provided in the public schools for young school boys—presumably that the
little fellows may become “not only willing but anxious to fight.” And
the Church of the Peaceful Christ did not dare rebuke the “great
Christian President” for urging such a barbarous outrage upon the
schoolboys’ dawning social consciousness and their finer sentiments of
the brotherhood of man.
Recently a school teacher in the city of Washington, where this
swaggering-bull-pup patriotism has been most effectively suggested,
asked her school children: “What is patriotism?” She got the answer:
“Killing Spaniards!” Thus have the little people been outraged with
befouling suggestions that cheap race-hatred is patriotism. But the
Church does not dare cry out, in defense of “these little ones”: “Stop
that! You noisy betrayer! Cease pouring venom into the hearts of these
helpless little children!”
“With a hero at head and a nation
Well gagged and well-drilled and well cowed,
And a gospel of war and damnation,
Has not an empire a right to be proud?”[290]
Quite naturally no protest is made.
The working man wonders why,
The working woman wonders why,
The children wonder why—
Why do not the Christian emperors, and Christian kings, the Christian
tsars and Christian presidents, the Christian Parliaments, congresses,
diets and cabinets of the whole Christian world promptly call a world
convention of the Christian rulers of the Christian world, and in this
convention declare at once that never, never again, _under any
circumstances_, shall there be a war between Christian nations?
Yes, indeed, why not?[291]
For this reason:—The Christian nations are capitalist nations managed
for the capitalist class. Each great Christian nation knows that it must
find a foreign market for the EMBARRASSINGLY LARGE SURPLUS of goods
which its capitalists do not consume or invest and its working class is,
by the wage-system, not permitted to consume. Each and all these nations
know that this FOREIGN MARKET MUST BE FOUND OPENED AND PROTECTED—with
Christian sword and cannon if need be—in order that the capitalists of
these countries may make more profits. Indeed, when markets must thus be
had, Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Confucians—with lust for
profits—trample down all things fine, sand-bag everything noble, spit in
the face of every man of peace, and shout, “Stand back! Stand back!
Bring on the cannon! Business is business! There is no sentiment in
business! To hell with the mollycoddles! We are in business for
_profits_!”
With noble exceptions, at such times Christian preachers, priests, and
bishops of the warring nations, with the swagger and pomp of cheap
“fighting parsons,” step briskly to the front of the stage, consecrate
the cannon, “bless” the sword, baptize the butcher, and, on both sides,
with pious savagery scream to the “God of battles,” also to the “God of
peace,” for victory “in this _righteous_ war,” for victory in this
“armed _crusade for Christ_,” for victory in this “glorious effort to
_advance His kingdom_,”—always, always, of course, some lofty name, some
swelling phrase, to veil the huge and pious murder.
Sacred wholesale assassinations—for the Peaceful Jesus’ sake!
Even every massacre of the peaceful Jews in Russia is sanctioned by the
Greek Christian Church,—and the Roman and the Protestant churches and
the Christian governments of the world do _not_ unite and demand peace
for the peaceful Jews.
“God moves in a _mysterious_ way his wonders to perform,” we are piously
taught.
Mysterious. Very.
But it is _not_ mysterious why pro-war preachers, priests, and bishops
are not slaughtered on the battleline and then eaten by buzzards when
the cannon’s feast is finished. These men are too intelligent—too
cunning—for the buzzards’ banquet.
Every distinguished professional butcher in modern times has been a
“member in good standing” in his denomination and his blood-stenched
fame is recited with pride.
That mysterious?
All soldiers are blessed as they march away to “Death’s feast.”
The preacher consecrates the cut-throat.
The bayonet is prepared—with prayer—to be thrust into the bowels of the
toilers.
All wars are somehow pronounced “mysteriously the will of God”; and the
cannoneers who hurl shot and shell into a city or village and cannonade
helpless women and children—these are “the servants of the
Lord”—mysteriously.
And thus to the appalling music of the cannon’s roar the Cross is
dragged down into the bloody mire where men die cursing the preachers
safe at home who helped trick them to the hell called war. And thus,
too, the spirit of the great fraternal Christ is banished from the lives
of the betrayers and the betrayed—and Christ is crucified anew.
Because it is profitable.
Thus in all Christian nations the Cross dips obsequiously to the
red-throated cannon—and to the cash-register.
Business is business; the rulers rule; and gold is God.
That is, under capitalism.
Reader, name one “civil” war or one international war of modern times
powerfully, effectively hindered by the Church of the Man of Peace.[292]
Just one.
But no matter! Since long before the slaughter of the Carpenter our
brothers of the working class have furnished the blood and tears—cheap
blood, cheap tears,—about forty cents a day for American “regulars” in
the “year of our Lord” 1910.
Learn this, you toilers: The capitalists have the preacher cornered and
shackled. The working class must be their own saviors from the horrors
of war. In Chapter Ten I shall explain how this can be done and even now
begins to be done by the working class.
But the workers should learn from history and keep distinctly in mind
this great lesson: With noble individual exceptions the ministry, the
religious leaders, have in times past _defended chattel slavery_ with
its unspeakable horrors for the _working_ class; and have _defended
serfdom_ with its hell for the _working_ class; and have ignobly
defended all Christian national and international wars of modern
capitalism praying on both sides to the “God of battles” for “glorious
victory” regardless of the blood spurting from a million wounds in the
torn breast of the _working_ class.
The path of human progress in modern times is steep and slippery with
the carcasses and blood of the socially despised working men—and the
Church has not _defied_ the cash-register idolater and _demanded_ peace.
Unrebuked, right proudly the cash-register devotee, the business man,
blurts out: “_There is no sentiment in business_.”
That proposition, “No sentiment,” is enough to make a cannibal blush.
Yet that doctrine is at the heart of capitalism.
_If there is no sentiment in business, then there is no brotherhood in
business, for brotherhood is a sublime and beautiful sentiment._
_And if there is no brotherhood in business there can not be Christian
fellowship in business._
Thus business banishes Christ and the Cross retreats before the
onslaughts of the cash-register.
But it is actually and sadly _true_ that business, competitive business,
is too little and belittling, too wolfishly fierce, for deep and loyal
brotherhood. This is also true of the great _class_ competition, the
_class struggle_, the embittering clash of _industrial class interests_.
And where there is no deep and loyal brotherhood, no great _socializing
unity of interest_ stretching from the centre to the rim of society,
including all, _peace is impossible_.
Thus it is that in the great competitive business world, like
quarrelsome dogs, every business man’s hand is against every other
business man’s hand competing in the “same line,” to “put him out of
business” and thus “get more business.”
Thus local neighbors are at war in a Christless scramble for business.
Thus nations also, fiercely struggling for markets and territory, are at
war—commercial war—sometimes needing sword and cannon. (See pp. 40–41.)
Now, notice: Christian business men in this brotherless, Christless
scramble called business _must have the scramble made “respectable.”_
For this purpose the minister is most serviceable. The business men need
the minister—“need him in their business”—to consecrate and sanctify the
ways and means, even the sword, the cannon and the vast human
slaughterings called war.
“Put up thy sword,” said Christ.
“Business is business! Bless the butcher! Grind sharp the sword,”
commands the business man.
But “no man can serve two masters.”
Here the minister, just like the “common working man,” is face to face
with the MOST DOMINEERING FACT AND FORCE IN HUMAN LIFE; namely, ECONOMIC
NECESSITY. The preacher and the plumber, the rabbi and the sweat-shop
tailor, the priest and the hod-carrier—these must _live_; they must
“_get a living_.” But the capitalist controls the opportunities to “get
a living.” The “common working man” is embarrassed. The minister is also
embarrassed—_tho’ he may be—and very often is—one of the noblest men in
the world, he is embarrassed_. This ECONOMIC force grips them both like
a vise. They must live. To live they must kneel before the king—the
kings in industry.
OBEY OR STARVE.
The inevitable follows:
The plain common working man and the haughty and cultivated
minister—both of them—bow their heads and submit their necks to the
cruel yoke, the yoke of capitalism.
The rulers rule.
Capitalism, internationally, is—for capitalists—a struggle for a
strangle hold among jealously competing, unneighborly neighbors, a
struggle for business.
Capitalism thus becomes a stupid snarl of “foreigners”—to each nation
all other nations are “foreigners.”
And thus the world is petty, unsocial, “foreign,”—a war always possible
and threatening between “foreigners,”—the unfortunate ministers, most of
them, not to the contrary.
BUT, READER, THERE ARE NO “FOREIGNERS”—FOR ME AND MY INTERNATIONAL
FRIEND CHRIST AND MY INTERNATIONAL COMRADES.
Then why should a group of Christless, plutocratic political crooks and
flunky-champagne-guzzlers in Paris or Tokio, in Berlin or London, in
Madrid or Washington—why should any such group of political
bunco-steerers by a pompous declaration of assassination officially
decide for you and me and our brothers of some so-called “foreign
nation”—that we working class brothers are “enemies” and that we must
lay down the instruments of production and take up the weapons of
destruction and butcher ourselves by the tens of thousands?
Why should we permit a band of cheap “statesmen” to order us to tear one
another’s throats like dogs?
Why should _we_ fight?
_We_ have no quarrels.
The thing is ridiculous—utterly ridiculous, is it not?
And an equally important question is:—Why should we working class
brothers of all the world ever permit any ecclesiastical savages to fan
the flames of international hatred in our souls by means of pious
prayers and sermons in favor of war?
Even more ridiculous, isn’t it?
Let us refuse to murder. The blood-spilling business is too small for
brothers, too savage for socialized men, no matter what their religious
faith may be.
Perhaps, brother, you and I do not agree on Christ. But we can be good
friends any way, can’t we?
Now, I will tell you frankly, the Peaceful Christ seems to me to be so
much grander than a war-preaching preacher, so much nobler than a flunky
“fighting parson,” that he gains my sincere admiration. Such a great
brave brother he was.
Christ was the most defiant preacher that ever walked the earth or
flashed as a character conception in the human brain.
Christ, the historical revolutionary Christ, or Christ, splendid
creation of imagination, or Christ divine—whichever or whatever he
was—he wins and compels my gratitude:
Because he was neither an automaton nor a tool;
Because official ruffians even before his mockery of a trial viciously
pronounced him an “undesirable citizen”;
Because “leading citizens” could not use him, could not rent his
influence;
Because he scorned the opportunity to become “successful in life” in the
contemptible rôle of intellectual prostitute;
Because he despised the lusting devotees of Mammon;
Because he forgave the “duly convicted” crucified thieves and whipped
the unconvicted bankers from the temple;
Because with stinging words he lashed the whited sepulchres called “the
very _best_ people”;
Because he was so fine and great he promptly became extremely unpopular
with coarse and savage little “prominent people”;
Because he was so gentle and terrible that the noisy and cruel
“law-abiding leading citizens” in their swaggering ignorance and
malignance decided he was an anarchist and proceeded to shut off his
free speech;
Because he was neither narrow enough to be national nor ignorant enough
to be orthodox;
Because on the last morning of his life be so proudly despised the
official political bull-pups who teased him and insulted him—and could
not understand him;
Because, on the same morning, he so finely scorned the bigoted little
orthodox holy bullies who hindered him and wolfishly screamed for the
Carpenter’s blood;
Because children charmed him;
Because the humble “common people” swarmed around him and loved him—in
spite of their pious and orthodox “spiritual advisers”;
Because he scorned the “dignity” of some men and saw the Dignity of Man;
Because he came from the bottom up and never forgot—_never hesitated to
defend_—“even the least of these,” including his sad, shamed, outlawed
sister;
Because he did not whimper and cringe when certain religiously eminent
small souls spat in the face of the World Soul;
Because the great wholesome brother was a true Social Soul, loving all
mankind;
Because, especially because, he so finely forgave the thoughtless
working class soldiers who mocked him, forced a thorn crown upon his
head, drove nails through his flesh, sneered at his agonies, and thrust
a spear into their working class Brother Carpenter;
Because he said, “Put up thy sword,” regarded no man as “foreigner,” and
died for International Fraternalism.
A Social Man.
A Sample.
I love him.
Let us, too, brother, be social and international.
Let us bury the hatchet, break the rifle, spike the cannon, despise the
sword, accept the Sermon on the Mount for its spirit of peace, and scorn
any sermon that urges us to war against our own class brothers. Let us
detest any sermon that stirs and fosters the tiger within us and arrests
our social development.
Social development.
“Social development,” did I say? Yes, reader, that is what we need,
social development.
Man on his long march upward—up from the jungle—has been impeded by a
heavy burden—in his blood. He has carried the menagerie—in his veins.
Here permit me to use a very homely metaphor, a figure of speech neither
to your taste nor to mine, yet needed and defensible:
In its social development the world is hindered by too much bull-pup.
A bull-pup is at a disadvantage—socially. His social development is
stunted. The malignant wrinkles of his prize-fighter face obstruct his
vision. His outlook is restricted. Thus his notion of the world is
small. Hence the bull-pup is narrow, local and unsocial. Being socially
local and mean—and therefore petty and pugnacious—he enjoys a fight. In
the world of dogs he is a tough, a “rough-rider” and a “war-lord.” All
other dogs are “foreigners,” “guilty,” and “undesirable citizens.”
Peace is too large and fine for the bull-pup. War is “dee-lightful,”
“just bully”—for the bull-pup.
Thus even the humble dog world is worried and hindered by the socially
narrow and pugnaciously strenuous bull-pups—“great” and “successful,” in
their estimation.
Thus littleness and localism hinder even brutes in their social
development.
And it is thus in the human world also.
Confucius was a great man.
But Confucius is hindered—hindered by littleness—little Confucians.
Christ? Christ is great, fascinatingly, commandingly great.
But Christ is hindered—hindered by the pettiness of pugnacity, hindered
by littleness, little Christians.
Let us be brothers? Let us have peace?
Not yet. We can’t. We must wait. Strange, but true, we must wait for the
most reasonable thing in the world—peace.
Peace is on the program—next number.
From the warring tribes of the long, long ago, up, up, upward to the
federated races of the world,—that is the first number on the program—a
long steep climb for the human mind, up, up through the hundreds of
centuries, a half million years consumed in expanding the human heart,
in refining the human affections, in strengthening the social vision to
see all the way ’round the world, in widening the diameter of Society,
in creating, revising, and re-creating a definition of “Brother,”—the
race generating the Social Man, the World Patriot, the International
Citizen.
The arithmetic of history—Given: Life. To find, or produce, or deduce,
the god, the god of aspiring intelligence, the god of a socialized race.
A puzzling problem—how to subtract the brute, add the brother and
multiply the brains; how to proceed to the next number on the
program—Peace; how to move our bruised lips to say: “Put up thy sword.
We are of one blood.”
We are hindered.
Brotherhood and peace—divinely high thought!
But, alas! the thought is too high for low-browed strenuosity of the
tough-rider type; the thought is too large and fine for the poor brain
of a bull-dog or a human bully or a socially blunted holy man or any
other breed of stunted runts.
The strutting, thin-brained rooster in the farmyard crows, “Hurrah for
this our very own dunghill, the finest filth pile on earth.” Thus this
spurred and feathered patriot virtuously cultivates his vanity by
boisterously challenging “the enemy” in the neighboring farmyards.
“Hurrah for our tribe,” screams the savage—patriotically.
“Hurrah for our village of Squeedunk,” yells the local human shrimp.
More patriotism.
“Hurrah for our great city!” squeals the boastfully “metropolitan” small
man sweltering in unspeakable corruptions.
“Hurrah for the nation—right or wrong!” yelps the patriotic national
mongrel.
And thus these socially puny creatures, these social runts, stand ready,
as it were, to “patriotically” throw carbolic acid at their national and
international neighbors.
“Hurrah for Mankind, hurrah for Life!” finely calls the socially
developed man, the Increasing International Man.
Really, reader, the narrow-visioned provincial, the local sniveling, the
social shrimp, the pugnacious nationalist, the racial bigot, and the
stunted, sacerdotal manlet—really, these unsocial people are, as yet,
too local and little and narrow for a federated world, for an
internationally social Christ. Really, these unsocial human runts can
not sincerely and effectively carry “to all the world” any magnificent
social gospel of “peace on earth, good will toward all men,” and “make
of one blood all nations”—even tho’ they be baptized.
Now please do not misunderstand me. I do not belittle the rite of
baptism.
But baptism has no effect on a declaration of war by an extremely narrow
local bull-dog, whether he be a humble canine wearing a brass collar, or
a strutting puny human being wearing a “Prince Albert,” or a
lard-and-tallow millionaire worshipping a cash-register. None of these
is emotionally and socially fine. As usual, the world is embarrassed
when trying to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear.
A Christian assassin mounted on the throne of Russia remains an
assassin—in spite of his baptism.
A Christian bully elevated to the throne of the German Empire or to
American presidential distinctions, remains a pugnacious ruffian,
spoiling for trouble, always “not only willing but anxious to fight.”
Sacerdotal ceremonies have no effect on a leopard’s spots, a tiger’s
stripes, a bull-pup disposition, or a cash-register ambition.
War among brothers is civil war.
All men are brothers.
Therefore all war is civil war.
But peace is hindered by local littleness—especially by the belittling,
localizing effects of the sacred cash-register and its smaller unsocial
time-servers.
The Confucian capitalist, the Christian capitalist, and all other kinds
of capitalists of the whole world stand behind their blessed and
belittling cash-registers, plot in their Wall Street dens, cheating,
cheating, cheating—and snarling at one another. And this unsocial
snarling is called business, and this Christless business is morally
legitimated, “made respectable,” by too many unsocialized “spiritual
advisers.” Some of the holy men are finely social, nobly large,
splendidly fearless; and these great social souls refuse, proudly
refuse, to “sic” or urge the “dogs of war.” But unfortunately these
truly greater holy men are too few and they are threatened and bullied
by the over-fed, fat-pursed industrial Caesars in the best pews of the
house of God; and, moreover, these greater holy men are abused and
outvoted in the church conventions by their less developed brethren, if
they oppose a war—especially if there is a “national crisis.”
And there is always a “national crisis” imminent when greater markets
must be had and new territory is to be scrambled for by the capitalists
of the world.
Whenever there is a “crisis on,” whenever the cash-register captains,
the politicians and unsocial “spiritual leaders” believe, or announce,
that there is a “crisis upon us,”—at such times Christ, the peaceful,
nobly social Christ, is thrust to the rear of the stage and forced to be
silent, while the “fighting parsons” and the politicians and the
money-mongers and some glory-hunting buccaneers rush to the front of the
stage and scream for war—a “patriotic war.”
_And more and more the actual necessity for a larger foreign market
produces a “crisis.”_
It is coming—another war.[293]
Then for brotherhood—a sneer.
Then for the man of peace—a scornful “Mollycoddle!”
Then for Christ—coarse jeers.
Then for markets, for profits—blood and tears.
Then will the malignant manikins patriotically and profitably shout for
“national honor.”
Then Christ must wait.
Peace must wait.
Brotherhood must wait.
International federation, social grandeur, the human race, must wait.
All these must wait for the poor little fellows to get the emotions of
the prize-fighter and the savage heat and hate of the bull-pup out of
their veins; all these must wait, too, while the cash-register devotee
and his man Friday get the money—and “divide up.”
Possibly, reader, some of these paragraphs seem unfair.
Very well; perhaps it will seem fair to let a _clergyman_ speak with
frankness on this matter. Here following are some paragraphs from a
powerful book, _The Moral Damage of War_, by the fearless Dr. Walter
Walsh, a distinguished and eloquent clergyman of Dundee, Scotland.[294]
In the chapter, “The Moral Damage of War to the Preacher,” Dr. Walsh
speaks to his clerical brethren with the courage and directness of the
ancient Jewish prophets. Here are some illustrative paragraphs
(reprinted with kind permission of publishers):
“The belief that Christianity is incompatible with war, was designed
to abolish war ... was held by all the Christians of the first three
centuries.... Christianity is the religion of peace. How then is
Christendom still at war? We naturally turn to the professional
teachers of religion for an answer.
“The paid teachers of Christendom are numbered by hundreds of
thousands: Priests, bishops, ministers, catechists and so on,—while
their lay helpers—deacons, church-wardens, elders, Sunday-school
teachers, missioners, lay preachers—may be counted by the million
and _it is incomprehensible that war should continue to exist in
Christendom unless by first demoralizing these formers of religious
opinion_. The fact also that all Christian countries alike compete
in the equipment and spoils of war can be understood only as a proof
of a corrupt or undeveloped conscience. The reason why Christendom
is today in such straits and that so many countries wallow in debt,
waste, ignorance, covetousness, poverty and misery unspeakable, is
chiefly that the paid teachers of Christianity with their hosts of
unpaid assistants have capitulated to the war god.... War is never
pure, but is hell; and it can never be permissible to inaugurate
heaven by the help of hell.... Here and there a smaller Elijah
refuses to bow the knee to the military Baal, a faithful Micaiah,
tho’ smitten on the mouth, continues to bear his testimony to the
true significance of the gospel.... ‘For centuries the church met
the hostility of a pagan and unscrupulous world and never
flinched.... No revenge or bitterness marred the security of her
soul.’... The appalling nature of the preacher’s defection is seen
by the contrast with the magnificent opportunity war time affords
him, than which prophet or apostle never had a greater.... _A trial
of strength between conflicting nations is also a trial of the
preacher’s moral character_; the height of noble opportunity to
which it lifts him has its counterpart in the base opportunism to
which he may descend. He may temporize like a politician.... He may
accept the carnal policies of the parliament as limitations of his
gospel and hang his head like a dumb dog when statesmen fling
Christianity incontinently out of the house of legislation. He may
soothe his conscience with the lie that war is a matter of politics,
having nothing to do with the preaching of the gospel, and slide
gently down into the dastard, blind equally to _the humor and the
atheism of his position_. Between the churches which cry, “No
politics in the gospel!” and parliaments which cry, “No gospel in
politics!” the Son of Man is hard put to it to maintain a footing in
modern affairs.... Few invocations to the Prince of Peace are heard
[in time of war], but many to the God of battles.... The conscience
[of ecclesiasticism] lies limp and voiceless before the uplifted
sword, bribed by gold, paralyzed by fear ... shielding itself....
The federated tribes of Israel slink to their tents, murmuring some
safe platitudes about peace and prayer meetings whilst the world
triumphs, the flesh riots and the devil grins with infinite
content.... It were hard to say which is worse,—the silence of the
pulpit or the timidity or wickedness of its speech when it does find
tongue.... A dumb dog is bad, but a bloodhound baying upon the trail
is worse.... What is to be said of a preacher, who, when the war
spirit and the peace spirit are trembling in the balance, either can
not speak or speaks only to blaspheme his own gospel?... _It can not
be doubted that the church, exerting herself in accordance with her
principles, could make all bloodshed impossible, and could have
averted every war of recent times_; yet on many such occasions the
multitude of ministers stir no finger, preach no sermon, sign no
petition, sound no note that the government, willing enough to know
the temper of a nation, can interpret as hostile to their
project.... The appalling truth has to be faced: that the church,
contrary to every expectation that might be formed from her
principles and the character of the Being she worships, is always,
as a whole, for the war of the day. It is true that when peace is
the popular cry, the preachers are also for peace. If there is a
peace crusade on hand which excites the shallow enthusiasms of the
fashionables, the preachers will also catch the excitements of the
hour; but when the white banner yields to the red, the pastors beat
the drums for the fighters as furiously as they had previously
denounced the savagery of armed conflict.... Organized Christianity
divests herself of her robe of righteousness and her garments of
meek humility to clothe herself in khaki.... A thousand pulpits are
manned by Bible bullies who cite every obsolete and bloody precedent
of the wars of the Jews and show themselves destitute of the
elementary humanities and of the faculties necessary to discriminate
between Judaism two thousand years before Christ and Christianity
two thousand years after him.... What can mankind do with a church
that peels itself like a pugilist and reveals the murdering pagan
instead of the martyred Christian; which for carnal reasons cancels
the Sermon [on the Mount], contradicts the Beatitudes, flatly denies
the gospel, repudiates every specific Christly ideal, and unseats
Jesus in order to elevate Mars to the throne of conscience?... At
frequent intervals the cross with its suffering victim recedes and
out of the blood-red mist emerges the foul idol of war erect on his
crimson chariot.... The sanctification of revenge is, indeed, the
vilest function performed by a war-poisoned, blood-stained
church.... It is thus that the masses are kept from seeing the
degenerate nature of the thing.... Their pastors lead them into the
blood-red fields of Jahveh when the politicians give the word, and
into the green pastures of the Nazarene only when there is no
national scheme of murder and robbery afoot.... The churches as they
are today can not prevent war. Their palsied lips can not echo,
however feebly, the words of the master, ‘Put up again thy sword
into its place!’ There is not spiritual power left in organized
Christianity to insure the substitution of reason for brute
force.... Alas! it has hitherto been impossible to get Christianity
to obey Christ.”[295]
That is the language of a brave Christian preacher. In connection with
the reverend Doctor Walsh’s chastisement of the church in the morning of
the twentieth century it is interesting to read on the same subject the
words of a philosopher of the eighteenth century, Voltaire.[296]
“This universal rage which devours the world.... The most wonderful
part of this infernal enterprise [war] is, that each chief of
murderers causes his colors to be blest, and solemnly invokes God
before he goes to exterminate his neighbors.... A certain number of
orators are everywhere paid to celebrate these murderous days....
All of them speak for a long time, and quote that which was done of
old in Palestine.... The rest of the year these people declaim
against vices.... All the united vices of all ages and places will
never equal the evils produced by a single campaign. Miserable
physicians of souls! you exclaim for five quarters of an hour on
some pricks of a pin, and say nothing on the malady which tears us
into a thousand pieces.... Can there be anything more horrible
throughout nature?”
And now let us get at this matter from the point of view of a political
economist, a really great economist, John A. Hobson—who puts the case
thus:[297]
“When has a Christian nation ever entered on a war which has not
been regarded by the official priesthood as a sacred war? In England
the State Church has never permitted the spirit of the Prince of
Peace to interfere when statesmen and soldiers appealed to the
passions of race-lust, conquest and revenge. Wars, the most insane
in origin, the most barbarous in execution, the most fruitless in
results have never failed to get the sanction of the Christian
Churches.... _There is no record of the clergy of any Church having
failed to bless a popular war, to find reasons for representing it
as a crusade._”
The following lines from a British philosopher, Frederic Harrison,[298]
are to the point for the workingman’s instruction:
“The official priests of the old faiths accept without questioning
the authorized judgment of the political government. They are
engaged ... in calling upon their God of Battles (can it be, their
God of Mercy?) to keep the British soldiers—the invaders, the
burners of villages, the hangmen of [native] priests—in his good and
holy keeping.... A system of slavery prepares the slave-holding
caste for any inhumanity that may seem to defend it.... If it
hardens our politicians, it degrades our churches. The thirst for
rule, the greed of the market, and the saving of souls, all work
together in accord. The Churches approve and bless whilst the
warriors and the merchants are adding new provinces to empire; they
have delivered the heathen to the secular arm.... Christianity in
practice, as we know it now, for all the Sermon on the Mount, is the
religion of aggression, domination, combat. It waits upon the
pushing trader and the lawless conqueror; and with obsequious
thanksgiving it blesses his enterprise.”
Who, indeed, shall deliver us from war?
Our pastors?
Hardly.
The pastors’ economic masters will not permit them to do so.
Tho’ the machine guns mow down a million of the world’s choicest working
men, pile up windrows of human carcasses and desolate the huts, flats,
hovels and “homes” of the poor; tho’ ten million pairs of calloused
hands of agonizing working class women be stretched toward well-fed,
comfortable pastors, begging for a _united, effective declaration_
against war; tho’ these ten million humble working class mothers, their
eyes streaming with tears, on their knees beseech the “holy men of God”
to unitedly cry aloud against the accursed “Death’s feast” where their
dear ones are devoured; tho’ multitudes of little working class children
in mute despair dread the roar of the belching cannon that slay their
fathers and brothers; still the pastors (most of them) will “stand by
the administration” in any and all wars, as usual.
“The administration,” “the government,” under capitalism, is simply the
_executive committee of the capitalist class_.
The capitalist class are internationally struggling for the world
market.
In these international struggles the capitalists need the support of
public opinion.
Public opinion can be created and controlled by the pastor.
The pastor must therefore be controlled by the capitalist.
The campaign begins—to capture the market and the minister.
The soldier goes to war and the capitalist goes to church.
The soldier takes a gun, the capitalist takes gold.
The soldier slays.
The capitalist prays—by proxy.
Being “the will of God” it is, of course, “mysterious.”
The capitalist occupies the very best pew in the house of God—and lays
beautiful bank-bills in the collection plate.
The minister is embarrassed—and impressed.
The pastor and his master divide up.
The war? Isn’t _war hell_?
It beats hell.
But it is “all for the best”—mysteriously.
With conscience “seared as with a hot iron” the preacher joins the
politician; and the precious pair unite their rented voices in patriotic
melody in support of the capitalist class.
Brother,—you of the working class,—Jew, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic,
Protestant, peaceful Buddhist or peaceful Confucian, or what
else,—wherever you are, whatever you are in religion, worshipping,
searching, groping through the universe for God, worship as you prefer,
worship whom you prefer: I do not seek to break your church allegiance.
But, sir, to save your life, to save your own wife’s tears, to defend
your own children, to protect your own working class, I do wish to have
you realize _distinctly_ that:—
_The working class must draw the bayonet from its own breast._ So far as
_war_ is concerned the working class must band together and stand
together against war. The working class must themselves protect the
working class against the industrial system through which they are
_robbed and betrayed_.
The workers of the world need a political party of their own class—and
as wide as the world, International, and committed to _justice and
therefore to peace._
Listen to the confession of the editor of a very powerful capitalist
newspaper:
“It is significant that the Socialists of different races, and
speaking different tongues, strangers in blood and customs, in
Germany, France, Great Britain, Austria, and Italy, constitute the
_one great peace party of the world_.”[299]
Listen again—to the best-known and the best loved Christian woman in the
United States, Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, Chicago:[300]
“The Socialists are making almost the sole attempt to preach a
morality _sufficiently all-embracing and international_ to keep pace
with even the material internationalism which has standardized
[even] the threads of screws and the size of bolts, so that machines
become interchangeable from one country to another.... Existing
commerce has long ago reached its international stage, but it has
been the result of business aggression and constantly appeals for
military defense and for the forcing of new markets.”
You, you who are to be tricked and shot at the factory door and on the
battlefield, go to your public library and get _Christianity and the
Social Order_, and read there the words of a preacher great enough for
the City Temple of London, great enough to be the worthy successor of
the world-known Joseph Parker, read the Reverend Dr. R. J. Campbell’s
splendid tribute to the Socialist Party as the only political party in
the world today scorning the belittling jealousies of capitalist
statesmen and working effectively for international brotherhood.
Reader, you working class reader, a special word here:
Perhaps your working class neighbor’s son is at this moment falling into
a patriotic trance, gullibly planning to join the local militia or the
standing army or the navy, meditating on butcheries. Go to him. With a
firm grasp on his mind (if he has one) wake him, rouse him, from that
race-cursing dream, rouse him from the spell that for thousands of years
has damned his class. Be kind. Be patient. But—wake him. Wake him for
the _world_ movement for the _working_ class. _Wake him for the war_—the
war without a sword, the war without a cannon; the war with a printing
press, the war with a book. _Teach him that salvation is through
information._ Teach him that the “truth will make him free.” In his
brain kindle a fire, a divine unrest, a desire that can not die, the
desire for peace born of justice.
Otherwise, beware lest your neighbor’s son be wheedled at any moment
into the militia or the standing army or the navy—_ready_ to be
consecrated, sanctified, blessed,—for wholesale assassination, _ready_
as a militiaman, as a Cossack, as a soldier, to stain his consecrated
sword with the blood of his neighbors and brutally—patriotically—laugh
at the tears of women and children.
Read to your neighbor the next Chapter: “Now, What Shall We Do About
It?”
-----
Footnote 285:
See Chapter Four, Section Two, “The Cost of War in Cash.”
Footnote 286:
“Documents of the American Association for International
Conciliation,” 1907–08.
Footnote 287:
See Chapter Eight, Section 13 and 14.
Footnote 288:
It is mildly encouraging to reflect that very heavy and very general
international investments in national and industrial bonds would have
at least some tendency to dampen the bond-buying capitalists’
enthusiasm for war; because, in some cases, a disastrous war might
result in the repudiation of bonds and, in most cases, might easily
result in a great temporary reduction of dividends from industrial
investments. Another thing to be noted here is that sometimes the
investors in the bonds of an unstable nation about to go to war, may
regret the threatening war and urge against it and even decline to buy
war bonds, _before the war is declared_, in order to protect their
investments already made. But after the war is once entered upon these
same regretful investors feel almost compelled to purchase the new
issue of war-bonds in order to make victory more certain for the
nation whose bonds they already hold, and thus protect the market
value of their original investments. French investors in Russian bonds
and enterprises to the extent of more than a billion dollars found
themselves in this predicament in the case of the recent
Russian-Japanese war. See Index: “Bankruptcy, Danger of.”
Footnote 289:
See Chapter Seven, Section 17.
Footnote 290:
Swinburne: “A Word for the Country.”
Footnote 291:
See Index: “The Hague Peace Conference.”
Footnote 292:
See Chapter Four, Section One.
Footnote 293:
See Index: “Another War.”
Footnote 294:
Published by Ginn and Company, New York.
Footnote 295:
Italics mine. G. R. K.
Footnote 296:
_Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary._
Footnote 297:
_The Psychology of Jingoism_, pp. 41, 133.
Footnote 298:
_National and Social Problems_, pp. 252–53.
Footnote 299:
The New York _World_, editorial, August 15, 1907. Italics mine. G. R.
K.
Footnote 300:
_Newer Ideals of Peace_, pp. 114–15. Italics mine. G. R. K.
CHAPTER TEN.
Now What Shall We Do About It?
“No people will toil and sweat to keep a class in idleness unless
_cajoled_ or _compelled_ to do so.... There are various devices by
means of which a body of persons may sink their fangs into their
fellows and subsist upon them. Slavery ... is the primary form of
the parasitic relation. By modifying this into serfdom the parasitic
class, without the least abating its power of securing its
nourishment from others, places itself in a position more convenient
to it and less irritating to the exploited.... Finally, the
institution of property is so shaped as to permit a slanting
exploitation under which a class is able to live in idleness. The
parasitic class is always a ruling class, and utilizes as many as it
can of the means of control.”—Professor Edward A. Ross, Department
of Sociology, University of Wisconsin.[301]
“The various institutions, political, ecclesiastical, professional,
industrial, etc., including the government, are devices, means,
gradually brought into existence, to serve interests that develop
within the State.”—Professor Albion W. Small, Head of Department of
Sociology, University of Chicago.[302]
“The non-industrial or _parasitic_ classes are often the most
active.... They are wonderfully successful in _creating the belief_
that they are the most important of all the social elements.”—Dr.
Lester F. Ward, Department of Sociology, Brown University.[303]
The preceding chapters have, it is hoped, been of some assistance to the
reader in realizing in what unqualified contempt the working class are
held in our boasted civilized society,—how utterly the working class are
tricked and betrayed, brutalized and bled, degraded and despised,
robbed, starved and stung,—their flesh torn, their blood spilt, their
bodies tossed to the buzzards and grave-worms, and even the widows and
orphans insulted with thirty dirty pieces of silver in payment for the
life and love and joy lost in war. Having tried to make this, and more,
clear, now let me explain “what to do about it.”
What, indeed, shall the working class do to rid themselves of the curse
called war?
We can do nothing, absolutely nothing, with sweeping effectiveness, till
we understand the industrial structure and purpose of the present order
of society, and, as a class, also understand the art of
self-defense—political and industrial class-defense.
Repeatedly in preceding chapters I have written of two classes.
Are there indeed two classes?
_Get distinctly in mind the three following propositions stating the
three largest facts of all concerning the present order of society_:
=First Proposition=: In the present capitalist form society is divided
into two classes, two industrial classes: the capitalist class and the
working class.
=Second Proposition=: Industrially, society is organized and managed for
the _special_ benefit of _part_ of society—for one class, the capitalist
class.
=Third Proposition=: Each of these two classes has industrial interests
_as a class_; these class interests conflict; and there is, therefore,
as a part of and because of the _class_ form of society, a constant
class conflict, a _class struggle_.
Let me try to make these three propositions clear. Please note carefully
the exact wording of the propositions to be explained.
The explanation,—first proposition:
Of course you wish to live and be comfortable. To live and be
comfortable you must consume useful things. But before you can consume
useful things they must be produced. And since this is true of all the
members of society it is readily seen that the first task of society,
the primary social function, is production.
_Production, industry, is the foundation of society._
Now, in performing this industrial work, in doing this first thing, we
use raw materials, mines, forests, fields, mills, factories, tools,
machinery, railways, etc., etc.; and these things are called the MEANS
OF PRODUCTION. We make use of these things, these means of production,
in _applying our labor-power_—that is, in producing the things society
wishes to consume.
But:—
One class privately own the coal mines and iron mines and buy
labor-power;
The other class work in the coal mines and iron mines and sell
labor-power.
One class privately own lumber forests and marble quarries, and buy
labor-power;
The other class work in the lumber forests and marble quarries, and sell
labor-power.
One class privately own cotton mills, steel mills, and flour mills,
etc., and buy labor-power.
The other class work in cotton mills, steel mills, and flour mills,
etc., and sell labor-power.
One class privately own railroads and buy labor-power;
The other class work on railroads and sell labor-power.
Or, to say it briefly,
One class, the _capitalist_ class, privately OWN the chief material
means of production—and BUY labor-power.
The other class, the _working_ class, USE the chief material means of
production—and SELL labor power.
Surely you can see that there are two _industrial classes_.
There are, under capitalism, not only two industrial classes, but
also two social classes. Industrial classes become social classes.
Johan Kaspar Bluntschli, one of Germany’s most eminent writers on
political science, has this to say:
“Classes have very often been founded on the basis of property. In
these constitutions ... property becomes the determining political
force, and citizens are valued by amount of their income.... The
Proletariate ... consists mainly of the waste of other classes, of
those fractions of the population who, by their isolation and their
poverty, have no place in the established order of society.” [That
is, they are in no _commanding relation_ to the industrially vital
property.][304]
“Conversely, social rank depends on economic conditions; the state
is made ... conservative ... by the economic interests at its
foundation....
“Perhaps its [property’s] most important social effect has come to
be the fact that the possession of property is so generally the
basis of social differentiation. In earlier times, physical force,
later, institutions of caste, were the basis of differentiation in
society; wealth is the most universally recognized source of power,
so that social rank is often determined by the possession of
wealth.”—Professor Fairbanks, Yale University.[305]
And now the _second_ proposition: Are these industries and the other
industries really operated for the _special benefit_ of _part_ of
society? The answer is clear in the following illustration:
If the profits on all these industries should, during the next twelve
months, _rise two billion dollars higher than usual_, would the _wages_
of the workers engaged in these industries be _increased_ in _that
proportion_? Most certainly they would not. You know very well they
would not. But why not? Simply because these industries, like all other
industries, are, under capitalism, operated for the special benefit of
those, the capitalist class, who privately own these industries and buy
labor-power, and, by this arrangement, live on profits,—on surplus
value.[306]
And, finally, the third proposition: Do the industrial interests of
these two industrial classes fundamentally _conflict_? Perhaps the
answer will be clear in the following homely illustration:
If you are selling a horse, you wish to sell him for—say $300. But the
buyer of the horse wishes to buy the horse for, say, $150.
Clearly there is a conflict of interests between the buyer of the
_horse_ and the seller of the _horse_.
A wage-earner selling labor-power wishes to sell, say, eight hours
labor-power for $6.
The capitalist employer buying labor-power wishes to buy, say, nine
hours labor-power for $2.50—in order to get the surplus value—that
fascinating _surplus_.
Thus there is a fundamental conflict between the industrial interests of
this buyer of labor power and the industrial interests of this seller of
labor-power.
And it is just so with the two industrial classes.
There is a fundamental conflict of industrial interests between the
employer class buying labor-power and the working class selling
labor-power.
Between these two industrial classes there is a struggle, a class
struggle—to defend their conflicting industrial interests.
This class struggle takes on many different forms—but it is _always_ the
same thing down at the bottom—a class struggle _in industry_.
* * * * *
The three propositions explained above are most important. A clear
understanding of these three propositions always—always—revolutionizes
the _political_ thinking of the working class man, or woman, who has
not, before, understood them. These three truths destroy old political
prejudices and customs, cut the reins by which the political tricksters
misguide the workers, clear the air of “hot air,” reveal the blind
alleys of old party politics, point the road to power and freedom for
the working class, and make a rock-bottom foundation for a working class
political philosophy and policy and tactics.
_The capitalist class (who rule and ruin the toilers) regard these three
truths as more dangerous than any other, or all other, teachings that
ever reach the working class mind._ It is to the capitalists’ interest
that the workers should not learn these three truths. But it is to the
interest of the working class that the working class should learn these
three truths.
With these three primary facts of present society clearly in mind let us
proceed.
In addition to their powerful position as capitalist OWNERS OF THE MEANS
OF PRODUCTION, the capitalist class have three _special advantages_ over
the working class in this class struggle:
(=1=) The capitalist class are more _class conscious_ than the working
class are—at present. That is, the capitalists more _distinctly realize_
that, as capitalists, they _constitute a class_—with _class interests_
to defend.
(=2=) The capitalists, because they are more class conscious, are,
naturally, more _class loyal_ than the working class are—at present. In
obedience to the _biological law of self-preservation_, a _class_, as
well as an individual, will defend themselves, as a class—that is, will
be class loyal—in proportion as they are class conscious, or in
proportion as they are aware of and understand the interests of their
class. Tho’ the capitalists understand that they are a class with class
interests, they are always cooing softly to all workers who are ignorant
enough to listen, cooing sweetly about “no classes,” “all in the same
boat,” “harmony of interests,” “Capital and Labor are brothers,” etc.
(=3=) The capitalists _study_ tactics of class warfare—tactics of
industrial struggle, far more than the working class do—at present.
Being more class conscious and therefore more class loyal and
consequently more eager, as a class, for self-defense, the capitalist
class naturally study more patiently the ways and means for their own
class defense. And _because they do study more they really know more_—at
present—about politics, about the game called the class struggle, about
the art of self-defense, _class defense in industry_.[307]
In all the modern forms of this unhappy class struggle, one phase of
which is called war, the capitalist class are awake and watchful, united
and victorious—seated in the saddle of power at the head of the
procession; and the working class are drowsy and confused, divided and
defeated—limping afoot and ridiculous at the tail end of the grand march
of the world’s affairs.
All great military leaders in all wars—in all struggles—in all time have
always used the two following tactics:
FIRST: Divide the enemy, if possible, and have them crush one another;
or,
SECOND: If circumstances hinder the first tactics, then divide the enemy
and crush them one part at a time.
And the captains of industry, the capitalists, right now employ these
tactics with success. They themselves band together, but they divide and
rule the working class. More class conscious, more class loyal and more
studious of the ways and means of struggle than the working class are,
the capitalist class proceed as follows:
=(A) On the Economic Field= the capitalists divide the working class and
have them fight one another; and thus the capitalist class are easily
able to defeat and fleece the workers all the time, everywhere. The
workers, having no part in the ownership of the means of production and
being thus divorced from a commanding relation to the economic
foundations of society, craftily fooled with false teaching of
“capital-and-labor-harmony-of-interests,” sore and humble with
disappointment, whipped with the lash of hunger, stung to desperation,
confused and traduced by bribed pets, spies and traitors,—the workers
angrily, blindly, split up into jealous groups, shamefully turn against
one another, fight one another, under-bid one another, “scab” on one
another, desert one another,—defeat one another. Moreover one part of
the working class is flattered and cheaply bribed into volunteering to
organize and arm themselves and proudly stand guard over their brothers
and against their brothers; and thus the workers spy and inform on one
another, arrest one another, jail one another, “bull pen” one another,
bayonet one another and shoot one another—under the capitalist
system—the present class-labor system.
The working class, of course, are thus easily defeated and robbed
industrially.
The busy human bees sting themselves—and lose the honey of their own
industry.
And all this is entirely satisfactory to the industrial masters—great
and small. (See page 175, [5].)
The rulers rule.
=(B) On the Political Field= the capitalist class divide the working
class into two or more groups and have them politically antagonize
themselves, have all the workers all the time politically sting and
defeat one another—that is,—have them cancel the political _class_-power
of the working class.
One part of the working class vote one capitalist class party ticket,
another part of the working class vote another capitalist class party
ticket, another another, and so on. Thus millions of the confused
working class politically defeat the working class and politically
support their industrial masters by politically supporting _political
parties_ (variously and craftily labeled) _which unanimously stand for
the capitalist system_.
Thus the confused working class are easily defeated _politically_—which
makes it far easier to rob them _industrially_.
By electing to political power _any_ political party standing for _any_
form of the capitalist _class_-labor system the working class give the
_capitalist class complete control_ not only of all the political
institutions, but also of all other institutions useable by a class in
self-defense; because _the control of political institutions carries
with it the legal right to control all other institutions_. In this
political confusion, division and eclipse, the working class are as
helpless as sheep, and, like sheep, are shorn by their political and
industrial shepherds.
And this also is entirely satisfactory to the masters of industry—both
great and small.
The rulers rule.
We must learn this: Everywhere, always and under all circumstances the
working class must _stand together_ in the use of _all_ forms of power
we have in defense of our _class_.
Having distinctly in mind, then, these important preliminaries,—and
especially the fact that whatever we do in self-defense we must do _as a
class banded together_, let us consider still further the source—the
fountain-head—of the trouble called the class struggle, one form of
which is commonly called war.
_Society has many functions to perform. In order to perform these
functions society must be organized._
_Always, it is most important to note, society is organized primarily
with respect to the function of wealth production, because the
production of things to live on comes before every other social
function._
_For the performance of this function of wealth production society,
developed beyond tribal communism, can be organized in two ways and only
two ways_:
=First Possible Form of Social Organization=: On the =Plan of
Mutualism=—under which the INDUSTRIAL FOUNDATIONS of society are PUBLIC
PROPERTY.
Society can be organized for the performance of this great industrial
function of production on the plan of mutualism—_all_ of the people
having Joint-ownership and joint-control of the _chief material means of
production_, all of the people of proper age and condition of health
performing useful, necessary social service,—there being no industrial
master class and no industrial dependent class,—the industrial
independence of all the members of society being due to the fact that
each is an owner, a joint owner, of the chief material means of
production. Every one is thus _commandingly related_ to the absolutely
necessary _means of life_. With equality in ownership and equality in
control of _the things used in getting a living_ the people become
_equals in opportunity_ to get a living,—that is, industrially free. The
dominant institution would be the institution of public property in the
dominant means used in performing the dominant social function. This
would render impossible the domination of society by a _group_ or
_class_ within society—ALL the members of society _would have their feet
firmly planted upon the foundations of life_, the means of life, the
means of production; and _could not be crowded off the foundations_ and
robbed by private owners of these foundations.
This form of society may properly be called an industrial democracy.
The _purpose_ of this form of society is the _welfare of all_ the
members of society.
Under this form of society there would be no industrial classes; and
therefore, class robbery would _not_ be and could _not_ be organized,
legalized and easy.
=Second Possible Form of Social Organization=: On the =Plan of
Antagonism=—that is, with a _Class_-Labor System—under which the
INDUSTRIAL FOUNDATIONS of society are PRIVATE PROPERTY,—privately owned
by one class and productively used by the other class.
Society can, indeed, be organized for the performance of this great
industrial function of production on the plan of a class-labor
system—one part of society being in the strategic position of industrial
masters, a ruling class, their mastery being due to the fact that they
own as private property the _chief material means of production_;—the
other part of society being in the helpless position of industrial
dependents, a working class,—their industrial dependence being due to
the fact that they have no effective share in the ownership and control
of the chief material means of production.
This form of society we may properly call an industrial despotism.
The _purpose_ of this form of society is the _special welfare of part_
of the members of society.
Under this class-labor form of society, class robbery is _organized,
legalized, and easy_.
The _foundation institution of all despotism_ is the institution of
private property in the economic foundations of society—that is, in the
means of production. This is the rock-bottom of organized, legalized and
easy robbery of the workers by the shirkers.
Historically society has been organized in a class-labor form in three
different ways,—as follows:
(=1=) CHATTEL SLAVERY, instituted thousands of years ago, was a
_class_-labor system,—an organized, legalized opportunity for wholesale
class robbery; and under that form of class-labor system, with class
robbery legally _arranged_ for, class robbery was, of course,
respectable, profitable and easy—and therefore inevitable.
Peace was impossible.
The _purpose_ of this form of society was _unsocial_.
Under this form of society the masters were in legal possession of the
means of production and also of the forts, courts, and legislatures
(such as existed); and were thus _in perfect position_ to defend and
extend their industrial robbery.
The chattel slave owners were thus parasites, aggressive social
parasites.
That is admitted.[308]
(=2=) SERFDOM, common in Europe only a hundred years ago, was also a
class-labor system—an organized, legalized opportunity for wholesale
class robbery; and under that form of class-labor system, with class
robbery legally arranged for, class robbery was, of course respectable,
profitable and easy—and therefore inevitable.
Peace was impossible.
The _purpose_ of this form of society was _unsocial_.
Under this form the masters were still in legal possession of the means
of production and also of the forts, courts and legislatures, and were
thus _in perfect position_ to defend and extend their industrial
robbery.
The landlords-and-masters of the ancient serfs were thus also parasites,
aggressive social parasites.
That is admitted.
(=3=) CAPITALISM, the present system, is also a class-labor system, an
organized, legalized opportunity for wholesale class robbery; and under
this form of class-labor system, with class robbery legally arranged
for, class robbery is, today, of course, altogether respectable,
abundantly profitable and temptingly easy—and therefore, naturally,
inevitable.
The purpose of the present capitalist form of society is the special
welfare of only a part of society, the capitalist class, and is,
therefore, an unsocial purpose.
Peace is impossible—while capitalism lasts.
Under this form of society the masters, the capitalist class, are in
possession of the means of production; that is, in legal possession of
the industrial foundations of society, and also in legal control of the
arsenals, cannon, soldiers, forts, courts and legislatures, and are thus
_in perfect position_ to defend and extend their industrial robbery.
The capitalists (_so far as they receive social incomes without
rendering equivalent social service_) are thus parasites, aggressive
social parasites. (See footnote, pages 298–99.)
That is admitted. That is admitted, explained and condemned even by the
President of the American Sociological Society, Dr. Lester F. Ward,
Professor of Sociology in Brown University.[309]
_This parasitism of capitalism is easily seen in this way_:
_Wealth equivalent to three hundred and sixty-nine tons of gold
($200,000,000) was given by inheritance to William H. Vanderbilt’s eight
children._[310]
_If the daughter of John D. Rockefeller, senior, should by inheritance
receive one-half of the present six-hundred-million-dollar fortune, she
would receive, without rendering any service whatever, wealth equivalent
to five hundred and fifty-three tons of gold._
Billions of dollars’ worth of mines, railways, factories, forests and
other means of production, will, _by inheritance, without
function_,—that is, without service—legally fall into the hands of the
children of the present capitalist class, whether those children are
intelligent, virtuous and industrious, or stupid, vicious and lazy. And
thus, like the children of kings and nobles, they will be _in position
to win the race of life without running_, in position to _prey upon
others_ in the struggle for existence, in legal position to procure
_substance without service_.
This whole vast scheme of robbery—social parasitism—is “correct” and
“proper,”—that is, the process is ELABORATELY LEGALIZED.
_Parasitism is robbery._
_Parasitism does not cease to be parasitism, nor does robbery cease to
be robbery, when, like chattel slavery, it shrewdly gets itself
organized, baptized and legalized as an “eminently respectable” and
profitable righteous institution for committing perpetual grand
larceny._[311]
Thus at present, as in the past under slavery, as in the past under
serfdom, the ruling class, as intelligent parasites, prepare for class
aggression, prepare for class robbery. They as a class create and secure
their opportunity for legally robbing the producing class by arranging
to _control the industrial structure_ of society and thus control the
_performance_ of the _industrial function_—that is, the fundamental
function, the _first_ function, of society.
The ruled and robbed working class must get it in mind distinctly and
unforgettably that the foundation of all class-labor forms of society,
that which gives to _part_ of society the _control of society_, the
foundation upon which industrial parasitism rests, the substructure of
all despotism—is the _institution of private_ property in the _chief
material means of production_. This institution SPLITS SOCIETY INTO TWO
CLASSES, namely, the producers and the parasites. Political parties do
not create classes. Political parties are a _consequence_ of industrial
classes and are intended to _defend_ industrial classes. Sometimes, to
make sure of victory, the capitalist class have several political
parties in the field—under shrewdly _confusing names_.
A class-labor system, any class-labor system, all class-labor
systems—_provide, by means of institutions_, the LEGAL conditions and
opportunities at the industrial foundations of society for part of
society, a class, to act directly or indirectly as parasites; and it is
_entirely natural_ that that part of society, in pursuing their own
interests, should use their opportunity to act like parasites. And it is
_entirely natural_ also that there should be resistance by the
producers, and therefore class struggle, class war. Indeed all
class-labor forms of society are industrially so _brutally unjust and
therefore so irritating_ that the _largest_ fact in such societies is an
eternal, internal, infernal conflict of industrial class interests—an
endless civil war in industry, a class war, a class struggle, _around
and around the industrial foundations of society._ (See pages 167–70.)
_Antagonism_ is thus in the _Structure_ of _class_-form society.
This helps to an understanding of past and present conflicts.
It becomes evident that the source of war is to be found at the
industrial foundations of society.
War—war broadly considered—the class struggle, throughout the history of
civilized society is no more and no less than the natural aggressive
robbery by a part of society provided with an opportunity to rob and the
natural resistance of the class that is robbed.
WAR, THE WAR, IS AGGRESSION AND RESISTANCE—ROBBERY AND
RESISTANCE—PLUNDER AND PROTEST:—
(1) The aggressive industrial robbery by one class, and
(2) The resistance to industrial robbery by the other class.
Not only in the history of civilized peoples everywhere for thousands of
years, but also in our own present-day capitalist society everywhere, we
see this natural aggression and natural resistance.
The result today—as in the past—is struggle, war, class war—between the
parasites and the producers.
_The_ war is the _class_ war.
Modern “foreign” wars are simply contests between different groups of
capitalists (the workers of course doing the fighting and bleeding) _to
extend the area of opportunity for industrial class robbery_, and are
thus simply _phases_ and _extensions_ of the class war.
War, then, begins with aggression, continues with aggression; and is at
present extended by aggressive foreign wars of industrial or commercial
conquest.
_To summarize._
(_a_) _War, conflict, class aggression and class resistance, are
inherent in all class-labor forms of society._
(_b_) _Capitalism is a class-labor form of society._
(_c_) _Therefore, under capitalism there will be, there must be as long
as capitalism lasts—class aggression and class resistance, class
conflict—class war._
THE CONCLUSION CANNOT BE DODGED: PEACE IS IMPOSSIBLE—UNDER CAPITALISM.
A million sermons and a million peace talk-fests cannot heal the
smarting wounds in the robbed toiler’s breast; cannot pull the fangs of
the capitalists from the flesh of the toilers, _as long as capitalism
lasts_. Organized eloquence can not stop a cannon ball or persuade the
rulers to resign.
Under capitalism, as under slavery and serfdom, the employers are in a
position _down at the industrial foundations of society_ to legally
filch their livings from the working class—thus:—the capitalists
privately own and privately control the means of production—the things
the workers must use in getting a living. Like leeches the capitalist
class are thus fastened to the very foundations of society. Here at the
industrial foundations of society the industrial blood of society,
wealth, is produced. And here are the leeches; and here they are in
absolute control of the industrial blood of society. And it is natural,
entirely natural, that here, in such position with such opportunity,
they should, like leeches, suck this industrial blood, that is, behave
like parasites.
The capitalists—with society arranged in this manner—are indeed in
position to rob the world wholesale, in position to hold up all the
weary producers on all the earth.
This organized, legalized hold-up and the resistance to this
hold-up—this is war, _the_ war.
The policeman, the militiaman, the cossack and the soldier are all
always ready to rush upon the world’s stage to serve.
To serve whom?
