The Wage-Slave certainly believes in Political Action and we think our readers will bear us out in the statement that we are not at all derelict in doing our best to increase the Socialist vote.
Especially is this in order during a Presidential campaign year. By all means let us do all in our power to roll up the Socialist vote.
But having said all this, and it should be said, we deem it also highly necessary to point out the Limitations of Political Action. So many comrades carry the idea that Political Action is all that is necessary. They seem to think that when once a majority of the people vote for Socialism it will be already here. There can be no greater delusion and they who indulge in it are doomed to a sad disappointment.
To begin with, the ballot-box never enforces itself. The only reason why a minority submit to the decisions of the ballot-box is either that they recognize the issues involved not worth fighting about or that it is tacitly agreed that the voting power of an interest is about equal to its fighting power.
But the issues which Socialism raises are certainly worth fighting for, especially from the capitalist view-point moreover, the question of fighting power in these days of machine guns, is far from being a simple question of number and the capitalists know this.
Nothing more foolish can be imagined than to supposed that when we get a few more pieces of paper in a box than they have, the capitalist class will through up their hands and walk quietly away.
History knows of no instance where a ruling class have surrendered their privileges without making the most desperate efforts to retain them. Did the Southern slaveholders throw up their hands and walk quietly away when Lincoln was elected to the Presidency even with an overwhelming majority?
No. the ballot never enforces itself. What means have we at hand for enforcing the decisions of the Socialist ballot when we get a majority?
Industrial Unionism is the word. Let the workers meanwhile be organized into great Industrial Unions after the model of the I.W.W., prepared to seize and hold the Industries on the advent of Socialist political victory. Otherwise Socialist political victory will either fizzle out in Opportunism or the attempt to carry out a Revolutionary program will precipitate a bloody rebellion.
That isn’t all. Political institutions are not adapted to the administration of Industry. They have been called into being for a totally different purpose, namely the exploitation of the working class, a function which they perfectly subserve. Every Government on earth today, whether sitting at Hancock, Lansing, Washington, or anywhere else is simply a debt-making and a debt-collection agency of the capitalist class. Just that, and nothing more in the world.
Fancy trying to adapt any of these Institutions to working-class purposes! Fancy an assembly of politicians, Editors for example, trying to fix the rates of exchange and to decide how much of a workingman’s labor entered into the production of a given commodity!
No, the Political State can not be reformed, and more than the church can be reformed. It must be destroyed. And in its place there must arise the Co-Operative Commonwealth based upon Industrial Unionism. Instead of geographical units, known as Congressional Districts the basis of representation must be Industrial Departments.
All the peculiar Institutions of our oppressors-the Senate-the Supreme Court-the Presidency-Representative Government, must entirely be done away before the working-class are even measurably free.
In their place must come Industrial Administration the Initiative and Referendum and Direct Legislation-if any.
The main purpose, then, of Political Action is destructive rather than constructive. The proper function of Political Socialism is not to transform the State but to capture it that we may do away with it, and substitute in its place an Industrial Administration based upon Industrial Unionism.