As to Politics

First Letter by John Sandgren

San Francisco, Cal.

The most important issue confronting the working class to-day is the question of the proper method, the proper tactics, to adopt in order to attain the aim upon which even the most hostile factions agree, namely the overthrow of the capitalist system. A discussion of this kind leads us immediately to the question: shall it be accomplished through political organization, or through economic organization, or through both. It is imperative that this question should be openly, honestly, and widely discussed, in order to arrive at a solid basis upon which all workingmen may unite; it is imperative that the cloudiness and uncertainty which now divides revolutionary workingmen and frustrates in part their best energies and efforts, should be dispelled. Having very decided opinions on the subject, I beg leave to submit my views, hoping they will be received in the same good faith as they are given, without prejudice or rancor, solely with the aim of benefiting the working class movement.

The first preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World says that “the workers must come together on the political, as well as the industrial field and take and hold that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization without affiliation with any political party.” The second convention of the IWW, held this year, adopted an amendment to this clause to the effect that the IWW does not wish to endorse or to .be endorsed by any political party, which amendment will no doubt be adopted by referendum vote. The amendment does not materially change the original clause. This clause declaring for political unity, but at the same time striking a nolle-me-tangere, don’t-touch-me attitude to all political parties, has been, is, and will be subject to an endless variety of interpretations. A document like the preamble should be positive in its statements, not negative. It should outline a definite, absolutely definite, policy, which could leave no room for essential disagreement, between those who endorse its program at least. Its weakness on this point lies in enumerating two things out of the thousand and one things which it does not want, namely, it does not want to endorse any political party and it does not want to be endorsed by a political party. Instead of doing this, the preamble ought to state most positively what the IWW does want and thus serve as a fixed star to steer by, instead of presenting us with a moving cloud to steer by, on this most essential point, the question of tactics.

However presumptuous it may appear, the writer will undertake to suggest an amendment for the next convention to consider, an amendment which will remove the apparent contradiction and express the ideas and the conception of revolutionary workingmen, and it would be as follows:

To strike out all reference to politics in the IWW preamble.

In defence of a preamble thus amended, may I be allowed to submit the following reasons.

It is not in order to dodge or to escape a difficult situation with which two IWW conventions have unsuccessfully wrangled, that this amendment is submitted for discussion. It is submitted because political activity may justly be considered of little or no value for the overthrow of the capitalist system. If the following arguments in support of such a sweeping statement are defective to the point of making the conclusion wrong, they should be annihilated, in the best interest of the working class.

It is being asserted by the adherents of a revolution at the ballot box that the working class outnumbers the other class as voters (some enthusiasts say “as 10 to 1”). If this statement is true, it would be theoretically possible to vote capitalism out of existence, provided nearly all workingmen could be made to vote solidly for revolution, and provided the class in power would count their vote, and provided the ruling class would abide by their vote, and provided that an economic organization is in existence to “back up” the vote, if the ruling class does not abide by it. But in the final analysis this contention is based upon the statement that the workers are a majority of the voters. The contention, stands or falls with the question whether the workers are in a majority at the ballot box or not. Thus far nobody can disagree with me, except those who depend for political success upon the votes of people who do not belong to the working class.

The writer maintains that the working class is not in a majority at the ballot box, which he will proceed to prove in the following simple manner, by the aid of statistics.

According to United States statistics, as summed up in the Socialist Almanac, page 101, the working class was in 1870 62.81 per cent of the population, in 1880 58-91 per cent, and in 1890 55 per cent of the total population. Later statistics I can unfortunately not quote, my little library having been destroyed in the great San Francisco fire. But I am certain that later statistical figures are not such as to wreck my conclusions, as we will find further on. Taking the figure of 1890 the wage working class is 55 per cent of the population and the plutocrat, middle, and professional class 45 per cent. Assuming that we have universal and equal manhood suffrage it would then be correct to assume that the working class controls 55 per cent of the votes and the master class 45 per cent. But these 55 per cent are by no means all voters. In this percentage of workingmen are included men of foreign parentage who have not become voters and the disfranchised negroes, and many other non-voters.

