The under-appreciated Caroline Nelson was a Danish-born revolutionary Socialist, feminist and birth control activist, west coast I.W.W. leader, writer and lecturer. Here she looks at the division in the Socialist Party between its largely middle-class leadership and its largely working class rank-and-file.

‘From Below! The Strength of the Socialist Movement’ by Caroline Nelson from Revolt (San Francisco). Vol. 2 No. 12. September 16, 1911.

A man is said to have once got into the workshop of nature; there he found God at work, His whole attention riveted on something in hand. The intruder dared not disturb the Almighty. At last God looked up.

“Art thou shaping the wings of an angel?” asked the man.

“I am working on a flea’s leg,” was the answer. We estimate men and things according to the standard of value that exists for the time being. We Socialists are part and parcel of the society we live in. Our whole philosophy shows us that it is the man in overalls that carries the social structure on his back. Nevertheless, we cannot practically understand that therefore it is of vastly more importance for us to get the overall brigade in our ranks than it is to get the whole professional and middle class. Why? Don’t we want trained brains? Yes, but not trained in the capitalist philosophy and tactics, which is based upon deception all along the line. But suppose we should get the whole middle class into our movement, and every one of them unload their mental poison before entering our ranks, and become revolutionary Socialists, what good would it do? As long as the man in overalls sticks to his task and obeys his master, the world remains as it is.

I was attending a meeting of a Local the other night. The secretary was reading a long line of new members; suddenly there was applause. This was caused by the reading of a minister’s name. What can such exhibitions mean? The ministers in our day are simply wage slaves who must speak to suit minds which hold the purse string in their churches. So let us rejoice when they step down from the pulpit, where they have used the name of Christ in vain. But why should we rejoice over them, any more than over the man in overalls? Because our minds are of the mongrel type, half capitalist and half proletarian.

The overall brigade is stupid, we say. Very well, comrade, suppose that is true, remember our civilization is resting on those stupid backs just the same. A few years ago when Mr. Middle Class had a much better seat on the very stupid back, he said: “The world is good enough as it is,” and became red in his face at hearing the word “Socialism.” He was then interested in keeping the man in overalls stupid. Now he becomes red in his face the moment the overalls man refuses to listen to his Socialism, and he says: “This is a terrible world, but the workers can never understand Socialism. So we must make it respectable to appeal to the better class of people.”

In the workshop of Socialism to-day we want to make angels’ wings, instead of bracing up the legs in overalls. So much nicer, you know. Only remember that the man in overalls doesn’t care a pin-head about our angelic orators. For thousands of years he has heard about a new spiritual age where the lamb and the lion lie down together peacefully. But he is just finding out that it is the nature of the lion to eat the lamb, so he begins to wonder why he should play lamb. Every day he is being driven by the lion into a corner where he must take his last stand to fight for his life, while our sentimental comrades speak about dreams and ideals of the co-operative commonwealth. It is not their fault. It is the legacy left to us from a previous social environment. But shall it be permitted to stifle our movement?

The man in overalls is the man of all men to-day. HE ALONE HAS HIS HANDS UPON THE THROAT OF THE SYSTEM. The supreme question of the moment is–what will he do? He is not clear upon this question yet. It is our supreme privilege as Socialists to clear his mind upon this subject. It is our mission. A man in our movement of the overalls brigade is therefore worth a whole dozen of ministers, lawyers and petty merchants put together, because he is in the bottom from whence this structure of capitalism alone can be overthrown. The new social power grows from the bottom up, not from the top down.

In our day we know of no power except financial or authoritative power. Many of our comrades write and speak as though there were no other power. Political power is purely authoritative. It is a delegated affair. The dominant economic power uses this delegated power of the people because it controls the means of life. The workers can use no delegated power before they have any power to so delegate. The worker’s only power is his labor power. Until this labor power is organized, it can have no political power. Unorganized labor is a helpless slave product. It is politically nothing upon the industrial and economic field. From nothing something cannot come, except phantoms. A political candidate running with no economic power back of him, if elected, becomes a ghostly god we may pray to but never compel. Indeed, all he can do is to be a nice business man, and transact business according to the laws made by the dominant class. These laws are all made to skin the worker, to job him of his product. Does it satisfy the workers to have their own candidate in power? Very well. They can have that, provided he will put his revolutionary ideas aside for the time being. That is all right for the future. The slaves always could have anything they wanted in the sweet by and by.

But political candidates come and go. The man in overalls remains. Upon his back he carries the world. Should he count in the Socialist movement? The answer is–the Socialist movement doesn’t count without him. Marx spoke to the man in overalls, but we are too high-minded for him. We can’t make ourselves understood.

Revolt ‘The Voice Of The Militant Worker’ was a short-lived revolutionary weekly newspaper published by Left Wingers in the Socialist Party in 1911 and 1912 and closely associated with Tom Mooney. The legendary activists and political prisoner Thomas J. Mooney had recently left the I.W.W. and settled in the Bay. He would join with the SP Left in the Bay Area, like Austin Lewis, William McDevitt, Nathan Greist, and Cloudseley Johns to produce The Revolt. The paper ran around 1500 copies weekly, but financial problems ended its run after one year. Mooney was also embroiled in constant legal battles for his role in the Pacific Gas and Electric Strike of the time. The paper epitomizes the revolutionary Left of the SP before World War One with its mix of Marxist orthodoxy, industrial unionism, and counter-cultural attitude. To that it adds some of the best writers in the movement; it deserved a much longer run.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/revolt/v2n16-w25-oct-14-1911-Revolt.pdf