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ONE OF THE GREATEST ORATORY SPEACH
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REFORM OR
REVOLUTION?
by
Daniel DeLeon
An address delivered at
Wells’ Memorial Hall, Boston, Mass.,
January 26, 1896
M r. Chairman and Workingmen of Boston:
I have got into the habit of putting two and two
together, and drawing my conclusions. When I was
invited to come to Boston, the invitation reached me
at about the same time as an official information that
a reorganization of the party was contemplated in the
city of Boston. I put the two together and I drew the
conclusion that part of the purpose of the invitation
was for me to come here to tell you upon what lines
we in New York organized, and upon what lines we
“wicked” Socialists of New York and Brooklyn gave
the capitalist class last November the 16,000-vote
black eye.
ORGANIZATION
It has become an axiom that, to accomplish results,
organization is requisite. Nevertheless, there is
“organization” and “organization." That this is so
appears clearly from the fact that the “pure-and-
simplers” have been going about saying to the
workers: “Organize! Organize!” and after they have
been saying that, and have been “organizing” and
“organizing” for the past thirty or forty years, we
find that they are virtually where they started, if not
worse off; that their “organization” partakes of the
nature of the lizard, whose tail destroys what his
foreparts build up.
I think the best thing I can do to aid you in
organizing is to give you the principles upon which
the Socialist sections of New York and Brooklyn are
organized. To do that I shall go back to basic
principles, and in explaining to you the difference
there is between reform and revolution, I shall be
able, step by step, to point out how it is we are
organized, and how you ought to be.
I shall assume”it is a wise course for a speaker to
adopt—that none in this audience knows what is
“reform” and what is “revolution." Those who are
posted will understand me all the better; those who
are not will follow me all the easier.
We hear people talk about the “reform forces,”
about “evolution” and about “revolution” in ways
that are highly mixed. Let us clear up our terms.
Reform means a change of externals;
revolution”peaceful or bloody, the peacefulness or
the bloodiness of it cuts no figure whatever in the
essence of the question”means a change from within.
REFORM
Take, for instance, a poodle. You can reform him
in a lot of ways. You can shave his whole body and
leave a tassel at the tip of his tail; you may bore a
hole through each ear, and tie a blue bow on one and
a red bow on the other; you may put a brass collar
around his neck with your initials on, and a trim little
blanket on his back; yet, throughout, a poodle he was
and a poodle he remains. Each of these changes
probably wrought a corresponding change in the
poodle’s life. When shorn of all his hair except a
tassel at the tail’s tip he was owned by a wag who
probably cared only for the fun he could get out of
his pet; when he appears gaily decked in bows,
probably his young mistress’ attachment is of
tenderer sort; when later we see him in the fancier’s
outfit, the treatment he receives and the uses he is
put to may be yet again and probably are, different.
Each of these transformations or stages may mark a
veritable epoch in the poodle’s existence. And yet,
essentially, a poodle he was, a poodle he is and a
poodle he will remain.
That is reform.
REVOLUTION
But when we look back myriads of years, or
project ourselves into far -- future physical
cataclysms, and trace the development of animal life
from the invertebrate to the vertebrate, from the
lizard to the bird, from the quadruped and mammal
till we come to the prototype of the poodle, and
finally reach the poodle himself, and so forward”then
do we find radical changes at each step, changes
from within that alter the very essence of his being,
and that put, or will put, upon him each time a stamp
that alters the very system of his existence.
That is revolution.
So with society. Whenever a change leaves the
internal mechanism untouched, we have reform;
whenever the internal mechanism is changed, we
have revolution.
Of course, no internal change is possible without
external manifestations. The internal changes
denoted by the revolution or evolution of the lizard
into the eagle go accompanied with external marks.
So with society. And therein lies one of the pitfalls
into which dilettantism or “reforms” invariably
tumble. They have noticed that externals change with
internals; and they rest satisfied with mere external
changes, without looking behind the curtain. But of
this more presently.
We Socialists are not reformers; we are
revolutionists. We Socialists do not propose to
change forms. We care nothing for forms. We want a
change of the inside of the mechanism of society, let
the form take care of itself. We see in England a
crowned monarch; we see in Germany a sceptered
emperor; we see in this country an uncrowned
president, and we fail to see the essential difference
between Germany, England or America. That being
the case, we are skeptics as to forms. We are like
grown children, in the sense that we like to look at
the inside of things and find out what is there.
One more preliminary explanation. Socialism is
lauded by some as an angelic movement, by others it
is decried as a devilish scheme. Hence you find the
Gomperses blowing hot and cold on the subject; and
Harry Lloyd, with whose capers, to your sorrow, you
are more familiar than I, pronouncing himself a
Socialist in one place, and in another running
Socialism down. Socialism is neither an aspiration of
angels nor a plot of devils. Socialism moves with its
feet firmly planted in the ground and its head not lost
in the clouds; it takes science by the hand, asks her to
lead and goes whithersoever she points. It does not
take science by the hand, saying: “I shall follow you
to the end of the road if it please me.” No! It takes
her by the hand and says: “Whithersoever thou
leadest, thither am I bound to go.” The Socialists,
consequently, move as intelligent men; we do not
mutiny because, instead of having wings, we have
arms, and cannot fly as we would wish.
What then, with an eye single upon the differences
between reform and revolution, does Socialism
mean? To point out that, I shall take up two or three
of what I may style the principal nerve centers of the
movement.
