Revolutionary socialism

“ Revolutionary Socialism adheres to the class struggle because through the class struggle alone — the mass struggle — can the industrial proletariat secure immediate concessions and finally conquer power by organizing the industrial government of the working class. ”

“ Having established a dictatorship of the proletariat, revolutionary Socialism will then proceed to act upon the problems of war and peace according to its own policy and the facts of the prevailing situation. ”

“ Revolutionary socialism is a world movement towards the deliverance of the producing slave from the non-producing master who has robbed him of the fruits of his toil and left him half dead on the wayside [Pg 31] —the only effective movement to this humanitarian end.
Revolutionary socialism is the Good Samaritan of the despoiled and wounded laborer. The reformatory kinds of socialism are so many priests and Levites who pass by on the other side. ”

“ It is necessary to vanquish power, by not demanding anything of it; to prove the parasitism of capital, by supplying it with credit; to establish the liberty of individuals by organizing the initiative of the masses.
It is necessary, in a word, that there must be a deuteration of the revolutionary idea, a new manifestation of socialism.
God forbid that I wish to augment my role! I recount my dreams. I know how little the thought of one man weighs in the resolutions of society; I myself am a living proof of the slowness with which the idea penetrates the masses. ”

“ Here is a proletarian horde deprived of participation in government in a constitutional monarchy, struggling toward political recognition. It is armed with all the weapons of militant Socialism: a revolutionary tradition; a national history rich in mob violence, street brawls, and conflicts with police and soldiers; possessed of a well-organized party, a class solidarity, and capable and courageous leaders who are willing to go, and do go, to the extreme of the general strike and violence in order to achieve their goal. ”

“ Revolutionary socialism, growing more opportunist of late years, seems losing much of its old phrenzy, and getting domesticated into a shifty State socialism, fighting a parliamentary battle for minor, though still probably mischievous, changes within the lines of existing society, instead of the old war à l'outrance against existing society in whatever shape or form. ”

“ Is the time of social revolution past or not? Have we already the political conditions which can bring about a transition from capitalism to socialism without political revolution, without the conquest of political power by the proletariat, or must we still expect an epoch of decisive struggles for the possession of this power and therewith a revolutionary epoch? ”

“ A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. ”

“ Will the capitalist reformers in control of national governments allow the Socialist "reformists" to play the leading part in their own chosen field of effort? If people tend to be satisfied with reform, what difference does it make as to the ultimate political or social ideals of those who bring it about? If the steps taken by reformers and "reformists" are the same, by what alchemy can the latter transform them into parts of a revolutionary program? ”

“ IN its early days, socialism was a revolutionary movement of which the object was the liberation of the wage-earning classes and the establishment of freedom and justice. The passage from capitalism to the new régime was to be sudden and violent: capitalists were to be expropriated without compensation, and their power was not to be replaced by any new authority. ”

“ Simultaneously with this coming to the front of the Industrial Union and its tactics, we see the old-time political socialist movement losing its tone. Under the tutelage of middle class and professional "intellectuals," for the most part without first-hand knowledge of the class struggle, the political movement is becoming more and more "opportunistic"; pinning its faith more and more to reforms, such as "labor legislation," "government ownership," "co-operatives," "taxation reforms," and other ineffectual schemes of "attacking capitalist society behind its back." ”

“ What was there in my speech, under these new formulas of gratuitous and reciprocal credit, the suppression of interest, the continual increase of well-being by the progressive reduction of wages and income, social liquidation, etc., etc.? There was this: without a capitalist aristocracy, no more authority; and without authority, no more government. Labor emancipated from the suzerainty of capital, the people cannot wait for the initiative of the government: all these proposals are homologous and solidary. Socialism, as I profess it, is the reverse of the socialism of Louis Blanc. ”

“ The Manifesto begins by describing the revolutionary situation into which the course of industrial development has brought modern society. Classes were dying out; the yeomanry, the nobility, the small tradesmen, would soon be no more; and society was drawn up in two widely separated hostile camps, the large capitalist class or bourgeoisie, who had all the property and power in the country, and the labouring class, the proletariat, who had nothing of either. The bourgeoisie had played a most revolutionary part in history. ”

“ It would be fatal, trusting in the one word revolution, to neglect the great forces which the conscious, organized proletariat can employ within democracy.
These legal means, often won by revolution, represent an accumulation of revolutionary force, a revolutionary capital, of which it would be madness not to take advantage.
Too often the workers neglect to profit by the means of action which democracy and the Republic put into their hands. They do not demand from trade-unionist action, co-operative action, or universal suffrage, all that those forms of action can give. ”

“ The so-called Marxian school calls itself revolutionary, and undoubtedly many members of this school are revolutionary, and have the idea that Socialism will come by revolution—by violence—while among the more thoughtful, this word is used to mean that Socialism will constitute revolution because it will transfer power from the exploiting class to the exploited class. [153] Others have confused ideas of the meaning of the word revolution in which the element of violence and that of the transfer of political power are more or less mixed. ”

“ They could understand nothing of this socialism which condemned strikes and political action and which assumed to harmonize the interests of capital and labor, of the exploiter and exploited. They kept aloof from the socialists and gave all their sympathies to the bourgeois republicans, because they were revolutionary. ”

