Part 18 (1/2)
The ”Conciliation,” however, can bring no conciliation between the employers and workers, because that is unnatural. On the contrary, the hatred of one side to the other is intensified and war breaks out oftener and a.s.sumes a more bitter and more obstinate character.
Thus viewing the two struggling cla.s.ses of capitalist society, revolutionary industrial unionism comes to the logical conclusion that between capital and labor there exists nothing in common, that the struggle must go on and peace can come only when economic oppression will cease, which is possible only when the program of revolutionary unionism will be realized; namely, when the workers will take over the means of production and abolish the system of private owners.h.i.+p. The autocratic control of industry, the unequal division of products will then disappear and society will be built on a socialist foundation, where the industries will be owned and operated by the workers, organized in a truly democratic manner, and where the individual will receive the full product of his labor.
These are the principles of revolutionary unionism, the principles of the international proletariat. They are the true expressions of the cla.s.s struggle and because of that, revolutionary unionism attracts more and more followers whose ideal is to develop within the working ma.s.ses a consciousness of their historic mission.”
In the words of an eloquent representative of the organized workers in the United States, I exhort the working men and working women of America: Keep your eyes on Russia. Watch what is going on there and what the capitalist plunderbund will try to do. Do not be misled by the lies and slanders that are daily dished up to you. Bear in mind that those who tell you these yarns have an interest to mislead you. They want to use you as a makeweight in their game of wresting from the Russian workers their dearly-won liberty. It is of no use to enumerate the lies that have already been punctured because they will invent new ones faster than one can write and print. Let your reason guide you. Think yourselves into the shoes of your Russian fellow workers. Think how you would act if placed in the same position and then draw the conclusion that they act about the same way that you would, because they are like you moved by the same emotions, the same desires, the same aspirations.
You, too, would like to keep for yourselves the fruits of your toil, if you only knew how to go about it, if you had the organization that would make it possible. But as yet you do not know and you have not that organization. In politics you still vote against one another in the Republican or Democratic camp. You will have to wait until you do know and until you do have the means--the Industrial Unions of the entire working cla.s.s that will be able to take and hold and administer industry for the reason that it will have the might, the power to do so. And when you have expressed through the ballot your will for that new society, which will guarantee to you the full fruits of your labor, remember the slogan of revolutionary Russia: ”All power to the Soviets,” and let your slogan then be: ”All power to the Industrial Unions!”
These are prophetic words written fifty years ago by Frederick Engels:
Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realization were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of cla.s.ses is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these cla.s.ses, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions....
So long as the total social labor only yields a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labor engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of society--so long, of necessity, this society is divided into cla.s.ses....
But if, upon this showing, division into cla.s.ses has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based on the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of cla.s.ses in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution, at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling cla.s.s, but of any ruling cla.s.s at all, has become an obsolete anachronism....
With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions into really human ones.... It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.
The capitalist countries are ruled through banks, and a bank is necessarily an inst.i.tution of the owning cla.s.s.
Russia is ruled through Soviets, and a soviet is necessarily an inst.i.tution of the working cla.s.s.
Banks and Soviets are so many headquarters for big unions. In capitalist countries the banks are such for the one big union of the owners, and in Russia the soviets are this for the one big union of the workers. These big unions cannot co-exist and flourish in the same country.
All owners everywhere see the necessity for their one big union and in all capitalistic countries, nowhere more than in the United States, they have the advantage of being on the ground floor and indeed on all the floors of all the sky sc.r.a.pers with their union which is the most universally inclusive and the most relentlessly efficient organization on earth.
Some workers everywhere see the necessity for their one big union, but nowhere is it seen as generally and clearly as in Russia,--the only country in which the workers have held the ground floor for any considerable time against all comers.
In all countries a beginning has been made by the workers in laying the foundation for their one big union, but in only one country, Russia, has progress been made with the superstructure, and here as everywhere the owners have hindered the workers so that they must defend themselves with their right hand while they build with their left. Nevertheless wonderful progress is being made and when the industrial structure has been completed, as it soon must be, else the world is doomed to destruction, it shall tower above its capitalist rival as a mountain over a foot hill.
After all, the power of the owner is money and it is not a real potentiality, for within the social realm there is in reality only one potentiality, the power of productivity which exclusively belongs to the worker.
In the sky there is no G.o.d, and on earth there is no king or priest like unto Labor, the lord of G.o.ds, the tzar of kings and the pope of priests.
Labor is high above all potentialities. The motto, ”All Power to the Workers,” which the cla.s.s-conscious proletarians inscribe on their banners, is not the expression of an ideal fiction, but the declaration of a practical reality, the greatest among all realities, that reality in which the whole social realm lives, moves and has its being.
Down with the one big union of the owners. Long live the one big union of the workers.
II. G.o.d AND IMMORTALITY.
We have done with the kisses that sting, With the thief's mouth red from the feast, With the blood on the hands of the king, And the lie on the lips of the priest.
--Swinburne.
Many critics contend that socialism and supernaturalism are not, as I represent, incompatibilities; but they lose sight of four facts: (1) this is a scientific age; (2) Marxian socialism is one of the sciences; (3) the vast majority of men of science reject all supernaturalism, including of course the G.o.ds and devils with their heavens and h.e.l.ls, and (4) only in the case of one of the sciences, psychology, is this majority greater than in the science of sociology.
The truth of the last two of these representations will be overwhelmingly evident from the chart on the next page. It and its explanation given in the following quotation is taken with the kind consent of the author and also of the publishers of a book ent.i.tled G.o.d and Immortality, by Professor James H. Leuba, the Psychologist of Bryn Mawr College. This book is having a great influence and I strongly recommend it to all who think that I am wrong in the contention that conscious, personal existence is limited to earth; that, therefore, we are having all that we shall ever know of heaven and h.e.l.l, here and now, and that whether we have more of heaven and less of h.e.l.l depends altogether upon men and women, not at all upon G.o.ds and devils. The second edition of Professor Leuba's book is now in the press of The Open Court Publis.h.i.+ng Company, 122 South Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. Here is the quotation in support of our contentions: