"We are a very active and growing section of the Socialist Party who are attempting to reach the rank and file with our urgent message over the heads that be, who, through inertia or a lack of vision, cannot see the necessity for a critical analysis of the party's policies and tactics.... "In the latter part of the nineteenth century the Social-Democracies of Europe set out to 'legislate capitalism out of office.' The class struggle was to be won in the capitalist legislatures. Step by step concessions were to be wrested from the state; the working class and the Socialist parties were to be strengthened by means of 'constructive' reform and social legislation; each concession would act as a rung in the ladder of Social Revolution, upon which the workers could climb step by step, until finally, some bright sunny morning, the peoples would awaken to find the Cooperative Commonwealth functioning without disorder, confusion or hitch on the ruins of the capitalist state. "And what happened? When a few legislative seats had been secured, the thunderous denunciations of the Socialist legislators suddenly ceased. No more were the parliaments used as platforms from which the challenge of revolutionary Socialism was flung to all the corners of Europe. Another era had set in, the era of 'constructive' social reform legislation. Dominant Moderate Socialism accepted the bourgeois state as the basis of its action and strengthened that state. All power to shape the policies and tactics of the Socialist parties was entrusted to the parliamentary leaders. And these lost sight of Socialism's original purpose; their goal became 'constructive reforms' and cabinet portfolios--the 'cooperation of classes,' the policy of openly or tacitly declaring that the coming of Socialism was a concern 'of all the classes,' instead of emphasizing the Marxian policy that the construction of the Socialist system is the task of the revolutionary proletariat alone.... "The 'Moderates' emphasized petty-bourgeois reformism in order to attract tradesmen, shop-keepers and members of the professions, and, of course, the latter flocked to the Socialist movement in great numbers, seeking relief from the constant grinding between corporate capital and awakening labor.... "Dominant 'Moderate Socialism' forgot the teachings of the founders of scientific Socialism, forgot its function as a proletarian movement--'the most resolute and advanced section of the working class parties'--and permitted the bourgeois and self-seeking trade union elements to shape its policies and tactics. This was the condition in which the Social-Democracies of Europe found themselves at the outbreak of the war in 1914. Demoralized and confused by the cross-currents within their own parties, vacillating and compromising with the bourgeois state, they fell a prey to social-patriotism and nationalism. "But revolutionary Socialism was not destined to lie inert for long. In Germany, Karl Liebknecht, Franz Mehring, Rosa Luxemburg and Otto Rhule organized the Spartacus group. But their voices were drowned in the roar of cannon and the shriek of the dying and maimed. "Russia, however, was to be the first battle-ground where the 'moderate' and revolutionary Socialism should come to grips for the mastery of the state. The break-down of the corrupt, bureaucratic Czarist regime opened the floodgates of Revolution.... "'Moderate Socialism' was not prepared to seize the power for the workers during a revolution. 'Moderate Socialism' had a rigid formula--'constructive social reform legislation within the capitalist state,' and to that formula it clung.... "Revolutionary Socialists hold, with the founders of Scientific Socialism, that there are two dominant classes in society--the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; that between these two classes a struggle must go on, until the working class, through the seizure of the instruments of production and distribution, the abolition of the capitalist state, and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, creates a Socialist system. Revolutionary Socialists do not believe that they can be voted into power. They struggle for the conquest of power by the revolutionary proletariat.... "The 'moderate Socialist' proposes to use the bourgeois state with its fraudulent democracy, its illusory theory of 'unity of all the classes,' its standing army, police and bureaucracy oppressing and baffling the masses; the revolutionary Socialist maintains that the bourgeois state must be completely destroyed, and proposes the organization of a new state--the state of the organized producers--of the Federated Soviets--on the basis of which alone can Socialism be introduced. "Industrial Unionism, the organization of the proletariat in accordance with the integration of industry and for the overthrow of Capitalism, is a necessary phase of revolutionary Socialist agitation. Potentially, industrial unionism constructs the basis and develops the ideology of the industrial state of Socialism; but industrial unionism alone cannot perform the revolutionary act of seizure of the power of the state, since under the conditions of Capitalism it is impossible to organize the whole working class, or an overwhelming majority into industrial unionism. "It is the task of a revolutionary Socialist party to direct the struggles of the proletariat and provide a program for the culminating crisis."
Julius Hammer, in a letter published in "The Call," April 4, 1919, speaking of the Left Wing, says: