Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/116

114 that the economic and social influence or power of the proletariat is not, as it has been so often erroneously asserted, to be found in the form or particular function of an organization, but in its spirit and theoretical composition. Not the form or particular functions will affect and determine the principles of an organization, but the principles will determine the form and functions. Therefore, it cannot be too emphatically underscored that the power of the proletariat does not in the last analysis rest in the form or structure, but the spirit of an organization; Consequently, when certain Socialists attribute revolutionary vitality and creative power to Industrial Unionism as Industrial Unionism without qualifying it with the word Socialist, then they commit precisely the same error which certain pure and simple politicians fall into, when they seek to "organize the masses into a large political party" and in their anxiety for success forget and ignore entirely the Socialist character of the organization. Primarily, it is not the question whether the workers are organized on the economic field along craft or industrial lines, because we have both forms of organization in existence now (see Germany and America for classical examples); neither, whether the workers engage in independent politics, such politics having been Carried on for years by so-called liberal reform movements and alleged "Socialist" parties; but whether the economic and political activity is a Socialist activity: whether the industrial union is a class-conscious union; and whether the Socialist political party is a truly working-class organization. The yardstick with which to establish the status of a workers' organization has been provided in our previous article, and is to be found in the organization's conception of Capitalism and the consequent interpretation of the class struggle resulting therefrom. To a revolutionary Socialist only such an organization is considered class-conscious which affirms unequivocally the inabil-