Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/117

Rh ity of the workers to improve their economic and social conditions under capitalism permanently and calls upon the workers to marshal their forces on the economic as well as political field under the banner of not palliation or reform, but revolution. Organizations, therefore, that devote their main efforts to the palliation of effects and the propagation of reforms, even if "ultimately" affirming and "demanding" Socialism, cannot be considered class—conscious organizations, and are in reality a greater obstacle to the formation of a genuine proletarian army of the revolution than all the chicanery, economic despotism and social and cultural prerogatives of the capitalist class combined. Class-conscious Socialist action can only be the product of a scientific conception of capitalist production, of a Marxian interpretation of economic and social phenomena, and can, in consequence, have only a certain meaning to the working-class. Therefore it can not mean one thing to one worker and something else to another. It will also be admitted that certain scientific premises and a scientific mode of investigation furnish certain deductions, which again will prescribe or determine a definite mode of action. The mode of action or tactics of a class-conscious movement, as it can be readily gleaned from the preceding, are, therefore, not the fruit of "expediency" or chance, but the product of theoretical clarity and scientific perception. Such being the case, the tactical department of the Socialist movement is, consequently, inseparably connected with the theoretical system of Socialism, being in reality a component part of this system. Therefore, tactical clarity and efficiency in a Socialist movement can only flow from theoretical clarity; a soundness in scientific consciousness and profundity being the father to class-consciousness, and class-consciousness again giving birth to effective class action—the dynamo of class movements.

Having established the original source of working-class