Mass Action.

 (By GEORGE REVERE.)

We reprint this article by request of members who would like to see it brought under the notice of a larger number of readers. It originally appeared in "The Proletarian" and "American Communist" paper, and is reprinted from No. 7 (Dec., 1921) "The Proletarian."
The Communist International lays it down without equivocation that it is by mass action that the workers conquer power. Certain hare-brained revolutionists therefore imagine that it is the duty of Communists here to call upon the Australian proletariat forthwith to hurl itself in open insurrection against the capitalist State. On the other hand, certain "Socialists of the Centre" charge the Communists who accept mass action as the process of the proletarian revolution with adopting an anarchist tactic. Although it deals with America and American conditions, in the hope that it may assist both these sections to a more correct understanding we reprint from an American publication the following article:—
The Communist movement in the United States has recently experienced a valuable discussion of mass action. As this discussion developed and it became a serious attempt to make more definite the vague generalities of the original Communist Party and Communist Labour programmes, there was undoubtedly a sharpening of understanding all around. By this time the thought on mass action has become crystallised, in the resolutions of the United Communist and of the Federation conventions, also in many resolutions by district conventions and by other groups. But this is a subject never to be exhausted except by the achievement of the revolution. Mass action, in the final analysis, is no more subject to rigid precalculation than the class struggle itself. Indeed, mass action may be said to be both the method and the totality of the proletarian action to conquer power.
What is mass action ? What are its forms ? What is the relation of our Party to mass action? What is the relationship between mass action and Parliamentarism, mass action and Unionism, mass action and the revolution? These questions are before us. Needless to say, this article does not contemplate a full treatment of any of these questions, but only a general introduction.

Present Stage of Class Struggle.

A short statement of the present status of capitalism and of the class struggle is a necessary preliminary.
Capitalism is now on its last legs. It is beyond the point when its own processes can end the world war and disorganisation which it brought on humanity. With the surplus seeking re-investment growing to dizzy proportions, there never was a time of more desperate struggle for the less developed fields of exploitation. The international financiers attempt to unite and reconcile the national conflicts between the capitalist groups, but the threat—the actuality of war has become perpetual. The State proceeds on a war basis continuously, acting instantly and without discussion through the administrative bureaucracies.
Both the external and internal situation create a frantic demand for greater disciplining of the workers—a disciplining in which the purposes of military and industrial subserviency are blended into one. This is undertaken by State, supported by all of the lesser middle class groups seeking reservations against application of rigorous policies to themselves while supporting them against the masses in general. Such is the policy even of those unionists who consider that their contracts and their legal and social status gives them sufficient stake to make them defenders of the capitalist order. This is the policy of Gomperism, the policy of craft-unionism in general. The disciplining of the workers has been typified in the United States by the usual methods of using armies of officials, private detectives, and volunteer detectives in an elaborate programme of espionage and bullying. The recent deportation fiasco, the wholesale arrests of strikers, the efforts to crush any political expression of the revolutionary aims of the proletariat, are examples. Not only is the freedom of the workers curtailed, but there is a frenzied intolerance against old-fashioned trade-unionism, as evidenced by the renewed fight for the open shop, led by Judge Gary.
With the more open use of the State functions to suppress the workers and destroy their organisations, we witness frequent and more direct collisions between the workers and the State. The State loses all distinctness from the unified capitalist class. Its interference and control constitute the last barrier against capitalist collapse.

Parliamentary and Union Action.

To the "constitutional" or legalised Socialists the control of a Parliamentary majority is the road to control of the State. By means of the golden key of universal suffrage they look to win the Parliamentary majority, thus to unlock the sanctuary of Socialism. Thus the conquest of political power is a gentle, smooth process, depending entirely upon propaganda and elections.
To rely upon Parliamentarism as the means for the proletariat conquest of power is to expect the capitalists to yield themselves to the forms and legality manufactured by themselves. Neither will the forms adapt themselves to such a fulfilment, nor would the capitalists meekly accept it. Parliamentarism, at most, is a means for broadening the latitude of the workers' struggle, for developing understanding and consciousness. This is not done by creating the illusion of the Parliamentary process as itself the decisive force against Capitalism, but only by a use of the elections and seats in the legislative chambers as means for the enlightenment of the working masses. It is a question when, if ever, the Communists of the United States will be permitted to make nominations on a class basis of absolute opposition to the capitalist State and its Parliamentary system; but this system, but this is only a question of one form of propaganda, nothing else.
The Labour Union which does not peddle in protocols and agreements, but wages its struggle as part of the class war of Labour against Capital, is "the great school of organisation and discipline." It teaches class solidarity, the dependence of the individual worker upon the group, of the group on the whole class. Aside from the danger of reactionary organisations, Unionism pure and simple is no more sufficient than Parliamentarism for the class purposes of the proletariat. Whether craft or industrial, the Union by itself is mainly a centre of resistance against the encroachment of capital.
That Communism will fall into our laps through the folded-arm strike is a phantasy, though the mass strike of large proportions is of tremendous significance in the struggle. To build a new society within the shell of the old, to organise peacefully all or even a majority of the workers into Industrial Unions, these to constitute in themselves the administration of the new society, is fully as ingenuous as the Socialist idea that the new society is to be legislated into being through a majority at the ballot-box under the auspices of the ruling class. All theorising about a peaceful, automatic, nicely arranged, invisible revolution is simply the theory of no revolution. But this is not to deny the great importance of Industrial Union organisation and action in the process of the class struggle.
There is no antithesis between mass action, Parliamentarism and Union action. Only it is clear that neither Parliamentarism, nor Unionism in any form, nor Parliamentarism and Unionism together, present a programme of actual revolutionary struggle for proletarian conquest of power. We have seen that it is the capitalist State against which the workers must finally array themselves; and this the workers cannot hope to do under the beneficent protection and within the processes of that State itself. We turn, then, to the action of the working masses, which is independent of and in defiance of the State permission and regulations.

