Part 35 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[223] In a previous attempt to define justice, I have found it necessary to devote to this subject an entire volume, and I do not believe that the subject can be sufficiently discussed in less than such a volume. The definition with which I concluded that book has been adopted by Mr. Lester F. Ward in his book on Applied Sociology. I believe that all other definitions of justice are defective mainly because other definitions such as those of Herbert Spencer in his book ent.i.tled ”Justice” confound justice with liberty. In other words, his definition of justice is a definition of liberty, whereas justice is more than liberty. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that liberty is one of the elements of justice.

[224] See ”Government or Human Evolution,” Vol. II, p. 181.

[225] See ”Principles of Sociology,” pp. 414-415.

[226] See ”Justice,” p. 127, by the author.

[227] The Unnecessary Curse of Sickness, _World's Work_, July, 1909.

[228] See Book III, Chapter II.

APPENDIX

I

SOCIALIST PARTY NATIONAL PLATFORM

ADOPTED AT THE NATIONAL CONVENTION a.s.sEMBLED AT CHICAGO, MAY, 1908

Human life depends upon food, clothing, and shelter. Only with these a.s.sured are freedom, culture and higher human development possible. To produce food, clothing and shelter, land and machinery are needed.

Land alone does not satisfy human needs. Human labor creates machinery and applies it to the land for the production of raw materials and food. Whoever has the control of land and machinery controls human labor, and with it human life and liberty.

To-day the machinery and land used for industrial purposes are owned by a rapidly decreasing minority. So long as machinery is simple and easily handled by one man, its owner cannot dominate the sources of life of others. But when machinery becomes more complex and expensive, and requires for its effective operation the organized effort of many workers, its influence reaches over wide circles of life. The owners of such machinery become the dominant cla.s.s.

POWER GOES WITH CONCENTRATION

In proportion as the number of such machine owners, compared to all other cla.s.ses, decreases, their power in the nation and in the world increases. They bring ever larger ma.s.ses of working people under their control, reducing them to the point where muscle and brain are their only productive property. Millions of formerly self-employing workers thus become the helpless wage slaves of the industrial masters.

As the economic power of the ruling cla.s.s grows, it becomes less useful in the life of the nation. All the useful work of the nation falls upon the shoulders of the cla.s.s whose only property is its manual and mental labor power--the wage workers--or of the cla.s.s who have but little land and little effective machinery outside of their labor power--the small traders and small farmers. The ruling minority is steadily becoming useless and parasitic.

STRUGGLE BETWEEN CLa.s.sES

A bitter struggle over the division of the products of labor is waged between the exploiting propertied cla.s.ses on the one hand, and the exploited propertyless cla.s.s on the other. In this struggle the wage-working cla.s.s cannot expect adequate relief from any reform of the present order at the hands of the dominant cla.s.s.

The wage workers are, therefore, the most determined and irreconcilable antagonists of the ruling cla.s.s. They suffer most from the curse of cla.s.s rule. The fact that a few capitalists are permitted to control all the country's industrial resources and social tools for their individual profit, and to make the production of the necessaries of life the object of compet.i.tive private enterprise and speculation, is at the bottom of all the social evils of our time.

ANARCHY OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION

In spite of the organization of trusts, pools and combinations, the capitalists are powerless to regulate production for social ends.

Industries are largely conducted in a planless manner. Through periods of feverish activity the strength and health of the workers are mercilessly used up, and during periods of enforced idleness the workers are frequently reduced to starvation.