day, is sufficient economic organization.
Mr. Debs admits the need of revolutionary tactics as well as revolutionary principles and even says: "We could better succeed with reactionary principles and revolutionary tactics than with revolutionary principles and reactionary tactics." He admits also that Socialists and revolutionary unionists are inspired with an entirely new attitude towards society and government and indorses as entirely sound certain expressions from Haywood and Bohn's pamphlet which had been violently attacked by reformist Socialists and conservative unionists. Mr. Debs agrees with the former writers in their definition of the attitude of the Socialist revolutionist's attitude towards property: "He retains absolutely no respect for the property 'rights' of the profit takers. He will use any weapon which will win his fight. He knows that the present laws of property are made by and for the capitalists. Therefore he does not hesitate to break them." But he does not agree that this new spirit offers any positive contribution to Socialist tactics at the present time. Just as Hervé has recently admitted that the superior political and economic organization of the Germans were more important than all the "sabotage" (violence) and "direct action" of the French though he still favors the latter policies, so the foremost American revolutionary opposes "direct action" and "sabotage" altogether under present conditions. Both deny that revolutionary economic action under capitalism is any more promising than revolutionary political action. Even Hervé defends his more or less friendly attitude to "direct action" wholly on the ground that it is good practice for revolution, not on Lagardelle's syndicalist ground that it means the beginning of revolution itself (see below).
By much of their language Haywood and several industrial unionists of this country would seem to class themselves rather with Lagardelle and Labriola (see below) than with Hervé, Debs, and Mann. Haywood, for example, has said that no Socialist can be a law-abiding citizen. Haywood's very effective and law-abiding leadership in strikes at Lawrence (1912) and elsewhere would suggest that he meant that Socialists cannot be law-abiding by principle and under all circumstances. But this statement as it was made, together with many others, justifies the above classification. Debs, on the contrary, claims that the American workers are law-abiding and must remain so, on the whole, until the time of the revolution approaches. "As a revolutionist," he writes, "I can have no respect for capitalist property laws, nor the least scruple about violating them," but Debs does not believe there can be any occasion to put this principle into effect until the workers have been politically and economically organized and educated, and then only if they are opposed by violence (see the International Socialist Review, February, 1912).