Austin Lewis says one does not make something Socialist by calling it Socialism, and the trade union movement is not Socialism.

‘No Surrender!’ by Austin Lewis from Revolt (San Francisco). Vol. 1 No. 4. May 20, 1911.

 Stand Firm For True Socialist Principles.

Here is a matter which is making considerable bother at the present time and concerning which there is much unnecessary display of temper, flourishing of incandescent oratory, and confusion in general. The matter is as to how far the trades unionists have a mortgage on the work, money and energy of the Socialists.

It has always appeared to the writer that, a Socialist is first and exclusively a Socialist; that is, that he adopts a theory of society, and a theory of politics, consequently, incompatible with any other theory. He is then compelled to make his propaganda on its own merits, to maintain his own political organization, to state his own political platform and otherwise to strive patiently and slowly forward, trusting in his theoretical correctness and the development of industry to prove his case.

All the talk in the world will not affect the substantial correctness of this position. Socialism is either something or nothing. It develops independent traits, it has its own methods of expression, it has its role to play in the social world, the world of industry and the world of politics or, it amounts to nothing at all.

You cannot make Socialists by calling people who are not Socialists, Socialists. You cannot call that a Socialist vote which is in favor of cheap gas and which is a spite vote cast at old officials. To call a platform which is not a Socialist platform Socialist is not to destroy the meaning of Socialism, which is too universally understood to be damaged in the eyes of its adherents or to be disarmed in the estimation of its enemies thereby. In fact, to do so subjects one to the sneering criticism of the informed, who declare that you dare not call Socialism by its right name, you dare not state the true Socialist position, but you are driven to commit a fraud on the electorate in order to obtain political standing.

Thus shame is brought upon the movement. Those who understand the Socialist movement are obliged to blush for the miserable falsehoods and the economic fallacies which are perpetrated in the name of the clearest and most concise view of economics which the ages have brought forth. History is wrenched from its place and, twisted and distorted, is made to serve the needs of the demagogues or trailed in the dust to pander to the emotions of the mob that the desecrator of knowledge may obtain some small place or emolument.

All this and worse follows from the abandonment of the Socialist position. There is no limit to the degree of degradation when once the movement downwards has begun and the name Socialism may easily be made a mocking and a byword to the working class which consequently may seek its destined goal under some other banner. This would be unfortunate, considering the heroic role which Socialism has played in the later stages of the labor movement.

When we are called upon to sacrifice the Socialist movement on the altar of trade unionism we are compelled to ask how and since when have the trade unionists become Socialists? Then we are informed that the trade union movement is not a Socialist movement; in many cases we are shown that the labor unionists are bitter and vehement antagonists of Socialists, that really nowhere will the trade unionists accept the Socialist platform. Because they cannot, the fundamental doctrine of trades unionism, which regards the workers as peddlers of labor power, being entirely antagonistic to the Socialist conception.

But we are told that we must sacrifice the identity of the Socialist party because the trade unionists are threatened with persecution. To this we reply that we as Socialists everywhere are ready to stand up for a free press for freedom of speech and for the constitutional guarantees upon which the bourgeois state was founded and which are necessary to the development of all progressive movements. This we are ready to do here as we have always been ready to do before. We showed it in the Moyer-Haywood case, we have shown it on a thousand occasions where these fundamental rights have been neglected and when our people have gone to jail with the sneers of union labor as their reward.

It will not do. We can stand for organized labor wherever the constitutional guarantees are threatened, as we have always done. But surrender our party and our propaganda, to trail our banner in the dust and to corrupt our economic faith because organized labor needs our votes, and because political preferment seems possible to certain ambitious Socialists? This simply will not do!

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/v1n04-may-20-1911-Revolt.pdf