Considering first the foreign-born, included in the 55 per cent, we find that in 1900, according to my best recollection they were about 18 per cent of the whole population. Of these approximately 12 per cent may be counted as belonging to the working class, and the other 6 per cent to the other class, these 6 per cent being nearly all citizens and voters. Of the 12 per cent belonging to the working class only a small part are voters. A large percentage are not in the country a sufficient time to be citizens, and outside the Celtic and Teutonic races comparatively few foreigners acquire citizenship, partly because they do not learn the language well enough to become citizens, partly because their imperfect knowledge of the language makes them indifferent to citizenship “privileges,” partly on account of the difficulty in securing witnesses in accordance with law, partly because they have lost faith in the ballot in the country where they came from. Taking all these factors into consideration it is safe to assume that of the 12 per cent counted with the working class about 8 per cent have no vote.

Subtract 8 from 55 you have 47 per cent, as against the 45 per cent of the other class. Your majority is dwindling dangerously already.

Now we come to the negroes included in the 55 per cent. They number about 10 per cent of the population. Most negroes being wage workers about 7 per cent of them are included in the 55 per cent. Of these approximately 5 per cent are disfranchised directly.

Subtract 5 per cent, from 47 per cent and you have 42 per cent as against the 45 per cent of the other class. Now where is your majority? You are already in the minority, and I have already proven my statement that you do not outnumber the other class at the ballot box.

But in addition to these large groups who have no voice in the nation’s affairs we have an immense number of citizens, who are counted in the 55 per cent, who lose their vote through poll tax, property, and residence qualifications and through the nature of their occupation. About 200,000 seafaring men can not vote. Hundreds of thousands of workers, aye over a million, who work in railroad construction, in the woods, or drift from Manitoba to Louisiana with the harvest season, or between the different crops in California and the Northwest, or from mining camp to mining camp or from one industrial town to another, are disfranchised. It is safe to deduct 5 per cent more from the 55 per cent. Deducting 5 per cent from 42 per cent we get 37 per cent as opposed to the 45 per cent of the other class. You are now 8 per cent behind, which leaves a generous margin to cover any errors made in this argument. That the figures will not stand essentially different in 1910 or 1920, counting by per cent, is also safe to assume. It may be said with some truth that since 1890 the working class has been largely swelled by accessions from a dying middle class, and that nearly a million wage workers (largely disfranchised) come to this country every year, and that the working class as a consequence is now more than 55 per cent of the population. But as stated above the figures were for 1870 62.81 per cent, for 1880 58.91 per cent, for 1890 55 per cent. If the pendulum has swung the other way since 1890, it is still hardly probable that it has swung far enough to give the working class a majority at the ballot box. It is up to my critics to prove that it has, by quoting later, authentic statistics.

It is proven, then, that the working class does not outnumber the ruling class at the ballot box. And a miss in politics is as good as a mile. To fall short 100 voters of a majority is, for all practical purposes, as bad as getting only 100 votes in all.

But this argument against the value of the ballot as a working class weapon is so strong that I can afford to be generous. I will grant, for the sake of argument that we do outnumber the ruling class at the ballot box.

Can we, then, judging by past and present success, entertain the hope of gathering, in any reasonable time, that problematical working class majority upon one program, under one revolutionary banner? Probably not. The ruling class holds the strings of the bread and butter of millions of slaves so tightly that they can not vote for revolution. Furthermore the ruling class controls the schools and poisons the young minds of the children. It owns the press and controls the minds of the full-grown. It controls the pulpit, and there pollutes the mind of child and man. What becomes of your working class majority before these facts?

Again, granting for the sake of argument, that we now outnumber the master class at the ballot box, is there any reasonable justification for hoping that the master class will cease to impose new restrictions upon the right to vote, when that has been their course for the last ten years, as witness Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and other states? Or is there any guarantee whatsoever that our ruling class will not resort to gerrymandering or election geometry, that is, redistributing of districts and representation as has been done in Germany, Sweden and other countries, in order to curtail the effect of a working class vote?