GOVERNMENT”THE STATE
One of these principal nerve centers is the question
of “government” or the question of the “State.” How
many of you have not seen upon the shelves of our
libraries books that treat upon the “History of the
State"; upon the “Limitations of the State"; upon
“What the State Should do and What It Should Not
Do"; upon the “Legitimate Functions of the State,”
and so on into infinity? Nevertheless, there is not one
among all of these, the products, as they all are, of
the vulgar and superficial character of capitalist
thought, that fathoms the question or actually defines
the “State.” Not until we reach the great works of the
American Morgan, of Marx and Engels, and of other
Socialist philosophers, is the matter handled with
that scientific lucidity that proceeds from facts, leads
to sound conclusions and breaks the way to practical
work. Not until you know and understand the history
of the “State” and of “government” will you
understand one of the cardinal principles upon which
Socialist organization rests, and will you be in a
condition to organize successfully.
We are told that “government” has always been as
it is today and always will be. This is the first
fundamental error of what Karl Marx justly calls
capitalistic vulgarity of thought.
When man started on his career, after having got
beyond the state of the savage, he realized that
cooperation was a necessity to him. He understood
that together with others he could face his enemies in
a better way than alone; he could hunt, fish, fight
more successfully. Following the instructions of the
great writer Morgan”the only great and original
American writer upon this question”we look to the
Indian communities, the Indian settlements, as a type
of the social system that our ancestors, all of them,
without exception, went through at some time.
The Indian lived in the community condition. The
Indian lived under a system of common property. As
Franklin described it, in a sketch of the history and
alleged sacredness of private property, there was no
such thing as private property among the Indians.
They cooperated, worked together, and they had a
central directing authority among them. In the Indian
communities we find that central directing authority
consisting of the “sachems.” It makes no difference
how that central directing authority was elected;
there it was. But note this: its function was to direct
the cooperative or collective efforts of the
communities and, in so doing, it shared actively in
the productive work of the communities. Without its
work, the work of the communities would not have
been done.
When, in the further development of society, the
tools of production grew and developed”grew and
developed beyond the point reached by the Indian;
when the art of smelting iron ore was discovered;
when thereby that leading social cataclysm, wrapped
in the mists of ages, yet discernible, took place that
rent former communal society in twain along the line
of sex, the males being able, the females unable, to
wield the tool of production”then society was cast
into a new mold; the former community, with its
democratic equality of rights and duties, vanishes
and a new social system turns up, divided into two
sections, the one able, the other unable, to work at
production. The line that separated these two
sections, being at first the line of sex, could, in the
very nature of things, not yet be sharp or deep. Yet,
notwithstanding, in the very shaping of these two
sections”one able, the other unable, to feed itself”we
have the first premonition of the classes, of class
distinctions, of the division of society into the
independent and the dependent, into master and
slaves, ruler and ruled.
Simultaneously, with this revolution we find the
first changes in the nature of the central directing
authority, of that body whose original function was
to share in, by directing, production.
Just as soon as economic equality is destroyed and
the economic classes crop up in society, the
functions of the central directing authority gradually
begin to change, until finally, when, after a long
range of years, moving slowly at first and then with
the present hurricane velocity under capitalism
proper, the tool has developed further, and further,
and still further, and has reached its present fabulous
perfection and magnitude;
when, through its private ownership, the tool has
wrought a revolution within a revolution by dividing
society, no longer along the line of sex, but strictly
along the line of ownership or non-ownership of the
land on and the tool with which to work;
when the privately owned,
mammoth tool of today has reduced
more than fifty-two per cent of our
population to the state of being
utterly unable to feed without first
selling themselves into wage slavery,
while it at the same time saps the
ground from under about thirty-
nine per cent of our people, the
middle class, whose puny tools,
small capital, render them certain
victims of competition with the large
capitalist, and makes them
desperate;
when the economic law that
asserts itself under the system of
private ownership of the tool has
concentrated these private owners
into about eight per cent of the
nation’s inhabitants, has thereby
enabled this small capitalist class to
live without toil, and to compel the
majority, the class of the proletariat,
to toil without living;
when, finally, it has come to the
pass in which our country now finds
itself, that, as was stated in
Congress, ninety-four per cent of
the taxes are spent in “protecting
property””the property of the
trivially small capitalist class”and
not in protecting life;
when, in short, the privately
owned tool has wrought this work,
and the classes”the idle rich and the
working poor”are in full
bloom”then the central directing
authority of old stands transformed;
its pristine functions of aiding in, by
directing, production have been
supplanted by the functions of
holding down the dependent, the
slave, the ruled, i.e., the working
class.
Then, and not before, lo, the State, the modern
State, the capitalist State! Then, lo, the government,
the modern government, the capitalist
government”equipped mainly, if not solely, with the
means of suppression, of oppression, of tyranny!
In sight of these manifestations of the modern
State, the anarchist -- the rose-water and the dirty-
water variety alike”shouts: “Away with all central
directing authority; see what it does; it can only do
mischief; it always did mischief!” But Socialism is
not anarchy. Socialism does not, like the chicken in
the fable, just out of the shell, start with the
knowledge of that day. Socialism rejects the
premises and the conclusions of anarchy upon the
State and upon government. What Socialism says is:
“Away with the economic system that alters the
beneficent functions of the central directing authority
from an aid to production into a means of
oppression.” And it proceeds to show that, when the
instruments of production shall be owned no longer
by the minority, but shall be restored to the
Commonwealth; that when, as a result of this, no
longer the minority or any portion of the people shall
be in poverty and classes, class distinctions and class
rule shall, as they necessarily must, have vanished,
that then the central directing authority will lose all
its repressive functions and is bound to reassume the
functions it had in the old communities of our
ancestors, become again a necessary aid, and assist
in production.
The Socialist, in the brilliant simile of Karl Marx,
sees that a lone fiddler in his room needs no director;
he can rap himself to order, with his fiddle to his
shoulder, and start his dancing tune, and stop
whenever he likes. But just as soon as you have an
orchestra, you must also have an orchestra director”a
central directing authority. If you don’t, you may
have a Salvation Army powwow, you may have a
Louisiana Negro breakdown; you may have an
orthodox Jewish synagogue, where every man sings
in whatever key he likes, but you won’t have
harmony—impossible.
It needs this central directing authority of the
orchestra master to rap all the players to order at a
given moment; to point out when they shall begin;
when to have these play louder, when to have those
play softer; when to put in this instrument, when to
silence that; to regulate the time of all and preserve
the accord. The orchestra director is not an
oppressor, nor is his baton an insignia of tyranny; he
is not there to bully anybody; he is as necessary or
important as any or all of the members of the
orchestra.
Our system of production is in the nature of an
orchestra. No one man, no one town, no one state,
can be said any longer to be independent of the
other; the whole people of the United States, every
individual therein, is dependent and interdependent
upon all the others. The nature of the machinery of
production; the subdivision of labor, which aids
cooperation and which cooperation fosters, and
which is necessary to the plentifulness of production
that civilization requires, compel a harmonious
working together of all departments of labor, and
thence compel the establishment of a central
directing authority, of an orchestral director, so to
speak, of the orchestra of the cooperative
commonwealth.
Such is the State or government that the Socialist
revolution carries in its womb. Today, production is
left to anarchy, and only tyranny, the twin sister of
anarchy, is organized.
Socialism, accordingly, implies organization;
organization implies directing authority; and the one
and the other are strict reflections of the revolutions
undergone by the tool of production. Reform, on the
other hand, skims the surface, and with
“referendums” and similar devices limits itself to
external tinkerings.
MATERIALISM”MORALITY
The second nerve center of Socialism that will
serve to illustrate the difference between reform and
revolution is its materialistic groundwork.
Take, for instance, the history of slavery. All of
our ancestors - this may shock some of you, but it is
a fact all the same”all of our ancestors were
cannibals at one time. The human race, in its
necessity to seek for food, often found it easier to
make a raid and take from others the food they had
gathered. In those olden, olden days of the barbarism
of our ancestors, when they conquered a people and
took away its property, they had no further use for
the conquered; they killed them, spitted them over a
good fire, roasted and ate them up. It was a simple
and the only profitable way known of disposing of
prisoners of war. They did with their captives very
much what bees do yet; when they have raided and
conquered a hive they ruthlessly kill every single
denizen of the captured hive.
Our ancestors continued cannibals until their social
system had developed sufficiently to enable them to
keep their prisoners under control. From that
moment they found it more profitable to keep their
prisoners of war alive and turn them into slaves to
work for them, than it was to kill them off and eat
them. With that stage of material development,
cannibalism was dropped. From the higher material
plane on which our ancestors then stood, their moral
vision enlarged and they presently realized that it
was immoral to eat up a human being.
Cannibalism disappeared to make room for chattel
slavery. And what do we see? Watch the process of
“moral development” in this country—the classic
ground in many ways to study history in, for the
reason that the whole development of mankind can
be seen here, portrayed in a few years, so to speak.
You know how, today, the Northern people put on
airs of morality on the score of having “abolished
chattel slavery," the “traffic in human flesh,” “gone
down South and fought, and bled, to free the Negro,”
etc., etc. Yet we know that just as soon as
manufacturing was introduced in the North, the
North found that it was too expensive to own the
Negro and take care of him; that it was much cheaper
not to own the worker; and, consequently, that they
“religiously,” “humanely” and “morally” sold their
slaves to the South, while they transformed the white
people of the North, who had no means of
production in their own hands, into wage slaves, and
mercilessly ground them down. In the North, chattel
slavery disappeared just as soon as the development
of machinery rendered the institution unprofitable.
The immorality of chattel slavery became clear to the
North just as soon as, standing upon that higher
plane that its higher material development raised it
to, it acquired a better vision. The benighted South,
on the contrary, that had no machinery, remained
with eyes shut, and she stuck to slavery till the slave
was knocked out of her fists.
Guided by the light of this and many similar
lessons of history, Socialism builds upon the
principle that the “moral sentiment,” as illustrated by
the fate of the slave, is not the cause, but a powerful
aid to revolutions. The moral sentiment is to a
movement as important as the sails are to a ship.
Nevertheless, important though sails are, unless a
ship is well laden, unless she is soundly, properly
and scientifically constructed, the more sails you pile
on and spread out, the surer she is to capsize. So with
the organizations that are to carry out a revolution.
Unless your Socialist organizations are as sound as a
bell; unless they are as intolerant as science; unless
they will plant themselves squarely on the principle
that two and two make four and under no
circumstances allow that they make five, the more
feeling you put into them, the surer they are to
capsize and go down. On the contrary, load your
revolutionary ship with the proper lading of science;
hold her strictly to the lodestar; try no monkeyshines
and no dillyings and dallyings with anything that is
not strictly scientific, or with any man who does not
stand on our uncompromisingly scientific platform;
do that, and then unfurl freely the sails of morality;
then the more your sails, the better off your ship; but
not unless you do that, will you be safe, or can you
prevail.
