Marcy says our individual needs as workers can only be met through collective action as a class.
‘Why Should I Be a Socialist?’ by Jack Morton (Mary E. Marcy) from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 15 No. 9. March, 1915.
THIS is the question an Illinois coal miner asked us recently. “Why should I be a Socialist?” he said “Will socialism GET ME ANYTHING?”
And it was an intelligent question. Why should you be interested in blue sky mining stock? Why should you be interested in the Republican Party? In the Progressives or in the Democratic Party? Will SOCIALISM GET YOU ANYTHING?
Socialism appeals to the economic interest, furthers the bread-and-butter interest of the working class. There IS something in it for YOU and ME. There is everything in it for those who work.
If the workers were class conscious and experienced in fighting AS A CLASS, they would be able to abolish the present wages system today. But they are NOT organized and they are NOT accustomed to fighting AS A CLASS.
What we need before we can accomplish much that will benefit the workers, is experience in fighting AS a class–in other words, education and organization.
You understand perfectly well that you cannot fight the boss alone. You know that if you are to strike you need the co-operation of your fellow-workers to win any concessions from the man who employs you. And you know that the more men you have in your union, the more who strike with you, the more chance there is of your winning a victory.
But what happens when you start to organize the men in any industry as you did in West Virginia? What has kept the miners in Colorado and in Calumet from organizing themselves into a union?
All the recent strikes of the American miners are so fresh in our minds that we have not forgotten that it was a PROGRESSIVE Governor in West Virginia who arrested Mother Jones, who declared martial law, permitted hired thugs to murder the strikers and their wives and children. We have seen REPUBLICAN and PROGRESSIVE protecting the mine owners while they incarcerated strike breakers, forcing them to work in the mines and preventing their escape with search lights and machine guns.
In Colorado we have seen the great Democrat, Ammons, permit the actual hired murderers of the Rockefeller interests to be sworn in to the state militia so that they should have the protection of the uniform in their cowardly murders.
It was PROGRESSIVE Governor Johnson of California who sent his soldiers to Sacramento, armed with guns, to help drive members of your class and MY class out of that city because they were unable to secure work.
Many of us have wanted Something NOW so much that we have elected these men to office. And we have got SOMETHING NOW, but it was not what we wanted.
As long as the master class, the owning class, the class composed of the employers of labor, is able to control the COURTS, THE POLICE FORCE, the ARMY AND THE NAVY, just so long will they be able to break up our attempts at organization on the industrial field.
Start into an industrial center and try to organize the men working in the shops or mills. You will find that the shop and factory and mill bosses OWN the judges, the lawyers, the police force. They can send a hundred organizers to jail on any trumped-up charge they choose. They can discharge the union men and have all the protection they want for their imported gun-men and strike breakers, while the militia or police (who protect their scabs and thugs) will force you to submission.
The entire forces of the law belong to your boss if he chooses to invoke them. The Republicans and Democrats proved this long ago and the Progressives have come along and showed themselves just as willing to serve the OWNING class and to harm the working class as the two old parties.
The only man you can be sure of in ANY office is the man whose interests are bound up with YOUR interests. You can always trust YOURSELF. Therefore put your trust in yourself and your comrades whose interests are identical with your own.
This is why Socialism means something to you RIGHT NOW. There is very little use in going out on a strike for higher wages today unless you have all the men and women in your shop or your industry striking with you. This means a large measure of organization. And your boss will prevent such organization and will defeat your strike just as long as he has the power to use the courts, the police and the militia against you.
This is why you must seize these powers and use them in your own interests. You must elect socialists from your own class and you must make these elected officials the servants of those who work. You must direct them and tell them what you and your working class comrades want done in every event.
No matter how good any man is, he won’t know what YOU want so well as YOU do. So make your elected socialist officials YOUR representatives to carry out YOUR wishes.
A socialist Mayor in Ohio was called upon to preserve the “peace” by the owners of a factory who had a strike in their shops. He promptly hired the strikers at $3.00 a day “to see that order was maintained.”
When the silk strikers at Paterson were denied the use of the streets, it was the socialist mayor in Haledon who invited them to come to that city to hold meetings. In a time of strike the right of free speech, the right to organize, the right to educate are absolutely vital. And Haledon was able to extend these favors to her comrades who were refused these privileges in Paterson.
It is true that the Mayor of Haledon could not, of his own initiative, raise the wages of all the factory workers in Haledon, while the wages system lasts. But he could guarantee them the right to hold meetings, to organize, to carry on their work of propaganda. He could PROTECT them from the hired thugs of the bosses. He could arrest these thugs.
The miners of Colorado fought to enforce some of the statutes that are already on the law books of the state. But the Colorado Governor was a tool of the Rockefeller Interests and would not enforce any laws these Interests chose to disregard. In fact, he sent Rockefeller’s own gun employees, garbed in the suits of militiamen, to shoot the miners who were fighting to enforce these laws.
NOW.
So you see that the law and those who either enforce or BREAK the law are of vast import in your fight, for SOMETHING It is the duty of the elected socialists to MAKE the law, to interpret the law–IN THE INTERESTS of the WORKING CLASS, under the direction of the working class.
This is why you need all the socialists in office you can elect today. When you elect a socialist, he signs his resignation papers before he accepts office so that at the moment you feel he is not serving the interests of the working CLASS, you and your comrades can withdraw him. But the man who is elected from the working class and whose success or failure is determined by the confidence of his comrades, will serve your interests nine times out of ten, because in this way he will be serving his OWN interests.
We have had years of sad experience with the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Progressives have shown us where they stand in unmistakable terms during the past four years. It is time we began to elect our own comrades, OURSELVES to serve our own class. Think this over and write us if you find any good reason why every working man should not be a socialist.
And do not forget that the Socialist Party is the only Party that demands the value of his product for the worker.
The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.
PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v15n09-mar-1915-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf
