Page:The International Socialist Review (1900-1918), Vol. 1, Issue 1.pdf/16

am free to say that if that party could be transformed and saturated with the social spirit, could become conscious of the end to be achieved, that surely would prove the wisest step to take. The important thing to be kept in view, it seems to me, is that nothing can make this transition save that which shall completely change the economic system. We cannot have democracy so long as we retain any vestige of plutocracy. For myself, I believe there must be united political action. Plutocracy, though the very opposite of democracy, has served a useful purpose in preparing the way. It has wiped out national lines. It has become international. Democracy must also be international. We cannot have democracy in spots. It must be the dominant system of the world. And it can become so only as it rests upon an economic basis which knows no national lines. When you deal with economics you touch the universal life, you come face to face with universal interests. The industrial evolution has been as wide as civilization. In the path of that evolution lies democracy, and nowhere else. And therein lies the wisdom and strength of the Socialist movement. It is the only political movement to-day that is international, the only one that binds together into one the people of every race and clime for industrial and political emancipation. Is it not a fact that the only political party in Europe that aims at democracy is the Social Democratic Party? the party of Socialism? Nay, is there any other party in any country on the face of the earth which either believes in or is actually working for democracy? If there is, I have never heard of it. It is the only movement I know anything about which really believes in democracy, which has any real faith in the people, which combines sense and sympathy in such proportions as to be effective to that end. I cannot therefore resist the conviction that only through a Socialist political movement in this country, co-operant with the world-wide movement, can we hope to gain the ends of our desire and solve the problem of the twentieth century. Our choice must be between plutocracy and socialism.

William T. Brown.