Talking Revolution

There are few ideas that has been so contentious as that of revolution. Every socialist strives for social revolution and yet there are “socialists” who disclaim revolution and declare society will only be transformed through gradual reform. Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. The demands put forward by reformists are very limited ones: a wage rise, a shortening of the working week, an increase of social security benefits. These demands are perfectly legitimate and justified, but also perfectly compatible with the continued rule of the wealthy.

 Socialists want a revolution, i.e., a complete and fundamental change in the relation of the classes. Socialists want to end capitalism. We do not seek a violent bloody revolution.  But we may well answer any possible violence from the capitalist class if the circumstances demand it. Workers cannot be led, lured, or driven into socialism. Socialism has come to build not to demolish. Our job now is to discredit  every political tendency which acts  to bolster the illusions of the working class. But no revolutionary movement was ever yet caused by propaganda alone. Conditions make revolutions. Conditions have caused, and are causing, an tremendous change in the attitude of the labour movement.

There are indications that the spirit of revolution is again rising and the apathy is disappearing. It is perhaps just possible, or, at least, imaginable, that  capitalism may voluntarily decide to grant more tolerable conditions of life to the workers in order to stave off or prevent a social revolution; but, in all probability, before that day arrives the glaring contrasts between luxury and abject poverty, the increased exploitation of the workers by the capitalists,  will have produced such a revolutionary working class as will not so readily be satisfied by the few extra crumbs thrown to them by the capitalist class.  If and when the working class as a whole itself takes up the call for revolution (and puts flesh and blood on its bones) there will be a challenge to capitalist society, a challenge it will no longer be able to contain.

 War or civil war is still the perpetual nightmare of capitalism. The Socialist Party knows that no amount of moralising will avert war, if it is in the interest and in the power of the governing class to make it, who for their own profit are ready to provoke all the horrors of war. But war also tears away the veils which hides the capitalist world from us . War destroys the appearance which leads us to believe in peaceful social evolution and in the stability of political conditions under  the conscious direction of politics of  statesmen. War unleashes – at the same time as the reactionary forces of the capitalist world – the re-generative forces of social revolution.

Today even the most pressing immediate problems of the workers cannot be solved except through the social revolution, for the ravages of the capitalist crisis cancel whatever gains may be made by the working class.