Well, I have already stated that some good is occasionally accomplished
by political action,--not necessarily working-class party action either.
But I am abundantly convinced that the occasional good accomplished is
more than counterbalanced by the evil; just as I am convinced that
though there are occasional evils resulting from direct action, they are
more than counterbalanced by the good.
Nearly all the laws which were originally framed with the intention of
benefiting the workers, have either turned into weapons in their
enemies' hands, or become dead letters, unless the workers through their
organizations have directly enforced the observance. So that in the end,
it is direct action that has to be relied on anyway. As an example of
getting the tarred end of a law, glance at the anti-trust law, which was
supposed to benefit the people in general, and the working class in
particular. About two weeks since, some 250 union leaders were cited to
answer to the charge of being trust formers, as the answer of the
Illinois Central to its strikers.
But the evil of pinning faith to indirect action is far greater than any
such minor results. The main evil is that it destroys initiative,
quenches the individual rebellious spirit, teaches people to rely on
some one else to do for them what they should do for themselves, what
they alone can do for themselves; finally renders organic the anomalous
idea that by massing supineness together until a majority is acquired,
then, through the peculiar magic of that majority, this supineness is to
be transformed into energy. That is, people who have lost the habit of
striking for themselves as individuals, who have submitted to every
injustice while waiting for the majority to grow, are going to become
metamorphosed into human high-explosives by a mere process of packing!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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