Socialists have been accused over the years of wanting to overthrow capitalism by force and violence. When we are accused of this, what they are really trying to imply is that socialists want to abolish capitalism with a minority, that we want to force the will of the minority on the majority. The opposite is the truth. We believe we can win a majority of the people to support a change in the system. Socialism is not the regime of a minority. It cannot, therefore, be imposed by a minority.
Our whole case rests on the assumption that violence comes, as, indeed, it generally does, from the side of the ruling class. We have no respect for the established order of things, knowing full well its ruthless disregard of human life and its indifference to human suffering and misery. We can sympathise with the crimes of the outlaw, created a criminal by society. But we know that the crimes and violence inflicted upon our class enemies only serve to strengthen them, and that they are not revolutionary but reactionary in their effects. We may excuse, but we cannot advocate violence. Violence can only to be resorted to in self-defence.
When the working class adopt means to the end; we have to make sure that they are means that reflect the end in view, and that they will hasten, not retard its attainment. Rioting is simply the display of impotent rage. It is the tactics of despair, not a method for revolution. The capitalists’ power rest on the force of its state and to appeal to force while all the arms are in the hands of the ruling class is self-destructive. It may well be that the revolution will not be achieved without violence; but we should be fools to provoke the fighting when we should have to fight at a disadvantage, when all the riot police and military resources are controlled by the master class, and all we have to oppose to them is bricks and broken bottles. In such circumstances, any use of force, quite obviously, plays into the State’s hands; every riot and every attack on property, gives them an excellent excuse to indulge in reprisals. We know that nothing would please the ruling class better than to goad socialists into premature “revolutionary” violence so they can suppress us. When a doomed insurrection inevitably fails it will have left the capitalist system intact and armed it with implacable fury. The fear of the ruling class will express itself in a long succession of reactionary years. And the workers will be bound and crushed for a long time. The pages of history recount this bitter lesson.
Workers and socialists have struggled long and hard for universal suffrage - a vote for everyone. Elections indicate the strength of the different parties. A minority that, having taken part in the elections and having accepted them as a gauge, should then attempt to do violence to the majority, would would be opposed by a majority that, aware of its legitimacy of the ballot would not yield. The socialist’s task is organising for the revolution through the conquest of political power. We are by no means fanatics of democracy. The Parliamentary franchise is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end. We hold no illusions as to the value of the vote. Those votes are but the outward and visible sign of an inward invisible class-consciousness; the expression of a working-class revolutionary organisation. The power of the ballot depends, not upon the process, but upon the person behind the vote.
Great social changes that are called revolutions cannot (or rather can no longer) be accomplished by a minority. A revolutionary minority, no matter how intelligent and determined, is not enough, in to-day’s world to bring about a revolution. The co-operation and adherence of the majority are needed. The socialist revolution will not be accomplished by the action, or the sudden blows of a militant minority, but by the defiant and harmonious will of the immense majority. Whoever depends on physical force to bring about the revolution, and gives up the method of winning over the immense majority to our ideas, will give up at the same time any possibility of transforming the social order.
Socialism cannot be achieved except by the will of the majority of people. Socialists do not rest content after abolishing capitalism but must continue and build a new type of society where production is administered in an ordered way. A new social system cannot be constructed by a minority. It can only function with the approval of the majority who will create from capitalism the various types of social property, co-operative, and communal. The common good will be its object. For the first time since the beginning of human history, a revolution will have for its aim, not the substitution of one class for another, but the destruction of classes, the inauguration of a universal humanity. In the socialism, the co-ordination and collaboration of effort will not be maintained by the authority of one class over another,but will come as the result of the free association. How, then, can a system based on the voluntary participation of all be instituted against the will, (or even without the will,) of the greater number? Socialism requires to be organised and accepted by almost practically all.
The political terrorist is either a fool or a villain; either carried away by sheer lunacy, or motivated by personal gain. The genuine revolutionary knows that in order to accomplish results or promote principle, there must be unity of action. Hence, the true revolutionary accepts the will of the majority. The object of a Socialist Party is socialism. To that end the education and organisation of the working class and their persuasion to Socialist principles is essential. We cannot have socialism without socialists. Therefore, the first duty of a socialist party is propaganda, in order to make socialists. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working-class themselves. There is no other way. They cannot be emancipated against their will.
To the Socialist Party whose objective is the socialist revolution – the abolition of capitalism and wage slavery parliamentary action is not the only means but in countries with parliamentary democracy we use it because it is there to use. But in doing so the immediate object in view is to win the people to the ideas of socialism – to make socialists and to organise the working class for the social revolution. That being so, the winning or losing of seats in any legislative chamber is of secondary importance. What is important is to win votes – not merely as votes, but as evidence of the growing strength of the movement. In other words, as has been well said, we count heads instead of breaking them. That is not to say that the winning of seats is of no importance at all. It is important for it enables us to capture control of the machinery of the state to deprive the capitalists of its use and it legitimises the appropriation of the capitalist class. Parliamentarism is simply the most effective and appropriate means to that end at the present time.
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