Socialist revolution

“ In the same way and in this case even more certainly, the Socialist Revolution will not be accomplished by the action—the sudden surprise stroke—of a bold minority, but by the definite and harmonious will of the immense majority of the citizens. Whoever depends on a fortunate turn of events or the chances and hazards of physical force to bring about the Revolution, and resigns the method of winning over the immense majority of the citizens to our ideas, will resign at the same time any possibility of transforming the social order. ”

“ As with all institutions in class society, the class that holds state power determines the nature of that institution. We want to lead workers and their allies in overthrowing the bourgeois state that controls, exploits, and takes our people's lives, and we say so openly. We want socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to destroy and bury imperialism. —True revolution in America is concerned with running this country and having programs to turn over the wealth and resources of the U.S. to the creative energies of the masses of the people. ”

“ The nearness of such Capitalism to Socialism should be, in the mouth of real representatives of the proletariat, an argument for the nearness, ease, feasibility and urgency of the Socialist Revolution, and not at all one for tolerating a repudiation of such a revolution, or the attempts to make Capitalism look attractive, in which the Reformists are habitually engaged. ”

“ The special condition of the rise of revolution out of the imperialist war, the peculiar combination of forces within the country, the existence of a certain material basis serving as a starting point for the movement, all these taken together create the ground for a systematic advance along the lines of Socialist revolution. ”

“ The question they usually asked was, whether and to what extent the revolution was socialistic, whether it was a working-class revolution, a peasant revolution, or a bourgeois revolution; and they wished to estimate the value of the revolution from the socialist outlook, to ascertain whether and to what extent it had advantaged or injured particular classes and above all the working class, whether and to what extent the revolution had favoured or hindered the attainment of the socialist goal. ”

“ But after the desperate and prolonged war all over the world, we plainly see the beginning of a Socialist revolution all over the world. This necessity has been created even in the most backward countries, independently of theoretical considerations and Socialist doctrines—a necessity which tells us all, in a voice of authority, that we cannot go on living in the old way. ”

“ The Organization is a revolutionary vanguard, and as such we believe that the whole world must be freed. —The socialist revolution must have the specific content of serving the needs and interests of the oppressed people of the whole world. —We are one with all liberation struggles, we are one with all revolutionary movements, on the moon if necessary. —Socialism continues to spread across the face of the earth. ”

“ The proletarian party cannot expect to introduce at a stroke Socialism into a land of small farmers as long as the down-trodden majority of the population does not realize the necessity of a Socialist revolution. ”

“ In short, from 1889 onward, the chief efforts of the British Socialist Movement have been directed, not to bringing about any sudden, complete, or simultaneous revolution, but to impregnating all the existing forces of society with Collectivist ideals and Collectivist principles. ”

“ They are foreign in their essence to Marxism and, as a matter of fact, they serve but to put off the Socialist Revolution "until human nature is different." No, we want the Socialist Revolution with human nature as it is now; human nature itself cannot do without subordination, without control, without managers and clerks. ”

“ Ever in France, for a century since, bourgeoisie revolutions have had at their head a Socialist glimmer. The bourgeoisie alone was prepared economically to reap the benefit of the Revolution. But the proletariat concentrated in the great towns played, in the period of combat, a decisive part. ”

“ And in all classes of the community, just as before the French Revolution, people feast and dance whilst others live on the border-line of starvation.
But let us see how far the Socialist movement can be regarded as the spontaneous revolt of the "people" against this condition of things. Dividing the people after the manner of Marx into the non-revolutionary and the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find that the former category, by far the larger, combines with a strong respect for tradition a perfectly reasonable desire for social reform. ”

“ The Manifesto of the Socialist League, which was printed at full length in the first number of the Commonweal, declares in uncompromising terms for a complete revolution in the basis of society. Co-operation, Nationalization of Land, State-Socialism which left the existing system of capital and wages still in operation, are reviewed and dismissed as equally useless with merely political movements such as constitutionalism or republicanism. ”

“ There is great and regrettable confusion as regards the words reform and revolution. The Socialist party calls itself revolutionary, and as revolution is connected in the minds of most people with violence, the popular impression is that the Socialist party stands for violence. ”

“ The socialists were revolutionists, inasmuch as they struggled to overthrow the society of the present, and out of the material to build the society of the future. I, too, was a socialist and a revolutionist. ”

“ Every socialist strives for social revolution in the wider sense, and yet there are socialists who disclaim revolution and would attain social transformation only through reform. They contrast social revolution with social reform. ”

“ And the middle classes knew that they were on the eve of a revolution, and they prepared themselves for it. They sought to obtain by every possible means the support of the working class of the towns, and of the peasantry in the agricultural districts, and it is well known that there was, in the latter end of 1847, hardly a single prominent political character among the bourgeoisie who did not proclaim himself a “Socialist,” in order to insure to himself the sympathy of the proletarian class. We shall see these “Socialists” at work by and by. ”

“ The Independent Socialists had "made the revolution." They claimed the right to determine its development. The bourgeoisie, itself incapable of restoring the old order and, for the most part, not desiring to do so, supported the parent Socialist Party as the lesser of two evils. The Independents found themselves without the power to determine what course "their revolution" should take. All revolutionary history showed that this course would not be that desired by the Independent leaders and promised by them to their radical followers. ”