Granting, again, that we not only outnumber the ruling class, but have actually succeeded in getting a majority vote, what hope is there that they will not count us out, as is being done in every ejection, not only against workingmen’s parties but between the masters themselves? What would it matter if we had the vote “backed up with an economic organization”? As long as we insist on accomplishing our aim “legally,” so long can the master endure the game of showing us black on white that we are in the minority, and if we were to attempt the “backing up” of this minority, we would be “illegal” in the eyes of the ruling class anyhow, as long as they are in power.

Having granted so many impossible things, for the sake of argument, let us grant one more. Let us assume that a revolutionary political party carries a national election, and is allowed to take possession of all offices from President down. What will be the result?

As has so frequently been demonstrated, that day of our political victory would be our political funeral. The function of government is to make and enforce laws for the running of the capitalist system arid to safeguard it against all comers. Or in other words, the sole purpose and function of government is to regulate the relations springing from the private ownership of the means of production arid distribution, and everything connected therewith. But the new form of society, which we are preparing for, does not recognize this private ownership, it proposes to recognize production and distribution on collective lines, a function which cannot possibly be filled by politicians, by a President, a Secretary of War, a Secretary of the Navy, a House of Representatives, a Senate, a Custom House Department, an Internal Revenue Department, etc. Like Shakespeare’s Moor, the politicians would find their occupation gone. There would be positively nothing for them to do, unless they were to continue to run society on capitalist lines, the very thing they were supposedly elected to discontinue. Neither can it reasonably be suggested that these men, thus elected, should instantly sit down and reorganize society on co-operative lines. Society may be reformed by decrees and resolutions, but a complete organic change, a revolution, as we contemplate, must begin at the bottom, is a matter of evolution within the constituent parts of the organism itself, is a building of cell upon cell until the organism is completed. The so-called political organization does not occupy itself with this task. This task is left to the! economic organization such as the IWW which is even now grouping and arranging the individual human units as cells in the future organism of society. Such an organization as the IWW will, when the proper time comes, pass society over from private to collective ownership with no more jar, than when a railroad train, after crossing a steel bridge, glides over the narrow slit which separates the bridge from terra firma, no matter what its struggle may be before it reaches that point. And such an organization, instead of having to abdicate on the day of victory, reaches first then its perfection, and becomes the permanent form of the new society. Of course I realize that little, if any, objection will be made to this manner of stating the function of the economic organization. The objection I anticipate is that we need the political movement as an auxiliary at least, in the every day battle with the master class. Against this objection I maintain, and will try to prove, that the political propaganda far from being needed as an auxiliary for the overthrow of capitalism, is positively harmful to true working class interests. Such propaganda fosters and maintains the illusion that all the evils of society can be mended at the ballot box, which I have shown not to be the case. Reforms can be enacted through the ballot, but not revolutions contrary to the interests of those who control the ballot. Political activity puts us on a par with the capitalist parties and places us in a position where we have to tacitly endorse and co-operate in maintaining the capitalist system. I will illustrate.

Suppose Jackson of the SLP had been elected governor of New York, Haywood of the SP governor of Colorado, or Lewis of the SP governor of California, and all three suppositions are unreasonable, for the capitalist class is not going to allow us to play at governing, simply for the pleasure of having us demonstrate our impotency.

What would happen if these three men had been elected together with their whole tickets, controlling state legislature and everything else?

Could they have declared the co-operative commonwealth in existence? Everybody answers no. The legislature would have to sit down and tackle the bitter tasks of making, amending and improving the laws pertaining to the private ownership of the means of production and distribution. To do anything else would bring upon them the US Supreme Court and eventually the US regular troops. They would perforce have to be accomplices of the capitalist class in administering capitalist law to the workers. Could they even shorten the hours of toil or increase the pay of the workers? Experience tells us no. Ten hour laws have been declared unconstitutional in the State of New York. An eight-hour law was passed by a referendum by the people of Colorado, but it never was taken up by the legislature, so it never had a chance to be declared unconstitutional, but nobody doubts that it would have been so declared had the legislature passed it. Even a local victory would thus be futile. Oh, but you will say, we could keep the militia off in case of strike. Yes, but could you keep the federal troops off? No, we could not.