Socialism knows that revolutionary upheavals and
transformations proceed from the rock bed of
material needs. With a full appreciation of and
veneration for moral impulses that are balanced with
scientific knowledge, it eschews, looks with just
suspicion upon and gives a wide berth to balloon
morality, or he it those malarial fevers that reformers
love to dignify with the name of “moral feelings.”
THE CLASS STRUGGLE
A third nerve center of Socialism by which to
distinguish reform from revolution is its manly,
aggressive posture.
The laws that rule sociology run upon lines
parallel with and are the exact counterparts of those
that natural science has established in biology.
In the first place, the central figure in biology is
the species, not the individual specimen. In
sociology, the economic classes take the place of the
species in biology. Consequently, that is the central
figure on the field of sociology that corresponds to
and represents the species on the field of biology.
In the second place, struggle, and not piping peace;
assimilation by the ruthless process of the expulsion
of all elements that are not fit for assimilation, and
not external coalition”such are the laws of growth in
biology, and such are and needs must be the laws of
growth in sociology.
Hence, Socialism recognizes in modern society the
existence of a struggle of classes, and the line that
divides the combatants to be the economic line that
separates the interests of the property-holding
capitalist class from the interests of the propertiless
class of the proletariat. As a final result of this,
Socialism, with the Nazarene, spurns as futile, if not
wicked, the method of cajolery and seduction, or the
crying of “Peace, peace, where there is no peace,”
and cuts a clean swath, while reform is eternally
entangled in its course of charming, luring, decoying.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Let me now give you a few specific
illustrations”based upon this general sketch”that may
help to point out more clearly the sharp differences
there are between reform and revolution, , and the
grave danger there lurks behind confounding the
two.
You remember I referred to the fact that internal,
i.e., revolutionary changes, are always accompanied
with external changes of some sort, and that therein
lay a pitfall into which reform invariably tumbled,
inasmuch as reform habitually rests satisfied with
externals, allows itself to be deceived with
appearances. For instance:
The Socialist revolution demands, among other
things, the public ownership of all the means of
transportation. But, in itself, the question of
ownership affects only external forms: The Post
Office is the common property of the people, and yet
the real workers in that department are mere wage
slaves. In the mouth of the Socialist, of the
revolutionist, the internal fact, the cardinal truth, that
for which alone we fight, and which alone is entitled
to all we can give to it - that is the abolition of the
system of wage slavery under which the proletariat is
working. Now, up step the Populists”the dupers, not
the duped among them with a plan to nationalize the
railroads. The standpoint from which they proceed is
that of middle class interests as against the interests
of the upper capitalists or monopolists. The railroad
monopolists are now fleecing the middle class; these
want to turn the tables upon their exploiters; they
want to abolish them, wipe them out, and appropriate
unto themselves the fleecings of the working class
which the railroad monopolists now monopolize.
With this reactionary class interest in mind, the
duper-Populist steps forward and holds this plausible
language:
“We, too, want the nationalization of the roads; we
are going your way; join us!”
The reform straws are regularly taken in by this
seeming truth; they are carried off their feet; and
they are drawn heels over head into the vortex of
capitalist conflicts. Not so the revolutionist. His
answer follows sharp and clear:
“Excuse me! Guess you do want to nationalize the
railroads, but only as a reform; we want
nationalization as a revolution. You do not propose,
while we are fixedly determined, to relieve the
railroad workers of the yoke of wage slavery under
which they now grunt and sweat. By your scheme of
nationalization, you do not propose, on the contrary,
you oppose all relief to the workers, and you have set
dogs at the heels of our propagandists in Chautauqua
County, N.Y., whenever it was proposed to reduce
the hours of work of the employees.”
While we, the revolutionists, seek the
emancipation of the working class and the abolition
of all exploitation, duper-Populism seeks to rivet the
chains of wage slavery more firmly upon the
proletariat. There is no exploiter like the middle class
exploiter. Carnegie may fleece his workers”he has
20,000 of them”of only fifty cents a day and yet net,
from sunrise to sunset, $10,000 profits; the banker
with plenty of money to lend can thrive with a
trifling shaving of each individual note; but the apple
woman on the street corner must make a hundred
and five hundred per cent profit to exist. For the
same reason, the middle class, the employer of few
hands, is the worst, the bitterest, the most inveterate,
the most relentless exploiter of the wage slave.
You may now realize what a grave error that man
will incur who will rest satisfied with external
appearance. Reform is invariably a cat’s paw for
dupers; revolution never.
Take now an illustration of the revolutionary
principle that the material plane on which man stands
determines his perception of morality. One man
writes to THE PEOPLE office: “You speak about the
immorality of capitalism, don’t you know that it was
immoral to demonetize silver?” Another writes:
“How queer to hear you talk about immorality; don’t
you know it is a type of immorality to have a
protective tariff?” He wants free trade. A third one
writes: “Oh, sir, I admire the moral sentiment that
inspires you, but how can you make fun of
prohibition? Don’t you know that if a man is drunk,
he will beat his wife and kill his children?” And so
forth. Each of these looks at morality from the
standpoint of his individual or class interests. The
man who owns a silver mine considers it the height
of immorality to demonetize silver. The importer
who can be benefited by free trade thinks it a heinous
crime against good morals to set up a high tariff. The
man whose wage slaves come on Monday somewhat
boozy, so that he cannot squeeze, pilfer out of them
as much wealth as he would like to, becomes a
pietistic prohibitionist.