“ So he decries mere reform and insists upon nothing less than revolution, the transfer of political power from the capitalist to the people at large. There is thus between the reformer and the revolutionary Socialist a difference of principle; the one upholding the competitive system and the other denouncing it. ”

“ And the workers' political and industrial leaders, nearly all bred-in-the-bone Majority Socialist reformers, were equally anxious to avert the breakdown of capitalism. Although they propagated radical phrases, they did not believe in the revolution. They had no faith that the workers were capable of running society even if they could seize control of it. Their position was that Socialism had to come by evolution, not by revolution. [4] They saw in the vast upheaval merely a good opportunity to wrest important reforms from the employers. ”

“ The proletariat needs the State, the centralized organization of force and violence, both for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of guiding the great mass of the population—the peasantry, the lower middle-class, the semi-proletariat—in the work of economic Socialist reconstruction.
By educating a workers' party, Marxism educates also the advance-guard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and of leading the whole community to Socialism ”

“ And now the disillusioned workers are demanding to know how this can be; how it was that they were in complete control of society and yet did not accomplish the revolution. Nor are answers to their queries lacking. The current explanation, the one most widely accepted by all classes, is that the revolution failed because of lack of unity among the Socialist forces. The story goes that while they were wasting their strength and opportunity fighting each other, the capitalist class succeeded in reorganizing its scattered forces and in working its way back to power. ”

“ The course of the revolution bore out the truth of our cratic one. Then it became a movement, in conjunction with the entire peasantry, against the monarchy, against the landlords, against mediaevalism, and to that extent the revolution remained a bourgeois, a bourgeois-democratic one. hen it became a movement, in conjunction with the poorest peasantry, with the semi-proletariat, with all the exploited, against Capitalism including the village rich, the village vultures and speculators, and to that extent the revolution became a Socialist one. ”

“ In this, as in every other relation, the greatest diversity and possibility of change will rule. Nothing is more false than to represent the socialist society as a simple, rigid mechanism whose wheels when once set in motion run on continuously in the same manner. ”

“ A certain degree of venomousness, scurrility and abuse of bourgeois opponents has always characterized all but a few Socialist publications in all lands, and the Independent Socialist press far outdid the organs of the old party in this respect. ”

“ And far be it from me to deny that socialism is a menace. It is its purpose to wipe out, root and branch, all capitalistic institutions of present-day society. It is distinctly revolutionary, and in scope and depth is vastly more tremendous than any revolution that has ever occurred in the history of the world. ”

“ But all great parties are at odds, and all commit blunders. The proletariat had on its side the force of events. Towards the end of the century it attained the degree of well-being which opens the way to better things. Comrade, a party must have within itself a certain strength in order to accomplish a revolution favourable to its interests. Towards the end of the twentieth century of the closed era the general situation had become most favourable to the developments of socialism. ”

“ At first Socialists were utopians, then they became revolutionists. This was natural. Socialism was born in an air of revolution—the political revolutions of the bourgeois, and the infinitely greater industrial revolution. The tides of change and passion were rocking the foundations of state and industry. The evils in early industrialism were abhorrent. ”

“ Even now it is being presented in different ways; for the question of the possibility of constructing Socialism in our country is nothing more or less than the question of the character of our revolution. ”

“ Far from favouring the diffusion of democratic ideas, the projects of reform of the theorists of this period merely impeded their progress. Communistic Socialism, which several of them professed would restore the Revolution, finally alarmed the bourgeoisie and even the working-classes. ”

“ In books, in pamphlets, in the resolutions of their congresses, in their speeches, Socialists in all countries have explained to the people a thousand, nay, a million times, the class-nature of this bourgeois revolution. ”

“ But without a revolution, socialism cannot be enforced. It requires this political act, so far as it has need of the process of destruction and dissolution. But where its organizing activity begins, where its proper aim, its soul, emerges, there socialism casts away the political hull. ”

“ This growth into Socialism is only another expression for the steady sharpening of class antagonisms, for the growth into an epoch of greater, more decisive class struggles, such as we have described under the name of the Social Revolution. ”

“ It is the mission of the Socialist movement to bring all these various activities of the proletariat against its exploitation into one conscious and unified movement, that will find its climax in the great final battle for the conquest of political power. ”

“ Thus, by the action of the proletariat, Communism ceased to be a vague philosophic speculation and became a party, a living force. Thus, Socialism arose from the French Revolution under the combined action of two forces, the force of the idea of right, and the force of the new-born activity of the proletariat. ”

“ For what is the essence of modern Socialism as Marx taught it?—the political independence of Labour. And what is the foremost duty of a Socialist in the class struggle?—to divorce Labour from the parties of the possessing class. ”

“ But the working class would be the dupe of a fatal illusion and a sort of unhealthy obsession if it mistook what can be only the tactics of despair for a method of revolution. Apart from those convulsive upheavals that escape all forecast and are sometimes the final supreme resource of history brought to bay, there is only one sovereign method for Socialism—the conquest of a legal majority. ”

“ Industrial Unionism as a method of revolution has still been forgotten by its champions in their endeavour to deal with the scientific position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. This is very significant. ”