action:
"Experience in all countries shows most conclusively that industrial
organization, intelligently conducted, is of much more moment than
political action, for, entirely irrespective as to which school of
politicians is in power, capable and courageous industrial activity
forces from the politicians proportionate concessions.... Indeed, it is
obvious that a growing proportion of the intelligent pioneers of
economic changes are expressing more and more dissatisfaction with
Parliament and all its works, and look forward to the time when
Parliaments, as we know them, will be superseded by the people managing
their own affairs by means of the Initiative and the Referendum."[260]
The last sentence shows that Mr. Mann had somewhat modified his aversion
to politics, for the Initiative and Referendum is a political and not an
economic device. His objection to politics in the form of
parliamentarism (that is, trusting everything to elected persons, or
_representatives_) as distinguished from direct democracy, would
probably meet the views of the majority of Socialists everywhere (except
in Great Britain).

A later declaration of Mr. Mann after his return from Australia to
England shows that he now occupies the same ground as Debs and Haywood
in America--favoring a revolutionary party as well as revolutionary
unions:--

"The present-day degradation of so large a percentage of the
workers is directly due to their economic enslavement; and it is
economic freedom that is demanded.

"Now Parliamentary action is at all times useful, in proportion as
it makes for economic emancipation of the workers. But Socialists
and Labour men in Parliament can only do effective work there in
proportion to the intelligence and economic organization of the
rank and file....

"Certainly nothing very striking in the way of constructive work
could reasonably be expected from the minorities of the Socialists
and Labour men hitherto elected. But the most moderate and
fair-minded are compelled to declare that, not in one country but
in all, a proportion of those comrades who, prior to being
returned, were unquestionably revolutionary, are no longer so after
a few years in Parliament. They are revolutionary neither in their
attitude towards existing society nor in respect of present-day
institutions. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that many seem
to