Conclusions and the Issues at Stake
TO DRAW CONCLUSIONS merely from visible surface facts and general experiences, has
only a limited value and does not permit us to see clearly the character of future
developments. History does not move in a straight line, the zig-zags are not determined
by one trend, but are a composite of under-currents which must be taken into serious
consideration.
In each country the interests of the ruling-class are closely bound up with the country's
previous history, existing relations, and its particular position within the frame
of a given world situation. Any activities, alliances, losses, and opportunities
are power and property relations. All external shifts, changes, and struggles are thus
irrevocably connected with internal shifts and struggles between the classes, and
within the ruling-class or group.
No doubt, all previous existing ruling groups have hindered the development of a truly
social production and distribution. The key to the understanding of history lies
in the historical development of labour.
The class-struggle alone will be the decisive and determining factor, with its highest
point - the revolution. The latter is a matter of tactics.
As we have seen, in the practical field of revolutionary and social activities, the
political parties are no better informed than the masses. This has been proved in
all actual revolutionary struggles. As long as parties operate as separate groups
within the mass, the mass is not revolutionary, but neither are the parties. They can only
function as capitalist appendages.
The fact remains, the liberation of the working class, can only be carried out by
the working class itself. Since the teachings of Marx, Bakunin, and others, many
shifts and changes have taken place in the political, economic and social spheres.
There are no such things as eternal values. It is therefore, not enough to merely repeat the
teachings and timely truths of our pioneers and advisers, we must develop them and
carry them out.
The period when Capitalism was advancing is past, and with it the basis of the old
forms of organisation. Every epoch has its own forms of organisation, which are significant
for the onward movement of that same period in the course of development. However, with the beginnings of a new period, the old organisational forms hamper more and
more the new development. The older forms which were used as a means of progress
in the beginning of a particular period, become at the end of that same period a
hampering factor, and their effect is highly reactionary. The time of the, still-in some parts
of the world, existing capitalistic labour organisations is obviously past.
New conditions must be met with new forms of organisations and methods and with the
least possible delay. The workers themselves, organised as a revolutionary class
must act. The workers must be the masters, not the servants of their own organisations.
The working class is in need of a movement which will closely trace the paths of its
own laws of motion. An entirely new movement based on working class solidarity, unification
on the job, free and independent workers councils in cadres of self-asserting fighting units, based on ships, rail, aircraft, workshops, pits, factories and agricultural
communities. The workers do not require professional leaders, our confidential men
shall be class-conscious comrades and teachers only, dismissable at any time by a
vote of their direct electors.
We have no ready-made blue-prints of the near future, but we will dare to predict
that the present world-war will inevitably end with a deeper economic and social
crisis with revolutionary consequences. The self-acting workers of Europe, freed
from the ties of outmoded organisational forms, will not wait for the call of professional party
leaders. There will be at, at last a true revolutionary working class movement on
the European Continent.
Part 9
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