arty is still in a crude state and the members economically and
politically unfit to assume the responsibilities thrust upon them as the
result of popular discontent, will inevitably bring trouble and set the
party back, instead of advancing it, and while this is to be expected
and is to an extent unavoidable, we should court no more of that kind of
experience than is necessary to avoid a repetition of it. The Socialist
party has already achieved some victories of this kind which proved to
be defeats, crushing and humiliating, and from which the party has not
even now, after many years, entirely recovered.

We have just so much socialism that is stable and dependable, because
securely grounded in economics, in discipline and all else that
expresses class-conscious solidarity, and this must be augmented
steadily through economic and political organization, but no amount of
mere votes can accomplish this in even the slightest degree.

A vote for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal.

Socialism must be organized, drilled, equipped, and the place to begin
is in the industries where the workers are employed. Their economic
power has got to be developed through efficient organization, or their
political power, even if it could be developed, would but react upon
them, thwart their plans, blast their hopes, and all but destroy them.

Such organization to be effective must be expressed in terms of
industrial unionism. Each industry must be organized in its entirety,
embracing all the workers, and all working together in the interests of
all, in the true spirit of solidarity, thus laying the foundation and
developing the superstructure of the new system within the old, from
which it is evolving, and systematically fitting the workers, step by
step, to assume entire control of the productive forces when the hour
strikes for the impending organic change.

Without such economic organization and the economic power with which it
is clothed, and without the industrial co-operative training, discipline
and efficiency which are its corollaries, the fruit of any political
victories the workers may achieve will turn to ashes on their lips.

Now that the capitalist system is so palpably breaking down, and in
consequence its political parties breaking up, the disintegrating
elements with vague reform ideas and radical bourgeois tendencies will
head in increasing numbers toward the Socialist party, especially since
t