One of our great men, a really great man, a man
whom I consider a glory to the United
States”Artemus Ward”with that genuine, not bogus,
keen Yankee eye of his saw, and with that master
pen of his excellently illustrated this scientific truth,
with one of his yarns. He claimed, you know, that he
traveled through the country with a collection of wax
figures representing the great men and criminals of
the time. On one occasion he was in Maine. At about
that time a little boy, Wilkins, had killed his uncle.
Of course, the occurrence created a good deal of a
sensation, and Artemus Ward tells us that, having an
eye to the main chance, he got up a wax figure which
he exhibited as Wilkins, the boy murderer. A few
years later, happening again in the same Maine
village, it occurred to him that the boy Wilkins had
proved a great attraction in the place. He hunted
around among his figures, found none small enough
to represent a boy, and he took the wax figure that he
used to represent Captain Kidd with, labeled that
“Wilkins, the Boy Murderer,” and opened his booth.
The people flocked in, paid their fifteen cents
admission, and Artemus started to explain his
figures. When he reached the “Boy Murderer,” and
was expatiating upon the lad’s wickedness, a man in
the audience rose, and in a rasping, nasal voice,
remarked: “How is that? Three years ago you
showed us the boy, Wilkins, he was a boy then, and
died since; how can he now be a big man?"
Thereupon Artemus says: “I was angry at the rascal,
and I should have informed against him, and have
him locked up for treason to the flag.”
With the master hand of genius Artemus here
exposed the material bases of capitalist “patriotism,”
and pointed to the connection between the two. The
material plane, on which the fraudulent showman
stood, determined his moral impulse on patriotism.
The higher the economic plane on which a class
stands, and the sounder its understanding of material
conditions, all the broader will its horizon be, and,
consequently, all the purer and truer its morality.
Hence it is that, today, the highest moral vision, and
the truest withal, is found in the camp of the
revolutionary proletariat. Hence, also, you will
perceive the danger of the moral cry that goes not
hand in hand with sound knowledge. The morality of
reform is the corruscation of the ignis fatuus; the
morality of revolution is lighted by the steady light
of science.
Take another illustration, this time on the
belligerent poise of Socialism, to distinguish reform
from revolution.
The struggles that mark the movements of man
have ever proceeded from the material interests, not
of individuals, but of classes. The class interests on
top, when rotten”ripe for overthrow, succumbed,
when they did succumb, to nothing short of the class
interests below. Individuals from the former class
frequently took leading and invaluable part on the
side of the latter, and individuals of the latter
regularly played the role of traitors to civilization by
siding with the former, as did, for instance, the son
of the venerable Franklin when he sided with the
British. Yet in both sets of instances, the combatants
stood arrayed upon platforms that represented
opposite class interests. Revolutions triumphed,
whenever they did triumph, by asserting themselves
and marching straight upon their goal. On the other
hand, the fate of Wat Tyler ever is the fate of reform.
The rebels, in this instance, were weak enough to
allow themselves to be wheedled into placing their
movement into the hands of Richard II, who
promised “relief””and brought it by marching the
men to the gallows.
You will perceive the danger run by movements
that”instead of accepting no leadership except such
as stands squarely upon their own demands”rest
content with and entrust themselves to “promises of
relief.” Revolution, accordingly, stands on its own
bottom, hence it cannot be overthrown; reform leans
upon others, hence its downfall is certain.
Of all revolutionary epochs, the present draws
sharpest the line between the conflicting class
interests. Hence, the organizations of the revolution
of our generation must be the most uncompromising
of any that yet appeared on the stage of history. The
program of this revolution consists not in any one
detail. It demands the unconditional surrender of the
capitalist system and its system of wage slavery; the
total extinction of class rule is its object. Nothing
short of that—whether as a first, a temporary, or any
other sort of step can at this late date receive
recognition in the camp of the modern revolution.
Upon these lines we organized in New York and
Brooklyn, and prospered; upon these lines we have
compelled the respect of the foe. And I say unto you,
go ye, and do likewise.
THE REFORMER”THE REVOLUTIONIST
And now to come to, in a sense, the most
important, surely the most delicate, of any of the
various subdivisions of this address.
We know that movements make men, but men
make movements. Movements cannot exist unless
they are carried on by men; in the last analysis it is
the human hand and the human brain that serve as
the instruments of revolutions.
How shall the revolutionist be known? Which are
the marks of the reformer? In New York a reformer
cannot come within smelling distance of us but we
can tell him. We know him; we have experienced
him; we know what mischief he can do; and he
cannot get within our ranks if we can help it. He
must organize an opposition organization, and thus
fulfill the only good mission he has in the scheme of
nature”pull out from among us whatever reformers
may be hiding there.
But you may not yet be familiar with the cut of the
reformer’s jib. You may not know the external marks
of the revolutionist. Let me mention them.
The modern revolutionist, i.e., the Socialist, must,
in the first place, by reason of the sketch I presented
to you upon the development of the State,
necessarily work in organization, with all that that
implies. In this you have the first characteristic that
distinguishes the revolutionist from the reformer; the
reformer spurns organization; his symbol is “Five
Sore Fingers on a Hand””far apart from one another.
