The Commonwealth. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1911-1914, 1913-09-11
Are Socialists Failures?

ARE failures. With "rare exceptions
the non-Socialist is n failure. At least
ninety per cent of the failures" re-
ported by the mercantile agencies are
not in the Socialist movement A
large majority Of the "down-and-outs'
are adherents of the old capitalist par
ties or in the I, W. w. The Socialist
party cannot grow at all unless 1t alb
serbs the failures. as there are few
others to be absorbed. With few
notable exceptions" capitalism turns
out nothing but failures. The Socialist
party is destined soon to absorb all
these shopless Democrats, bankrupt
republicans, and jobless Bull Moosers.
As for the preachers and priests who
are not pulpitless, most of these "suc-
cessful spokesman of a Christianity
that failed, of a Jesus that was cruel
fled by the same class these time
servers now uphold; who was made a
vagabond and an outcast, having no
place to lay his head, by the same
class who now oppose Socialism, most
of these unenviable defenders of sys-
tenn based upon inhuman greed, ruth
less robbery of the workers, and MUIR
derous violence are holding their pull
pits upon terms which the pulpitless
preachers in the Socialist party have
long since learned to despise and
spurn.
We have, also, in the Socialist party
jobless editors, reporters, college pro-
fessors, and briefless lawyers, who
scorn to prostitute themselves at the
shrine of the great god Mammon. They
have discovered something more prec-
ious than the key to success. They
have found the key to freedom
We have also workers in the party
who failed" to barter their manhood
to corrupt politicians and the Shiny
agents of Big Business who betray the
ranks of labor and lead them to the
shambles of capitalist politics and the
Civic Federation. Many of our COM
rades have been blacklisted by soul
less, constituencies corporations be-
cause of their fidelity to their class.
They failed to make good for the
bosses, or proved unfit to survive as
cats paws for labor misleaders, or as
abject, willing slaves for man-killing
contractors.
We have some among us who were
incompetent" to overcome the newt
able results of improved labor-displac-
ing machinery. They had not the ex-
ceptional ability to avoid the neces-
sarily evil consequences of private
ownership in the hands of a few pa
triots" of the nations colossal ma
chinery of production and distribu-
ton; they could not rise above the
dead level of enforced idleness, nor
escape the encroachments of prema-
ture old age, due to speeding up and
greater efficiency Nor were they en-
terprising enough to regulate the
trusts and abolish the law of gravita-
ton.
Yes, thank God! we have these fail
ures in the Socialist party, and will
soon have millions more of them.
When there are enough of them,
strange thing will happen-the capt.
talists will have become failures as
exploiters, and altogether we shall be-
come successes as comrades and fell
low workers!
Many of the Socialists may be, as
Mr.. Lewis asserts, pulpitless, briefless,
and jobless; but none of them are
brainless, or fightless, or hopeless!
They are capable and efficient enough
to organize and democratically man.
age the greatest political organization
the world has ever known, and though
it to regenerate the whole of human
society.