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Title: Plutocracy Triumphant
Author: Ross Winn
Date: 1902
Language: en
Topics: political parties, revolution
Source: Retrieved on February 29, 2012 from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Plutocracy_Triumphant
Notes: “Plutocracy Triumphant” was published in Winn’s Firebrand in 1902. Originally appearing in Winn’s Firebrand , Vol. I No. 4, December 1, 1902.

Ross Winn

Plutocracy Triumphant

The political reformers can find little that is really comforting in the

result of the November elections. The Republican party representing the

financial and commercial interests of the capitalist class is everywhere

triumphant, while the forces of reform are once again squarely turned

down by the American voters. The Socialists are making a mighty fuss

over the increase of their vote, but this empty fact seems to me to be

what the great Prentiss termed “a damned barren ideality.” The Chicago

Public, which is the most intelligent political journal in the United

States, sees nothing satisfactory in the outcome, except the lessons

convincingly conveyed by it, lessons that will scarcely be heeded by the

political managers. Inasmuch as The Firebrand predicted the result

correctly two weeks before the election, giving all the reasons

therefor, it is unnecessary for me to review the causes of this last

victory of plutocracy over the people. For it was most certainly a

plutocratic victory, more sweeping and pronounced that the re-election

of McKinley two years ago.

If the Socialists got a few crumbs of comfort from the increase of their

vote, the Anarchists can find a little consolation in the large increase

of non-voters, whose absence from the polls indicated their indifference

to or disgust for political action. However, the careful student of

political affairs will find, after a thoro canvass of the situation,

that the entire election was really devoid of significance, except that

it illustrates very clearly the mental status of the masses. The

majority of the voters of this and all other countries, are simply

incapable of intelligent political action. It is, in all countries, the

minority who force action along the lines of improvement and advance.

As a revolutionist, I can see but one lesson in the result of the

November elections. That is the utter futility of the ballot as a weapon

of reform. Majorities are not progressive. How, then, can we expect

progress to result of majority action? Show me one advance of human

progress achieved by the action of a majority, and I will concede the

whole case to my political friends. Open history at every epoch of

social advance, and you will find that whatsoever has been accomplished

has been the work of a revolutionary minority.

The mass mind has ever been a stagnant force of conservative inaction,

against which the waves of social progress have beat; and, had humanity

waited for the initiative of the “dumb driven herd,” the tide of

civilization would have never crossed the low-level of barbarism.

Every forward step of human advance has been a tidal-wave of revolution.

Every revolution has been the work of a minority.

These are the two most firmly established facts of history.

Wherever reformers have gone into politics as a political party, they

have become stagnantly conservative, and their efforts barren of result.

Political action has extinguished the revolutionary spirit and character

of Socialism in Europe and America. In return for this loss, Socialism

is no nearer the goal of official power to-day than it was fifteen years

ago.

The Greenback party, Union Labor party, Populist party, each attempted

to combat the power of capitalism with the ballot. They all failed. No

revolutionary force ever yet moved a political majority to action. The

mass-mind never initiated any reform. It is the thinking few who achieve

the changes that make progress and civilization possible.

By revolutionary action I do not mean the use of violence. The question

of physical force is an incident of revolutions, invaribly raised by

those opposed to change. I believe that force to the degree of violence

is never expedient except as opposed to invasive violence. It is the

upholders of the established authority who resort to violence as a means

of maintaining their supremacy. I am a lover of peace. But I do not

believe in running in order to maintain it.

I believe that the forces of radical reform can achieve all that they

have in view by an international general strike. The workers of the

world could be its masters, and could achieve both their political and

economic emancipation from capitalism by a peaceful refusal to be

exploited. It is the wage-workers who are the most vitaly interested in

the destruction of the capitalist system. The world-wide struggle in

progress to-day, disguise it as we may, is a CLASS STRUGGLE. It is a

conflict between the workers and the exploiters, between the slaves and

the masters. And the victory of the workers must be their own

achievement. The battle is their’s. They, who support by their toil the

burden of the world, have but to formulate their demands and enforce

them by a general refusal to work longer for their masters, and the

battle is won.

This cannot be accomplished by party action. The hope of the reform

movement is in the action of an intelligent revolutionary minority, and

the means most effective is the general strike.