In the meantime the Western Federation of Miners and many unions of the American Federation of Labor even have an eighthour day and a minimum wage. Have they been declared unconstitutional? No, and they did not gain it through political action, but through economic organization.

The advocates of political working class activity predicate their success upon being “backed up” by an economic organization which is to take the chestnuts out of the fire for them. The economic organization stands on its own legs and declines political ‘”assistance.” The economic organization makes just such demands as it is able to enforce, and it is able to make demands and to enforce them from the very first, it does not have to wait for that hazy day when we shall have a majority. For them to waste their energy on the building up and maintaining of a political organization, which they afterwards would have to “back up,” only to awaken to a realization of its impotency, would be like crossing the river to fill your waterbucket, when you can just as well get your water on this side.

One more objection I will anticipate and meet. It will be said perhaps: “The workers have the right to vote, and, if we do not give them a chance to vote for revolution, they have no choice but to vote for capitalism.” But this objection has only a sentimental value. Some workingmen may feel some satisfaction in teasing the bear with a vote for revolution. I, for one, do not any longer. I do not enjoy practical jokes, and still less do I enjoy being insulted by having my ballot counted out. I wish to see my fellow workers quit wasting their time and energy on an illusion, drop politics, and unite on a plan of action which will bring about the results we desire, and that plan of action I find expressed in an economic organization on the lines of the IWW.

You will then, finally, ask: “What are we going to do with the political working class organizations already in existence, the Socialist Labor Party, and the Socialist Party?” The question is simple and easily answered. Both these organizations maintain that there is war between the two classes. In the war both of them have rendered splendid service, especially the SLP, in educating the workers up to the point where they were able to see the necessity of, and to form an economic organization like the IWW. They have done well as propaganda societies, but that is all they have ever been, their names and platforms notwithstanding. That they should have originally chosen the political field was natural, due to the deep rooted idea that all social evils can be cured at the ballot, in a “free” country. But their role is now played. In war, success depends often upon a complete change of front, upon a swift flank movement, upon abandoning one position and taking up a new one. Such movements are often necessary to avoid exposing your own men to your own fire. Such is the position of the SP and the SLP now. They are right in the line of fire. Their war cries are confusing and demoralizing the gathering proletarian army and may cause a temporary reverse. What kind of organization is theirs for war purposes ! It is a machine, a general staff, composed of sections, of locals, calling on their army (and an unreliable army it is) every two or four years for parade and review at the ballot box and then dismissing it. What sensible man could any longer participate in that sort of stage war? It is up to you to break up camp and take up the struggle from a point of vantage in the IWW and get out of the line of fire. Turn over your funds and your institutions at the earliest possible date to the IWW and let us join in the drilling and perfecting of the revolutionary industrial army which is never dismissed, but fights and forges forward irresistibly to the goal, the overthrow of capitalism and the establishing of the new society.

Before closing allow me again to request that my arguments be considered exclusively on their merits, and that every critic give as much time and sincere thought to the subject as I have.


Answer

Sandgren’s article falls within the general province of the burning question of Unionism, with a special eye to political activity, as its title indicates. The writer plants himself upon the industrial form of organization, or the IWW, as essential to the emancipation of the working class, and proceeds to present a chain of reasoning from which he concludes that the political movement is worthless, harmful and should be discarded, and he calls upon the Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Party to “break up camp,” and to “turn over their funds and institutions” to the IWW. Finally, the writer makes an earnest appeal for the serious consideration of his arguments, and invites discussion thereupon.

The writer’s premises are in the main wrong, and his conclusion is not only wronger, but not even logical, his own premises being defective. Nevertheless, the article is timely. Due to its timeliness, seeing that a perceptible anti-political sentiment has latterly broken out in several quarters, the article is published. Moreover, in honor to the good spirit which prompts the article, and for the purpose of systematizing the discussion which it invites and preventing the same from degenerating, as such discussions unfortunately but too frequently do, into an indefinite rambling that wanders more or less from the conclusion or the premises under consideration, the article will here be divided into its two main component parts, and these dissected.

