Page:The Advancing Proletariat (1917).pdf/22

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THE ADVANCING PROLETARIAT

abate one jot or tittle the power and privilege they now enjoy. The retention of the territorial "State" in the Socialist scheme of social regeneration marks it as a middle class conception, quite in keeping with middle class experience and psychology, and, therefore, largely out of harmony with any conception the proletariat may evolve from its own experience. The representative character of the territorial State does very well for a class engaged in trade and which has heretofore used the state as a medium for adjusting trade frictions, but to a class functioning directly in production and at the mechanical end of distribution, such a State is utterly out of date and useless. The Proletariat proposes the Industrial Democracy—a society based primarily upon production—equality in production coupled with equality in distribution—each necessary industry the equal of every other necessary industry—and it is quite evident that territorial representatives cannot legislate intelligently for the industries. Bureaucratic administration would necessarily result in the Socialist "State"—democratic participation and control by the people would be set aside—a new slavery would ensue, for bureaucrats are inherently despotic. Further—the State, (the primary function of which has always been to protect private property) as an entity set over and above the people, has so long represented the proletarian idea of despotism that any scheme retaining it must surely meet with proletarian opposition.

The machine dominates the lives of the proletariat, therefore the proletarian conception is that, in a society based on universal participation in industry and the benefits of industry, the machine must beneficially influence the lives of all men. Indeed, the major portion of the questions arising in such a society would be automatically settled by the machines, and, among a people living on the same plane of material interest and subjected to the same economic influences, there must arise