Definition of Mass Action.

The Dutch Communist scholar, Pannekoek, gives the following definition of mass action: —"When we speak of mass-action, we mean an extra-Parliamentary political act of the working class, by which it operates directly and not through the medium of political delegates. The organised labour fights in which the masses have hitherto engaged as soon as they have come to have political significance develop into mass action. In the question of mass action there is, therefore, also involved simply the broadening of the field of action of the proletarian organisation."
The special features of mass action are:— (1) An extra-Parliamentary medium; (2) a political aim or result; (3) direct mass-participation, not the act of a delegate or delegates; and (4) an organised form.
The workers act directly, not by intervention of intermediate persons. Their victories or defeats are forged by themselves, not by any little tin gods in congress. There is no delay, no avoidance of action through reliance upon representatives. The mass acts in direct relation to the goal immediately to be achieved. It does not choose anyone to take care of its interests generally as occasion warrants; it acts upon the instant occasion, directly imposing its will by its immediate display of power.
Again, these acts are political, which means that their aim or result is a forced concession from the bourgeois State, a weakening or overturning of the power of the capitalists, a strengthening or the complete establishment of the political power of the proletariat. But this does not mean that every mass action is consciously sent out for a political objective. Since, however, virtually every large-scale proletarian action is bound to come into collision with the State in some form or other, even strikes with purely economic demands now tend to take on political significance, as happened in Winnipeg and Seattle.
Mass action does not mean mob action. As the Pannekoek definition indicates, the question is one of broadening the field of organised proletarian action. Indeed, the conception of mass action is absolutely bound up with the fact of the tremendous concentration of the proletarian masses in the capitalist industry. This concentration brings about a certain discipline, as well as the psychology of solidarity. Mob action is the flaring up of a sudden vengefulness, with each member of the mob liable at any moment to go off on his own tangent and perhaps to carry the others with him. A Molly Maguire attack on a factory or the sabotage of a defeated striker is not mass action. However initiated, it is the action of the group, with a fairly definite group purpose, and with a measure of discipline. This is not the arbitrary dictum of a definition; it is involved in the nature of the class conflict to which this conception of action applies—a conflict which militarises the proletariat at the same time that it hurls the proletarian against the citadels of Capitalism.

Forms of Mass Action.