“ From the older socialism, which endeavoured to reach its end in a peaceful way within the existing lines of civil order, a later social democracy is to be distinguished by its decidedly politico-revolutionary character and tendency to attach itself more to communism. This modern socialism thinks to open the way to the realization of its hare-brained ideas by the confusion and overthrow of existing law and order. ”

“ With this demand as the only immediate and ultimate aim to struggle for, with the social revolution as the objective before it, the Socialist movement can not fail to be a truly revolutionary movement, and must by necessity formulate tactics just as revolutionary as the aim that gave birth to them. ”

“ But when that day comes, there will be no difficulty, in highly industrial countries, in securing Socialist majorities; if Socialism is not then carried without bloodshed, it will be due to the unconstitutional action of the rich, not to the need of revolutionary violence on the part of the advocates of the proletariat. Whether such a state of opinion grows up or not depends mainly upon the stubbornness or conciliatoriness of the possessing classes, and, conversely, upon the moderation or violence of those who desire fundamental economic change. ”

“ This indetermination grows still greater if the proletariat are converted to the ideas of social peace at the same time as their masters, or even if they simply consider everything from the corporative point of view; while Socialism gives to every economic contest a general and revolutionary colour. ”

“ At all events, if the Revolution did not know exactly what the secondary and indirect consequences of the economic and social régime that it inaugurated would be, if it did not have a clear understanding either of capitalism, with its combinations, its daring devices and its industrial crises, or of the antagonistic development of the proletariat, it did at all events know what régime it wanted to inaugurate. ”

“ Here, therefore, we see the elements which confuse this question of revolution and reform. The Marxian Socialists in Germany have seen Socialistic legislation enacted year after year and have seen it, by diminishing evils, tend to diminish enthusiasm for revolution. Moreover, revolutionary German Socialists, conscious that they have to destroy the existing political machinery represented by the Emperor, the nobles and the church ”

“ Therefore, when socialists speak of socialism as revolutionary, they mean by this to describe the programme to be realized and the final goal to be attained and not—as M. Garofalo, in spite of the dictionary, continues to believe—the method or the tactics to be employed in achieving this goal, the social revolution. ”

“ The revolutionary majority believes that the best that can be done at present is for the workers to train and organize themselves, and always to devise and study and prepare the means by which capitalism can be most successfully and economically assaulted when sufficient numbers are once aroused for successful revolt. ”

“ So that the proletarian revolution cannot, as Marx and Blanqui thought, take shelter behind bourgeois revolutions; it can no longer seize and twist to its advantage the revolutionary agitations of the middle class, because these agitations are over and done with. On open ground, on the large field of democratic legality and universal suffrage, the Socialist proletariat is now preparing, enlarging, and organising its revolution. ”

“ Not only the "state aid" but the very revolutionary struggle for the seizure of power in the capitalist countries renders the consolidation of the proletarian dictatorship possible and the development of socialism in the existing Soviet Republics. ”

“ Socialists often say that "Socialism must come by revolution and not by reform." What is exactly the meaning of this sentence? What is the difference between reform and revolution?
Reformers proceed upon the assumption that the competitive system is good and that capitalists can be entrusted with the task of reforming it so to eliminate its admitted evils. The revolutionary Socialist on the contrary says that the competitive system is bad and that the capitalist cannot be entrusted with the task of putting an end to it. ”

“ A revolutionary conflict was anticipated, to be fought out by economic means, but only as part of a political crisis—in which the majority of the people would be on the side of the Socialists and the labor unions. ”

“ Here, then, are the two conditions under which it is thought by Roland-Holst and the majority of Socialists that the general strike may some day prove the chief means of bringing about a revolution: the active support of the majority of the people, and the superior organization and methods and the revolutionary purpose of the working classes. ”

“ There then is the explanation of the easy enigma, presented by the fact that socialism, though revolutionary in its programme, follows the laws of evolution in its method of realization, and that is the secret of its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentially different from that mystical and violent anarchism, which class prejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism [Pg 211] assert is nothing but a consequence of socialism, while in fact it is the practical negation of socialism. ”

“ I shall endeavor to show you that no one of the eleven possesses the genius to grasp the proletarian standpoint of the question, and that their "practical socialism" amounts to a travesty even upon capitalist politics and is, therefore, the wildest of utopian dreams. ”

“ The old revolutionary policy of stirring up hatred against all existing institutions is thus relegated from the present to the distant future, after the present class-State is overthrown and the working-class or socialist State established in its place. ”

“ There is no middle ground: universal suffrage, henceforth indestructible, is a contradiction to the subordination of labor to capital. According to the mutualist principle of revolution by the co-operation and solidarity of the citizens, you have, under an ineluctable democracy, no other alternative than this: the taxation of the proletariat or the murder of the poor; the partition of income, or jacquerie. ”

“ We have seen that the only form of socialism which has come to life again since 1848 is the political and revolutionary phase of Social Democracy. Now, this was also the original form in which socialism first appeared in modern Europe at the time of the earlier Revolution of 1789. ”

“ The Utopian period of Socialism may be said to end, and the revolutionary era to begin, with the year 1830. The French Revolution was a bourgeois uprising. But behind it was the grim and resolute background of the proletarian mass. When the Third Estate achieved its victory, it proceeded to monopolize the governmental powers to the exclusion of its lowly allies. From 1830 to 1850 the ferment of democratic discontent spread over Europe and forced the demands of the workingman into the foreground. ”