19.02.1998

The sense of power

From 'The Call', paper of the British Socialist Party, February 14 1918

Our Russian comrades have shown us that the working class - the toilers of the towns and fields - can, under the most trying and difficult circum­stances, assume power and maintain it.

There has been much talk in this country of a Labour gov­ernment, of the control of in­dustry by the workers, of the “sweeping tide of democracy”, and so on. Yet there seems to be lacking a consciousness of power on the part of the work­ers. They do not realise yet that they do everything. Without them not a necessary social service would be performed. Without them not a train would run, or a ton of coal be taken from the mines, or a ship be sent over the seas, or a house be built. Yet their services are given to the ruling class and they are content to receive the husk of a living in return.

They fail to grasp the signifi­cance of their position, or to wield their power in further­ance of their own interests. The essential industries are run by the workers: surely now is the time to control - to assume power over - them? That is the view that all conscious work­ers ought to take. They should continually set before them­selves the question: how can we take over the country and reorganise it in our own inter­est?How can we obtain power?How can we become masters of the factories, mines and workshops, the intricate public machinery of the cities and towns, the whole network of industry?

The Bolsheviks are blazing the trail. They are doing in Rus­sia what should prove a much easier task in a highly organ­ised country like our own. The industries of this country are ripe for control. They are al­ready organised, constructed, ready for immediate use by social democracy. All that is re­quired is the revolutionary as­sumption of power by the workers.

The Russian workers speed­ily organised their soviets. The workers of this country have had years of training in organi­sation; they have a political, trade union, cooperative move­ment unsurpassed in the work­ing class movement of any other country. All that is re­quired is determination, clarity of vision, and the sense of power.

ME Quelch