The modern revolutionist knows full well that man
is not superior to principle, that principle is superior
to man, but he does not fly off the handle with the
maxim and thus turn the maxim into absurdity. He
firmly couples the maxim with this other that no
principle is superior to the movement or organization
that puts it and upholds it in the field.
The engineer knows that steam is a powerful thing,
but he also knows that unless the steam is in the
boiler, and unless there is a knowing hand at the
throttle, the steam will either evaporate or the boiler
will burst. Hence, you will never hear an engineer
say: “Steam is the thing,” and then kick the
locomotive off the track. Similarly, the revolutionist
recognizes that the organization that is propelled by
correct principles is as the boiler that must hold the
steam, or the steam will amount to nothing. He
knows that in the revolution demanded by our age,
organization must be the incarnation of principle.
Just the reverse of the reformer, who will ever be
seen mocking at science, the revolutionist will not
make a distinction between the organization and the
principle. He will say: “The principle and the
organization are one.”
A Western judge, on one occasion, had to do with
a quibbling lawyer, who was defending a
burglar”you know what a burglar is”and rendered a
decision that was supremely wise. The prisoner was
charged with having stuck his hand and arm through
a window and stolen something, whatever it was.
The judge sentenced the man to the penitentiary.
Said the lawyer: “I demur; the whole of the man did
not break through the window; it was only his arm.”
“Well,” said the judge, “I will sentence the arm; let
him do with the body what he likes.” As the man and
his arm were certainly one, and as the man would not
wrench his arm out of its socket and separate it from
the body, he quietly went to the penitentiary, and I
hope is there yet to serve as a permanent warning
against “reform science.”
Again, the modern revolutionist knows that in
order to accomplish results or promote principle,
there must be unity of action. He knows that, if we
do not go in a body and hang together, we are bound
to hang separate. Hence, you will ever see the
revolutionist submit to the will of the majority; you
will always see him readiest to obey; he recognizes
that obedience is the badge of civilized man. The
savage does not know the word. The word
“obedience” does not exist in the vocabulary of any
language until its people got beyond the stage of
savagery. Hence, also, you will never find the
revolutionist putting himself above the organization.
The opposite conduct is an unmistakable earmark of
reformers.
The revolutionist recognizes that the present
machinery and methods of production render
impossible”and well it is they do”the individual
freedom of man such as our savage ancestors knew
the thing; that today, the highest individual freedom
must go hand in hand with collective freedom; and
none such is possible without a central directing
authority. Standing upon this vigor”imparting high
plane of civilization, the revolutionist is virile and
self-reliant, in striking contrast with the mentally
sickly and, therefore, suspicious reformer. Hence the
cry of “Bossism!” is as absent from the
revolutionist’s lips as it is a feature on those of the
reformer.
Another leading mark of the revolutionist, which is
paralleled with the opposite mark on the reformer, is
the consistency, hence morality, of the former, and
the inconsistency, hence immorality, of the latter. As
the revolutionist proceeds upon facts, he is truthful
and his course is steady; on the other hand, the
reformer will ever be found prevaricating and in
perpetual contradiction of himself. The reformer, for
instance, is ever vaporing against “tyranny,” and yet
Watch him; give him rope enough and you will
always see him straining to be the top man in the
shebang, the man on horseback, the autocrat, whose
whim shall be law. The reformer is ever prating
about “morality,” but just give him a chance, and
you will catch him every time committing the most
immoral acts, as, for instance, sitting in judgment on
cases in which he himself is a particeps criminis, or
countenancing and profiting by such acts. The
reformer’s mouth is ever full with the words
“individual freedom,” yet in the whole catalogue of
defiers of individual freedom, the reformer vies with
the frontmost.
Finally, you will find the reformer ever flying off
at a tangent, while the revolutionist sticks to the
point. The scatterbrained reformer is ruled by a
centrifugal, the revolutionist by a centripetal force.
Somebody has aptly said that in social movements
an evil principle is like a scorpion; it carries the
poison that will kill it. So with the reformers; they
carry the poison of disintegration that breaks them up
into twos and ones and thus deprives them in the end
of all power for mischief; while the power of the
revolutionist to accomplish results grows with the
gathering strength that its posture insures to him.
The lines upon which we organize in New York
and Brooklyn are, accordingly, directly opposed to
those of reformers. We recognize the need of
organization with all that that implies”of
organization, whose scientific basis and
uncompromising posture inspire respect in the foe,
and confidence in those who belong with us. This is
the sine qua non for success.
Right here allow me to digress for a moment. Keep
in mind where I break off that we may hitch on again
all the easier.
Did you ever stop to consider why it is that in this
country where opportunities are so infinitely
superior, the working class movement is so far
behind, whereas in Europe, despite the disadvantages
there, it is so far ahead of us? Let me tell you.
