Page:James Connolly - Socialism Made Easy (1909).djvu/46

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44
Socialism Made Easy

Now to analyze briefly the logical consequences of the position embodied in the above quotation.

“Political institutions are not adapted to the administration of industry.”

Here is a statement that no Socialist with a clear knowledge of the essentials of his doctrine can dispute. The political institutions of to-day are simply the coercive forces of capitalist society, they have grown up out of and are based upon territorial divisions of power in the hands of the ruling class in past ages, and were carried over into capitalist society to suit the needs of the capitalist class when that class overthrew the dominion of its predecessors. The delegation of the function of government into the hands of representatives elected from certain districts, states, or territories represents no real natural division suited to the requirements of modern society but is a survival from a tie when territorial influences were more potent in the world than industrial influences, and for that reason is totally unsuited to the needs of the new social order which must be based upon industry. The Socialist thinker when he paints the structural form of the new social order does not imagine an industrial system directed or ruled by a body of men or women elected from an indiscriminate mass of residents within given districts, said residents working at a heterogenous collection of trades and industries. To give the ruling, controlling and directing of industry into the hands of such a body would be too utterly foolish. What the Socialist does realize is that under a Social Democratic form of Society the administration of affairs will be in the hands of representatives of the various industries of the nation; that the workers in the shops and fac-