Page:James Connolly - Socialism Made Easy (1909).djvu/47

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Political Action of Labor
45

tories will organize themselves into unions, each union comprising all the workers at a given industry, that said union will democratically control the workshop life of its own industry, electing all foremen, etc., and regulating the routine of labor in that industry in subordination to the needs of society in general, to the needs of its allied trades and to the department of industry to which it belongs. The representatives elected from these various departments of industry will meet and form the industrial administration or national government of the country. In short, Social-Democracy, as its name implies, is the application to industry, or to the Social life of the nation, of the fundamental principles of democracy. Such application will necessarily have to begin in the workshop, and proceed logically and consecutively upward through all the grades of industrial organization until it reaches the culminating point of national executive power and direction. In other words Social Democracy must proceed from the bottom upward, whereas capitalist political society is organized from above downward; Social Democracy will administered by a committee of experts elected from the industries and professions of the land; capitalist society is governed by representatives elected from districts, and is based upon territorial division. The local and national governing or rather administrative bodies of Socialism will approach every question with impartial minds armed with the fullest expert knowledge born of experience; the governing bodies of capitalist society have to call in an expensive professional expert to instruct them on every technical question, and know the impartiality of said expert varies with and depends upon the size of his fee.