I. Working Class Strength at the Ballot Box

After the first four introductory pages which can be safely left undiscussed, whether pro or con, the writer devotes much space to prove statistically that the working class does not outnumber the capitalist class at the polls, and hence the workingman’s ballot can never win. The figures are wrong. For one thing, part of them are nearly twenty years old; for another, the deductions are made only from the figures for the working class, whereas many a deduction should also be made from the figures for the voting strength of the capitalist class. Here are, for instance, a few serious discrepancies between the writer’s figures and the figures of the Census for 1900:

The writer estimates the foreign born population in 1900 at 18 per cent; the census states 23.7. The writer estimates the number of citizens among the foreign born at considerably below 10 per cent (6 per cent as capitalists and all voters, and of the remaining 12 per cent workingmen he says, “only a small part are voters”); the census for 1900 gives 80 per cent of foreign born males as citizens, and only 20 per cent of them as remaining aliens. The writer climaxes his errors under this head by subtracting his deductions, not from the working class population in 1900 (about 70 per cent), but from the working class population in 1890 (about 55 per cent).

Again, the writer deducts in lump from the voting strength of the working class “about 200,000 seafaring men” as unable to vote; the census for 1900 gives less than one-half that number, only 78,406 as the total for “boatmen and sailors,” exclusive of US sailors and marines who are comparatively few, seeing that, together with the soldiers, they number only 43,235 men.

Again, the writer overshoots his own mark. He points to the influence, physical and mental, that the ruling class exercises through “the strings of the bread and butter of millions of slaves” which that class “holds tightly,” as well as through its schools, press and pulpit, and concludes therefrom that these slaves “cannot vote for revolution.” If these influences, which no doubt must be reckoned with, are so absolutely controlling that these wage slaves will be too timid to perform even such a task as voting, a task that the veriest coward could perform with safety, and they must be deducted in lump from the voting strength of the working class, upon what ground can the writer feel justified to enroll those same slaves as reliable material for the revolutionary act of the IWW? If they must be excluded from the former, they cannot for a moment be thought of in the latter.

No doubt deductions must be made from the voting strength of the working class; but the necessary deductions are not the slashing ones made by the writer. Sc overwhelming is the numerical preponderance of the working class that, all justifiable deductions notwithstanding, it preserves an ample majority at the polls. Moreover, the revolutionary working class ballot may safely count with reinforcements from the middle and kindred hard-pushed social layers. While corrupt and vicious is all attempt to secure split votes for the revolution from classes that vote the rest of capitalist tickets, legitimate is the attempt to induce hard-pushed middle class elements to tear themselves from their class prejudices and plump their vote for the revolution and justified is the expectation that big chunks of that class will hearken the summons. If the decision for or against politics were to depend exclusively upon the numerical strength of the working class at the polls the decision would have to be for, not against.
 

II. The Mission of Politics

The second of the two main component parts of the writer’s article is devoted to proving that even if the working class ballot were more numerous than the ballot of the foe, the former would be counted out by the latter; and that, even if it were not counted put, working class political victory would be a Barmicide’s Feast, in that the Socialist Republic has no use for the political or modern form of government. Both these points have been enlarged upon and proven in detail in De Leon’s address on The Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World; they were proved so thoroughly that the pure and simple political Socialists, who felt the cold steel of the argument enter their bourgeois souls, have handled the argument like a hot potato, and confined themselves to vapid slurs about “vagaries,” or the more vapid indulgence in “calling names” against the maker of the argument. That argument, however, was made in support of the IWW position regarding the necessity of uniting the working class on the “political as well as upon the industrial field;” the writer of the article under discussion, on the contrary, makes the argument in opposition to the IWW position. The opposite application of the identical argument brings out the basic error that underlies Sandgren’s reasoning—he confuses political agitation with the ballot. The two are distinct. How completely the vital distinction is missed by those who oppose political action is graphically illustrated by a favorite argument among them, an argument that Sandgren reproduces in beautifully pictorial style when he says that for the working class “to waste their energy on the building up and maintaining of a political organization, which they’ afterwards have to ‘back up,’ only to awaken to a realization of its impotence, would be like crossing the river to fill your water-bucket, when you can just as well get your water on this side.” This is begging the question. The very point at issue is whether that economic organization, able “to fill the water-bucket,” can at all be brought together without the aid of political agitation; the very point at issue is whether the politics-ignoring economic organization has hitherto accomplished anything of lasting value to the working class at large; or to put it in yet a third and summary form, whether the decline of power with the economic organization is not due to its contradictory posture of “voting” for one thing and “striking” for its opposite. Of course, if such a thing is conceivable as the bringing together of an industrial organization, able “to fill the bucket” without the aid of political agitation, it were folly to waste time, energy and funds in building up and maintaining a political organization. But the thought is visionary. To him in whom such a thought can find lodgment the blood spilt in Russia during the last sixteen months is blood wasted—and the error is born of the confusion of “political agitation” with the “ballot.”