Mass action is a process, taking on different forms at different times. One form is the street demonstration. By coming out into the streets and public squares, defying the policemen's clubs and soldiers' bayonets, the masses are able to exert great pressure as a warking against the Government. The notable Gary demonstration was in defiance of the police and military orders.
A particularly important form of mass action is the mass strike, which extends to the use of the workers' power over production to cripple the whole industrial life of the country. Since the Belgian strike of 1893, and especially since the 1905 strike in Russia, the mass strike has been recognised as a most important weapon in the political arsenal of Labour.
The mass strike cannot be created by fiat. It grows out of a certain stage of industrial development and proletarian consciousness. Presupposing these, the political organisation of the revolutionary workers can promote, influence, and lend character and discipline to such strikes. Even the possibility of such a strike is enough to coerce Governmental action, as in the present situation as to Russian intervention, with Italian and English policy dominated by the threats of the proletariat. In a country like the United States the mass strike is bound to play a very important part in the proletarian struggle. The mass strike is a form of political expression open to all the workers, free from delay and trickery.
The mass strike is especially effective when it is aimed at the Union bureaucracy, as has been so much the case in the United States with strikes during the past two years. At a meeting of the recent "outlaw" railway strikers, one of the speakers declared: "This is spontaneous mass action." He was right in the sense that the revolt of the rail hands was an expression of the tendency towards "a broadening of the field of action of the proletarian organisation."
The logical outcome of large-scale, aggressive mass action is open combat with the, bourgeois State. But the workers can only engage in the culminating form of mass action, in open insurrection, after they have had the training and after they have developed political consciousness in the earlier forms. Hence, a revolutionary party is vitally concerned with the immediate struggle of the workers. The test of the revolutionary character of a party is, indeed, in its activity in these immediate struggles. Here, is generated revolutionary power and fervour among the workers. Here is the opportunity to broaden the workers' struggles, to turn them into revolutionary channels. Such is the activity, for example, of the Socialist Party of Italy.
To some scatter-brained, self-appointed saviours of the chastity of Communism in America, mass action is anything that smacks of violence. And, conversely, nothing without violence is of the nature of mass action. To those "Left Bolsheviks" mass action means revolt, or some lesser use of arms, first and all the time. They pretend to guard the sacredness of the programme of the Third International, when they have not apparently ever read it. For what does it say? "The revolutionary epoch demands the application of such methods of struggle as concentrate the entire strength of the proletariat—namely, their logical outcome—direct collision with the bourgeois State in open combat!"
By which is appears that, while mass action culminates in armed uprising, it has preliminary forms—forms dependent upon the particular economic and social conditions at hand. It is Kautsky who speaks of mass action as an act of revolution; but Communists, like Lenin, Pannekock, and Luxemburg, always describe mass action as a process of revolution. To our imitation "Left Bolsheviks," mass action is a sort of guillotine, to be carried in the pocket against all emergencies, in order to unfold it and set it to use after a "proper decision." A Communist party cannot create mass action, either in its primitive or in its culminating forms. Communists can wield a decisive influence in guiding all mass actions which are "historical phenomena proceeding at a certain moment with historical necessity from social conditions." If we are soundly organised, we can take the leadership in any mass action, and, through constant and resolute conduct, "give to the masses a feeling of security, self-confidence, and joy of battle." Any other conception of mass action and the role of the party is "a pedantic, mechanical, neuropathic conception."
Mass actions are not finely-spun cobwebs found in the dusty brains of loose-mouthed "theoreticians." They are part and parcel of the constant proletarian life struggle under the accentuated conditions of imperialistic exploitation. It is only out of this struggle that the means for the proletarian conquest of power—revolutionary mass action—can be developed.

Force and Revolution.

It is beyond dispute that "force has been the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one." Nor is there any shadow of doubt about the resistance to the last ditch of the capitalist class against surrender of its power, wealth, and privileges. But to talk of armed revolt when the mass of workers is not at all class conscious is an evasion of the immediate struggle through which the conditions for armed revolt are developed. It is necessary systematically to familiarise the workers with the idea of armed revolt. But systematically means with a method, a sequence, a calculation of time and circumstances. To talk armed revolt at the workers when they are striking against Union autocracy is rank betrayal of the revolutionary struggle, a direct service to the capitalist class. To provoke a premature revolt, if this could be done, would be the greatest boon to the forces of reaction. We need but recall Lenin's advice to our Italian comrades.
Revolutions are not manufactured. They are not resolved out of the whole cloth. They develop out of struggles, movements deeds; out of a long historical process. As Pannekoek says: "The revolution will be prepared only by the small detail work of the present, which does not constantly have the word 'revolution' on its lips." Heroic phrase-slinging, heavy cannonading with paper resolutions, coupled with criminal neglect of the immediate struggles, cannot build a revolutionary organisation. Yet in this fashion our self-appointed "revolutionists" propose to sponsor an organisation that will suddenly overturn Capitalism by a gigantic attack.
Shouting revolution at the proletariat will not make the working class in America revolutionary. The demagogic "revolutionist" is a far greater menace to the movement than a score of Attorney-Generals. We must run after the masses; but, even more, we must not run away from the masses. An armed revolt against the capitalist State is within the clear anticipation of American history, as recognised in the United Communist Party programme. The idea of armed revolt is one that no person can shrink from and still stand for the proletarian revolution. But our propaganda and efforts in this direction must not become matter of bombastic phraseology, of invocation of revolutionary sorcery. Struggle, struggle, struggle—let this be our watchword. It is only through constant, resolute struggle that the necessary force to overthrow the capitalise State can be developed. It is only in relation to the immediate struggles that our propaganda has real vitality; it is only within these struggles that there can be systematic agitation for revolutionary mass action. The tactics of class warfare, when all is said and done, are developed only through class warfare. It is by their impression within this warfare that the Communists give direction and inspiration to the struggle, not by standing aside and philosophically determining the programme of revolution. On with the Communist struggle !

Communist (Sydney, NSW : 1921 - 1923), Friday 10 June 1921, page 7