Part 17 (2/2)

In the course of human progress mankind has pa.s.sed (through cla.s.s rule, private property, and individualism in production and exchange) from the enforced and inevitable want, misery, poverty, and ignorance of savagery and barbarism to the affluence and high productive capacity of civilization. For all practical purposes, co-operative production has now superseded individual production.

Capitalism no longer promotes the greatest good of the greatest number, It no longer spells progress, but reaction. Private production carries with it private owners.h.i.+p of the products.

Production is carried on, not to supply the needs of humanity, but for the profit of the individual owner, the company, or the trust.

The worker, not receiving the full product of his labor, can not buy back all he produces. The capitalist wastes part in riotous living; the rest must find a foreign market. By the opening of the twentieth century the capitalist world--England, America, Germany, France, j.a.pan, China, etc.--was producing at a mad rate for the world market. A capitalist deadlock of markets brought on in 1914 the capitalist collapse popularly known as the World War. The capitalist world can not extricate itself out of the debris.

America today is choking under the weight of her own gold and products.

This situation has brought on the present stage of human misery--starvation, want, cold, disease, pestilence, and war. This state is brought about in the midst of plenty, when the earth can be made to yield a hundredfold, when the machinery of production is made to multiply human energy and ingenuity by the hundreds. The present state of misery exists solely because the mode of production rebels against the mode of exchange. Private property in the means of life has become a social crime. The land was made by no man; the modern machines are the result of the combined ingenuity of the human race from time immemorial; the land can be made to yield and the machines can be set in motion only by the collective effort of the workers. Progress demands the collective owners.h.i.+p of the land on and the tools with which to produce the necessities of life. The owner of the means of life today partakes of the nature of a highwayman; he stands with his gun before society's temple; it depends upon him whether the million ma.s.s may work, earn, eat, and live. The capitalist system of production and exchange must be supplanted if progress is to continue.

In place of the capitalist system we must subst.i.tute a system of social owners.h.i.+p of the means of production, industrially administered by the workers, who a.s.sume control and direction as well as operation of their industrial affairs.”

25. Define ”cla.s.s consciousness.”

Ans.: Cla.s.s consciousness of the workers means that they are conscious of the fact that they, as a cla.s.s, have interests which are in direct conflict with the interests of the capitalist cla.s.s.

26. What function does the state perform in the cla.s.s struggle?

Ans.: ”The state is a cla.s.s instrument, and is the public power of coercion created and maintained in human societies by their division into cla.s.ses, a power which, being clothed with force, makes laws.” It is, therefore, used by the dominant cla.s.s to keep the subject working cla.s.s in subjection in accordance with the interests of the ruling and owning cla.s.s. It is also used to prevent the workers from altering the economic structure of society in the interests of the working cla.s.s.

As the author of the catechism, of which these twenty-six questions and answers const.i.tute a small part, says:

”Society is a growth subject to the laws of evolution. When evolution reaches a certain point, revolution becomes necessary in order to break the bonds of the old and bring in the new. As the chicken grows through evolution until it reaches the point where it must break its sh.e.l.l (the revolution) in order to continue its growth, so do cla.s.ses of people come to the point in their evolution where revolution is necessary in order to continue their growth, bring in the new society and consummate the next step in civilization.”

Since 1913, when the foregoing catechism was published, we have had the war to end war and to make the world safe for democracy--a fateful and mournful war in which millions of lives were lost and other millions wrecked with the result of multiplying wars and increasing imperialism.

It was a war between national groups of capitalists with conflicting interests for commercial advantages, which is unexpectedly issuing in three great crises: (1) the imminent bankruptcy of capitalism; (2) the communist revolution in Russia, and (3) the imminent taking over of the world by the revolutionary proletariat.

Hitherto, the sons and daughters of capitalism have owned the earth with all that thereon and therein is. Henceforth, the sons and daughters of the useful workers shall be the owners.

The future belongs to the workers, but not until they organize themselves into one big revolutionary union. What ideas and aims are involved in the faith and endeavor of Revolutionary Unionism will appear from this pa.s.sage in Comrade Philip Kurinsky's Industrial Unionism and Revolution, a brilliant pamphlet, published by The Union Press, Box 205, Madison Square, New York City:

”Slavery is not abolished. It is merely a change in the struggle which throws itself hither and thither like the waves of the seas.

In ancient times chattel slavery existed. Feudalism then took its place. Feudalism in its turn was overthrown by capitalism which at present reigns supreme. As the immortal Tolstoy explained, 'The abolition of the old slavery is similar to that which Tartars did to their captives. After they had cut up their heels they placed stones and sand in the wounds and then took the chains off. The Tartars were sure that when the feet of their prisoners were swollen, that they could not run away and would have to work even without chains. Such is the slavery of wages'.

Of this slavery does revolutionary unionism speak in the name of the revolutionary worker. It a.n.a.lyzes the present society and shows that it is divided into two economic cla.s.ses. One cla.s.s, the capitalist cla.s.s, is the master cla.s.s which controls all the factories, mills, mines, railroads, lands and fields and all the finished and raw materials. This cla.s.s possesses all the natural riches of the world and this economic supremacy gives it control of the state, of the church, and of all educational inst.i.tutions. In short, this cla.s.s owns everything and controls the whole social and political life of each country. The other cla.s.s, the working cla.s.s, owns nothing. It produces all and enjoys little. It uses the machines and tools but does not possess them, and is therefore forced to sell its only possession, its labor power, to the master cla.s.s. And the latter uses the opportunity to buy that wonderful power like any raw material or some other commodity (some of the representatives of craft unionism wish to deny this but unsuccessfully). For the commodity which the worker is compelled to sell in order that he might live, he receives a wage which is determined as is the price of every other commodity. The price is always smaller than the value of the product which the worker produces for the capitalist.

Between these two cla.s.ses there must, naturally, exist a tremendous struggle which often has the character of actual war. No one urges the workers to this war--not the terrible I. W. W.'s nor the political socialist, neither the Bolsheviks nor the Anarchists, but the war naturally and inevitably arises from existing conditions.

On the one hand, the capitalists are continually chasing after higher profits which results in the employment of cheap labor under the worst conditions. Naturally the ideal of the capitalist cla.s.s is to keep the workers in a condition of slavery. If the workers attempt to revolt, as they do daily, their masters try to suppress the revolt with all the power at their command. On the other hand, the workers struggle with all their power to lighten their burdens.

They strive to get better conditions, higher wages and shorter hours, and in general the ideal of the working cla.s.s is to throw off the yoke of capitalism.

No one rightfully can say that this struggle is merely a theory. We can see this struggle in the attempts of the capitalist cla.s.s to destroy the victorious Russian Proletariat. It is mirrored before our eyes in the continual strikes. Nothing can stop this struggle except the abolition of exploitation.

No matter how hard the Citizens' Committees, Boards of Arbitration, of Conciliation and of Mediation, with their so-called impartial members try to convince the world that it is possible to bring the warring cla.s.ses into closer relations, their attempts are doomed to failure. At best their success is only temporary and their efforts succeed only in blinding the eyes of the working ma.s.ses. And if at some time these boards claim a victory, the credit is not due to them, but to the force exerted by the workers. It is the strike-weapon, held in reserve by the toilers, that brings victory to the workers--not the efforts of the philanthropic gentlemen.

Furthermore the efforts of these gentlemen greatly harm the workers, for at times when the workers can attain success through the use of the strike, these philanthropists interfere, and deaden the initiative and aggressiveness of the strikers. Often this causes strife between the strikers themselves. They lose confidence in one another, and the existence of the organizations which the workers succeeded in building up through their efforts and sacrifices are jeopardized.

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