We are entering tonight upon a momentous campaign. The struggle for
political supremacy is not between political parties merely, as appears
upon the surface, but at bottom it is a life and death struggle between
two hostile economic classes, the one the capitalist, and the other the
working class.
The capitalist class is represented by the Republican, Democratic,
Populist and Prohibition parties, all of which stand for private
ownership of the means of production, and the triumph of any one of
which will mean continued wage-slavery to the working class.
As the Populist and Prohibition sections of the capitalist party
represent minority elements which propose to reform the capitalist
system without disturbing wage-slavery, a vain and impossible task, they
will be omitted from this discussion with all the credit due the rank
and file for their good intentions.
The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the
Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class
struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such
differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to
principles.
With either of these parties in power one thing is always certain and
that is that the capitalist class is in the saddle and the working class
under the saddle.
Under the administration of both these parties the means of production
are private property, production is carried forward for capitalist
profit purely, markets are glutted and industry paralyzed, workingmen
become tramps and criminals while injunctions, soldiers and riot guns
are brought into action to preserve “law and order” in the chaotic
carnival of capitalistic anarchy.
Deny it as may the cunning capitalists who are clearsighted enough to
perceive it, or ignore it as may the torpid workers who are too blind
and unthinking to see it, the struggle in which we are engaged today is
a class struggle, and as the toiling millions come to see and understand
it and rally to the political standard of their class, they will drive
all capitalist parties of whatever name into the same party, and the
class struggle will then be so clearly revealed that the hosts of labor
will find their true place in the conflict and strike the united and
decisive blow that will destroy slavery and achieve their full and final
emancipation.
In this struggle the workingmen and women and children are represented
by the Socialist party and it is my privilege to address you in the name
of that revolutionary and uncompromising party of the working class.