The value of the “ballot” as a constructive force is zero; the value of “political agitation” is immeasurable.

Not everything that capitalism has brought about is to be rejected. Such a vandal view would have to smash the giant machine of modern production as well. Among the valuable things that capitalism has introduced is the idea of peaceful methods for settling disputes. In feudal days, when lords fell out, production stopped; war had the floor. The courts of law have become; the main fields of capitalist, at least internal capitalist battle, and production continues uninterfered with. It matters not how corrupt the courts have become, or one-sided against the working class. The jewel of civilized or peaceful methods for settling disputes is there, however incrusted with slime. Capitalism, being a step forward as all Socialists recognize, cannot help but be a handmaid, however clumsy, to civilized methods. Of a piece with the court method for the peaceful settlement of disputes, is the political method. The organization that rejects this method and organizes for force only, reads itself out of the pale of civilization, with the practical result that, instead of seizing a weapon furnished by capitalism, it gives capitalism a weapon against itself. The “filling of the bucket” must be done by the million-masses. The agitation for force only clips the wings of the agitation for the “filling of the bucket.” The inevitable result is that the agitation has to degenerate into “conspiracy;” conspiracy can be conducted in circumscribed localities only, such localities exclude the masses—and the wheels of time are turned back. The bringing together of the physical force organization becomes impossible. Political agitation equips the revolution with a weapon that is indispensable. Political agitation enables the revolution to be preached in the open, and thereby enables the revolution to be brought before the million-masses—without which there can be no “bucket” fashioned to do the “filling.” In short, political agitation, coupled with the industrial organization able to “take and hold,” or “back up” the political movement, or “fill the bucket,” places the revolution abreast of civilized and intelligent methods civilized, because they offer a chance to a peaceful solution; intelligent, because they are not planted upon the visionary plane of imagining that right can ever prevail without the might to enforce it. Of course, “political agitation” implies the setting up of a political ticket, and that, in turn, implies the “ballot.” Indeed, the “ballot” may be lost; let it; the fruits, however, of the “political agitation” are imperishable. Under the shield of that agitation the “bucket” is shaped. To Father Time the final issue may be safely left. No doubt there are many thorns to the rose of the political movement. No rose is without them. Irrelevant is the enumeration of these thorns. What the adversaries of political action in the IWW should do in the endeavor to convert their fellow workers of the opposite view is not to indulge in the superfluous repetition regarding the folly of the political movement when the “bucket” is in shape, but how the “bucket” can be put in shape without the aid of the agitation and education which the poktical movement places in the hands of the revolution.

*   *   *

The Socialist Party will as little “break up camp,” by the argument, however crushingly convincing, of the futility of the “ballot” only, as the capitalist class will break up camp by the argument, however crushingly convincing, that it is doomed. For that the SP is too legitimate an offshoot of bourgeois thought, which is clogged with “reform” notions, and for which the pure and simple ballot is a useful weapon. The SP will break up camp only when the revolutionary element in its ranks discovers that it is upon their shoulders that such a caricature of Socialism actually rests, and that it is from them only that the caricature draws its strength. The SP will “break up camp” only when this revolutionary element, by withdrawing, removes the plug from under the concern. As to the Socialist Labor Party, it never will need to be appealed to “to break up camp” after the “bucket” of the IWW, having gathered sufficient solidity, will itself have reflected its own political party. That day the SLP will “break up camp” with a shout of joy if a body merging into its own ideal can be said to “break up camp.”—Ed. The People