50 Years Ago: On Industrial and Political Action

What we have said should have made clear by now the only real solution to this, and all other economic troubles affecting the workers. If the workers had been as solid in voting for Socialism as they have been in striking on behalf of the miners what a different tale there would be to tell! And yet, as long as the workers support a condition of things which lays it down as a fundamental proposition that there shall employers and employed, capitalists and wage-earners; and at election time puts control of the governmental machinery into the hands of the masters and their supporters, they must expect defeat in their struggle for better conditions. The solution of the difficulties lies in the workers’ own hands. The substitution of common ownership in the means of wealth production in place of the present private property system, and the accomplishment of this end by voting delegates to the central seat of power at election times to carry out instructions formulated by their working- class electorate.

(From an article “The Strike” by Gilbert McClatchie, published in the Socialist Standard, June 1926)