and parliamentarism, and
substituted a Democracy, grouped around unions, and not around
parliaments.

"But the political Socialists, immersed in parliamentary hack work,
stifled the Socialist concept of Democracy by recognizing and
participating in the capitalist form of Democracy. Entering the
parliaments, they dreamed that they could transform these
parliaments into Socialist republics. Only too soon they discovered
that the parliaments had transformed them into 'Democratic'
apologists. Like a poisoning strain, parliamentarism spread out
over Socialism. And so, when Socialism came at last in Russia,
without the aid of the foolish parliaments, deluded Socialists
cried that Bolshevism was not Socialism."

The year 1919 witnessed a very marked drawing together, in the United
States and throughout the world, of I. W. W.'ism, or Syndicalism, and
all the bodies of radical, revolutionary Socialism. The Moscow
Bolshevists gave a great "boost" to the I. W. W. principle of industrial
unionism by endorsing it and declaring that Russia was being
reorganized economically along similar lines. Bolshevism in Russia, in
fact, has had the help and counsel of I. W. W. experts from the United
States, and I. W. W. leaders in America have naturally been elated. John
Sandgren wrote in "The New Solidarity," April 12, 1919:

"The immortal gains of Bolshevism for humanity lie on the political
field. When it comes to economic reconstruction, the Bolsheviks are
going to find that it cannot be made from the top through laws and
regulations. Any attempt to make the people the real owners of the
means of production and distribution must start with the industrial
organization of the workers themselves as outlined in the I. W. W.
program. In the meantime, let us hope that Bolshevism will sweep
victoriously over all such parts of the world where it still has a
mission to perform. After that, begins the I. W. W. period in human
history."

The April 1, 1919, issue of "The One Big Union Monthly," published the
Russian Communist Party call and invitation to the Moscow Conference
[see Chapter III for a copy of this document], remarking that "as to the
general demand for the overthrow of Capitalism, the dis-establishment of
private ownership and making the working-class the rulers of the world,
there is apt to be little if any dissension." Howe