In the first place, the tablets of the minds of our
working class are scribbled all over by every
charlatan who has let himself loose. In Europe,
somehow or other, the men who were able to speak
respected and respect themselves a good deal more
than most of our public speakers do here. They
studied first; they first drank deep at the fountain of
science; and not until they felt their feet firmly
planted on the rock bed of fact and reason, did they
go before the masses. So it happens that the tablets
of the minds of the European, especially the
Continental working classes, have lines traced upon
them by the master hands of the ages. Hence every
succeeding new movement brought forward by the
tides of time found its work paved for and easier. But
here, one charlatan after another who could speak
glibly, and who could get money from this, that, or
the other political party, would go among the people
and upon the tablets of the minds of the working
classes he scribbled his crude text. So it happens that
today, when the apostle of Socialism goes before our
people, he cannot do what his compeers in Europe
do, take a pencil and draw upon the minds of his
hearers the letters of science; no, he must first clutch
a sponge, a stout one, and wipe clean the pot-hooks
that the charlatans have left there. Not until he has
done that can he begin to preach and teach
successfully.
Then, again, with this evil of miseducation, the
working class of this country suffers from another.
The charlatans, one after the other, set up movements
that proceeded upon lines of ignorance; movements
that were denials of scientific facts; movements that
bred hopes in the hearts of the people; yet
movements that had to collapse. A movement must
be perfectly sound, and scientifically based or it
cannot stand. A falsely based movement is like a lie,
and a lie cannot survive. All these false movements
came to grief, and what was the result? -
disappointment, stagnation, diffidence, hopelessness
in the masses.
The Knights of Labor, meant by Uriah Stephens,
as he himself admitted, to be reared upon the
scientific principles of Socialism—principles found
today in no central or national organization of labor
outside of the Socialist Trade & Labor Alliance”sank
into the mire. Uriah Stephens was swept aside;
ignoramuses took hold of the organization; a million
and a half men went into it, hoping for salvation; but,
instead of salvation, there came from the veils of the
K. of L. Local, District and General Assemblies the
developed ignoramuses, that is to say, the labor
fakers, riding the workingman and selling him out to
the exploiter. Disappointed, the masses fell off.
Thereupon bubbled up another wondrous concern,
another idiosyncrasy -- the American Federation of
Labor, appropriately called by its numerous English
organizers the American Federation of Hell.
Ignoramuses again took hold and the lead. They
failed to seek below the surface for the cause of the
failure of the K. of L.; like genuine ignoramuses,
they fluttered over the surface. They saw on the
surface excessive concentration of power in the K. of
L., and they swung to the other extreme”they built a
tapeworm. I call it a tapeworm, because a tapeworm
is no organism; it is an aggregation of links with no
cohesive powers worth mentioning. The fate of the
K. of L. overtook the A.F. of L. Like causes brought
on like results, false foundations brought on ruin and
failure. Strike upon strike proved disastrous in all
concentrated industries; wages and the standard of
living of the working class at large went down; the
unemployed multiplied; and again the ignorant
leaders naturally and inevitably developed into
approved labor fakers; the workers found themselves
shot, clubbed, indicted, imprisoned by the identical
Presidents, governors, mayors, judges, etc.
—Republican and Democratic”whom their
misleaders had corruptly induced them to support.
Today there is no A. F. of L. ”not even the
tapeworm”any more. If you reckon it up, you will
find that if the 250,000 members which it claims
paid dues regularly every quarter, it must have four
times as large a fund as it reports. The fact is the
dues are paid for the last quarter only; the fakers see
to this to the end that they may attend the annual
rowdidow called the “A. F. of L. Convention””and
advertise themselves to the politicians. That’s all
there is left of it. It is a ship, never seaworthy, but
now stranded and captured by a handful of pirates; a
tapeworn pulled to pieces, condemned by the rank
and file of the American proletariat. Its career only
filled still fuller the workers’ measure of
disappointment, diffidence, helplessness.
The Henry George movement was another of these
charlatan booms that only helped still more to
dispirit people in the end. The “single tax,” with its
half-antiquated, half-idiotic reasoning, took the field.
Again great expectations were raised all over the
country”for a while. Again a semi-economic lie
proved a broken reed to lean on. Down came
Humpty Dumpty, and all the king’s horses and all
the king’s men could not now put Humpty Dumpty
together again. Thus the volume of popular
disappointment and diffidence received a further
contribution.
Most recently there came along the People’s Party
movement. Oh, how fine it talked! It was going to
emancipate the workers. Did it not say so in its
preamble, however reactionary its platform? If bluff
and blarney could save a movement, the People’s
Party would have been imperishable. But it went up
like a rocket, and is now fast coming down a stick. In
New York State it set itself up against us when we
already had 14,000 votes, and had an official
standing. It was going to teach us “dreamers” a
lesson in “practical American politics.” Well, its vote
never reached ours, and last November when we rose
to 21,000 votes, it dropped to barely 5,000, lost its
official standing as a party in the state, and as far as
New York and Brooklyn are concerned, we simply
mopped the floor with it.
These false movements, and many more kindred
circumstances that I could mention, have confused
the judgment of our people, weakened the spring of
their hope, and abashed their courage. Hence the
existing popular apathy in the midst of popular
misery; hence despondency despite unequaled
opportunities for redress; hence the backwardness of
the movement here when compared with that of
Europe.
To return now where I broke off. The Socialist
Labor Party cannot, in our country, fulfill its
mission”here less than anywhere else -- without it
takes a stand, the scientific soundness of whose
position renders growth certain, failure impossible,
and without its disciplinary firmness earns for it the
unqualified confidence of the now eagerly onlooking
masses both in its integrity of purpose and its
capacity to enforce order. It is only thus that we can
hope to rekindle the now low-burning spark of
manhood and womanhood in our American working
class, and reconjure up the Spirit of `76.
We know full well that the race or class that is not
virile enough to strike an intelligent blow for itself, is
not fit for emancipation. If emancipated by others, it
will need constant propping, or will collapse like a
dish-clout. While that is true, this other is true also:
In all revolutionary movements, as in the storming of
fortresses, the thing depends upon the head of the
column”upon that minority that is so intense in its
convictions, so soundly based on its principles, so
determined in its action, that it carries the masses
with it, storms the breastworks and captures the fort.
Such a head of the column must be our Socialist
organization to the whole column of the American
proletariat.
Again our American history furnishes a striking
illustration. When Pizarro landed on the western
slope of the Andes, he had with him about 115 men.
Beyond the mountains was an empire”the best
organized empire of the aborigines that had been
found in America. It had its departments; it had its
classes; it was managed as one body numbering
hundreds of thousands to the Spaniards’ hundred.
That body the small army of determined men were to
capture. What did Pizzaro do? Did he say, “Let us
wait till we get some more?” Or did he say, “Now,
boys, I need every one of you 115 men"? No, he said
to them: “Brave men of Spain, yonder lies an empire
that is a delight to live in, full of gold, full of wealth,
full of heathens that we ought to convert. They are as
the sands of the sea, compared with us, and they are
entrenched behind their mountain fastnesses. It needs
the staunchest among you to undertake the conquest.
If any, through the hardships of travel, feel unequal
to the hardships of the enterprise, I shall not consider
him a coward; let him stand back to protect our
ships. Let only those stay with me who are
determined to fight, and who are determined to
conquer.” About twenty men stood aside, about
ninety-five remained; with ninety-five determined
men he scaled those mountains and conquered that
empire.
That empire of the Incas is today capitalism, both
in point of its own inherent weakness and the
strength of its position. The army that is to conquer it
is the army of the proletariat, the head of whose
column must consist of the intrepid Socialist
organization that has earned their love, their respect,
their confidence.
What do we see today? At every recent election,
the country puts me in mind of a jar of water”turn
the jar and all the water comes out. One election, all
the Democratic vote drops out and goes over to the
Republicans; the next year all the Republican vote
drops out and goes over to the Democrats. The
workers are moving backward and forward; they are
dissatisfied; they have lost confidence in the existing
parties they know of, and they are seeking
desperately for the party of their class. At such a
season, it is the duty of us revolutionists to conduct
ourselves in such manner as to cause our
organization to be better and better known, its
principles more and more clearly understood, its
integrity and firmness more and more respected and
trusted”then, when we shall have stood that ground
well and grown steadily, the masses will in due time
flock over to us. In the crash that is sure to come and
is now just ahead of us, our steadfast Socialist
organization will alone stand out intact above the
ruins; there will then be a stampede to our party”but
only upon revolutionary lines can it achieve this;
upon lines of reform it can never be victorious.
As the chairman said that time would be allowed
for questions, I shall close at this point, but not
before”you will pardon the assumption -- not before
I call upon you, in the name of the 6,000 “wicked,"
revolutionary Socialists of New York and Brooklyn,
to organize, here in Boston, upon the genuinely
revolutionary plan. Your state is a large
manufacturing state; there can be no reason why
your vote should not grow, except that, somehow or
other, you have not acted as revolutionists. Every
year that goes by in this way is a year wasted.
Never forget that every incident that takes place
within your, within our, ranks is noted by a large
number of workers on the outside. Tamper with
discipline, allow this member to do as he likes, that
member to slap the Party constitution in the face,
yonder member to fuse with reformers, this other to
forget the nature of the class struggle and to act up to
his forgetfulness”allow that, keep such “reformers”
in your ranks and you have stabbed your movement
at its vitals. With malice toward none, with charity to
all, you must enforce discipline if you mean to
reorganize to a purpose. We know that in struggles
of this kind, personal feelings, unfortunately, play a
part; you cannot prevent that; let the other side, the
reformer, fill the role of malice that its weak intellect
drives it to; do you fill the role of the square-jointed
revolutionist”and if there must be amputation, do it
nobly, but firmly. Remember the adage that the
tenderhanded surgeon makes stinging wounds, and
lengthens the period of suffering and pain. The
surgeon that has a firm hand to push the knife as
deep as it ought to go, and pulls it out, and lets the
pus flow out, that surgeon makes clean wounds,
shortens pain, brings cure quickly about.
No organization will inspire the outside masses
with respect that will not insist upon and enforce
discipline within its own ranks. If you allow your
own members to play monkeyshines with the party,
the lookers-on, who belong in this camp, will justly
believe that you will at some critical moment allow
capitalism to play monkeyshines with you; they will
not respect you, and their accession to your ranks
will be delayed.
There is, indeed, no social or economic reason
why the vote of Boston should not be one of the
pillars of our movement. And yet that vote is weak
and virtually stationary, while in New York and
Brooklyn it has on the whole been leaping forward.
If you realize the importance of the revolutionary
construction of our army; if you comprehend the
situation of the country”that there is a popular tidal
wave coming; that, in order to bring it our way and
render it effective, we must be deserving thereof,
whereas, if we are not, the wave will recede with
disastrous results; if you properly appreciate the fact
that every year that passes over our heads brings to
our lives greater danger, throws a heavier load upon
the shoulders of our wives, makes darker the
prospects of our sons, exposes still more the honor of
our daughters -- if you understand that, then for their
sakes, for our country’s sake, for the sake of the
proletarians of Boston, organize upon the New York
and Brooklyn plan.
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