roletariat, which is Socialism.

"And yet, so misled is the thinking of our European Socialists that
in the very presence of a living, accomplished Socialist
commonwealth, they hastened to repudiate it because it was not
'Democratic.' Plekhanov betrayed it. Kautsky reviled it. Albert
Thomas called upon the capitalists of France to send their soldiers
there and crush it. Mr. Walling, Mr. Spargo and Mr. Russell
baptized themselves into a 'Socialist' crusade to destroy
Socialism. Could idiocy be more abject?

"The alternative is presented, to choose between Socialism or
Democracy. Or perhaps it would be better to put it--between
industrial Democracy and parliamentary Democracy. And our pitiable
Spargos, duped by a stale phrase, abandon their Socialism because
it is not 'Democratic.'

"In America, it is this same issue of Democracy which has long been
the dividing line between the Socialist Party and the I. W. W. Like
the Bolshevists of Russia, the I. W. W. have championed Democracy
but we have refused to allow the capitalist thinkers to define it
for us. We have practiced Democracy in our organization and we have
sublimated it into the most perfect of Democratic organizations.
But always, it has been a Democracy only of proletarians. We have
built the framework of a new society which says that those shall
not vote who do not work. And this, indeed, is Socialism.

"But the political Socialists have feared to draw this distinction.
They have not built themselves upon the proletarian rock. Into
their ranks they have admitted, not only the butcher, the baker and
the candle-stick maker, but also the lawyer, the doctor, the
merchant, the sky pilot, yes, and even the capitalists--known as
millionaire Socialists. Out of such a medley, a medley philosophy
was sprouted. Democracy, to the political Socialists, could not be
rigidly proletarian, because the political Socialists, themselves,
were not proletarians. And their ideals paled into evasion and
compromise.

"Again, the I. W. W. being proletarian, spurned a parliamentary
action which would have drawn it together with the exploiting
class. It realized, before Spargo took that fatal dodge, that, from
parliamentary Socialism to parliamentary Democracy it was but a
step. Hence we spurned politics