In all the conflicts due to class-labor forms of society, the ruling
class, as already indicated, have always a heavy social fist, a social
weapon—an _armed guard_, such as militia, heavy police forces, and
standing armies to extend the robbery and to protect the industrial
ruling class in their unjust, unsocial position of legalized robbers of
the working class. All talk, all hope, all prayer, for peace and quiet
and harmony are idle as long as society is unjustly organized—that is,
unsocially organized, down at its very foundations, one part of society
being in the position of industrial masters, the other part of society
being in the position of industrial dependents. The _yawning chasm_ in
society thus created between the two warring classes—_can never be
bridged with wishes, hopes and prayers, nor by peace conferences
dominated by profit-stuffed masters and their well-fed intellectual
serfs who dare not admit the fundamental cause of war_.[312]
THUS IT BECOMES CLEAR WHAT THE FUTURE HAS FOR THE WORKING CLASS—WHILE
CAPITALISM LASTS:
In spite of all the sincere and insincere hopes and prayers for peace
there will always be, under capitalism, legalized wholesale plundering
of the workers by the capitalist employers—a form of aggressive social
parasitism by the employers and _vigorous resistance by the workers in
proportion to their realization of the robbery_;—and consequently there
will be wage struggles, wage reductions, compulsory under-consumption,
“over-production,” unemployment, bread lines, soup kitchens, rent riots,
evictions, “demand-work” marches, strikes, picketing, “scabbing,”
boycotting, lockouts, injunctions, “bull-pens,” blacklisting, interstate
kidnapping; and also anti-picket thugs,—policemen, Pinkertons, deputy
sheriffs, constabulary, cossacks, militiamen and the “regulars” shooting
down underpaid, underfed workers; everywhere the belittled lives and the
spilt blood of the working class.[313]
And there will be increasing opposition to free assemblage, opposition
to free speech, opposition to free press—in order to silence discussion
and stop the spread of knowledge of what is fundamentally wrong.
Also there will continue to be, from time to time, naturally, under
capitalism, wars of conquest to widen the field of exploitation—to
enlarge the opportunity for aggressive social parasitism,—wars to open
up foreign markets, wars to protect foreign markets for products which
the producers’ wages will not permit them to consume and the employers
are not able to consume;—and everywhere the world will be stormy with
the stirring trumpet call, “To arms! To arms!”—stormy with the crafty
and confusing cry, “To the front! To the front! The flag!”—stormy with
the shrilling fife, the roll of drums, the rattle of musketry, the flash
of swords, the booming roar of cannon, burning cities, sinking warships
and the thundering tread of galloping cavalry horses,—the class struggle
in a thousand visible bitter forms,—and everywhere windrows and
ditchfuls of dead men, dead working men, everywhere the torn flesh, the
slit veins, the streaming blood and tears of the working class: hell
everywhere except in the homes of our “very _best_ people” who in times
of trouble as in times of peace are always calmly feeding (like leeches
ever feeding) on the surplus legally filched from the working class.
Thus capitalist society is everywhere cursed with a festering social
sore, an unhealable sore, poisoning, withering the best things in
society, blasting the finer forms and feelings of brotherhood and peace.
Everywhere the lives of the toilers are vulgarized and brutalized and
wasted. And all these things will always be natural and unescapable
facts and parts of any class-labor form of society, an unsocially
organized society, with injustice organized, legalized and easy, down
deep in the industrial foundations of society,—ever an endless civil war
in industry between the two, the only two, industrial classes.
Now what shall we do about it?
It is as plain as “a, b, c.”
War and all the forms of the class struggle are excessive social
inflammation.[314]
* * * * *
(a) Injustice violently inflames society.
(b) Social parasitism is monstrously unjust.
(c) Social parasitism therefore inflames society—and should be
destroyed.
* * * * *
(a) Any form of society that produces and protects a class of social
parasites will always inflame society, and should therefore be
destroyed.
(b) Capitalism produces and protects a class of social parasites, and
thus inflames society.
(c) Capitalism must therefore be destroyed.
* * * * *
Justice soothes society.
Society must be organized with justice _in its structure_.
We must search for justice—for a new _social structure_.
We must construct a form of society that will “make it easier to do
right and more difficult to do wrong.”[315]
Shall we be non-resistant?
No, emphatically, no.
Non-resistance is not natural (especially for the class conscious
workers)—for workers who _understand their interests as a class_; and
non-resistance is not reasonable, is not safe, and is not possible.
Non-resistance would mean defeat and degradation for the working
class—forever.[316]
Then is peace a childish dream and is war to be an endless wrangle and
blood-spilling nightmare—for the working class?
No—not necessarily.
We must resist.
But we should not resist first and only by physical force.
The working class must THINK—or they will have to struggle and bleed and
weep and wait forever,—wait and whimper like babies in the woods for
“some one” or some “good people” to come and “save” them.
The workers must _think till they find a form of social organization_ in
which the fundamental cause of war, that is, _class_ robbery, will have
_no opportunity_, and will therefore cease to exist.
What Dr. Ward calls the “spirit of aggression” will fade and finally
expire when the _condition_ (the parasitic opportunity) which
_cultivates_ the “spirit of aggression” is _destroyed_.
_The founders of the American republic resisted fearlessly, by force
too. But the working class in the United States at present should not,
and cannot now, with advantage, resist by force and force alone, and
that for very good reasons_:
FIRST:—We of the working class in the United States have now for our own
class defense another, and better, form of power, a form of power less
dangerous, less expensive, quieter and more legal and therefore more
strategic,—_a form of power that makes the capitalist class dread the
awakening of the working class_; namely, our political power—our united
ballots.
SECOND:—Until we are intelligent enough to strategically defend our
class with our united ballots we shall be too dull, even if it should be
necessary, to use force of arms successfully in defense of our class. It
seems unwise to counsel the use of the ruder methods of armed force
until, having developed the necessary intelligence, we have by trial
_fairly tested our peace powers_, our political powers—our united
ballots. (See special paragraph, page 303.)
THIRD:—We are not politically prepared,—that is, we are not legally in
possession of the powers of government, and therefore we are not in
strong position to protect our class with all our forms of power
legally. And until we are prepared we shall be used and abused.
Thus it is evident we can not, with advantage, use physical force.
What must we do?
We must destroy capitalism and close the class struggle.
In all the variations of the struggles or wars of capitalism the working
class are hired, flattered, fooled, or forced to do all the actual
fighting.
This must cease—as soon as possible—as a preliminary.
This will cease—when the conscious workers successfully _explain
capitalism and war_ to the confused and deluded workers. War will cease
when we have explained the national and international conspiracy of the
capitalist class.
War will cease when we rouse the workers of the world _by explaining_.
By explaining we inform.
By informing we increase intelligence.
By increasing intelligence we increase self-respect and the passion for
a greater life and for the freedom necessary for a greater life.
Therefore,
_Explain_—inside and outside the ranks—everywhere—in shop, mill, mine
and on the farm.
_Explain_ till emperors and presidents _dread their own conscripted and
“volunteer” armies_.
_Explain_ till murder for board and clothes and $16 a month looks vile.
_Explain_ till young working-class men inside and outside the ranks see
the light.
_Explain_ till an advertisement for human butchers and military fists
becomes utterly disgusting to the working class.
_Explain_ till our class becomes class conscious—till it sees itself,
sees its class interest and its class power.
_Explain_ till our class can not be fooled, hired, flattered or forced
to butcher or be butchered.
_Explain_ till our class, like the capitalist class, understand the
political method of class defense.
_Explain_ till millions of the roused workers of all political parties
clasp hands at the ballot box in a political party of their own class
for the defiant self-defense of their own class.
_Explain_ till our class clearly sees and proudly declares that we must
destroy the capitalist class-labor form of society and _reconstruct
society on a plan of rational mutualism_.[317]
All such explanations, all such teachings tend powerfully to rouse the
working class to a consciousness of themselves, make them eager to
defend themselves, both on the _industrial_ field and on the _political_
field—with _all their forms of power_.
Chattel slavery has been destroyed. Certainly. Why not?
Serfdom has been destroyed. Of course. Why not?
Capitalism must be destroyed. Of course——
What! Shall we destroy the rich men, the capitalists?
No, of course not.
That would not be fair. Capitalists are capitalists _legally_—permitted
by the working class.
By politically created laws and institutions capitalists are legally in
position to rule and rob the working class.
And by politically created laws and institutions the ruling class shall
cease to be in that position.
The _personal_ destruction of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of
capitalists would not in the least degree mend matters. The children of
chattel slave owners became slave owners by the politically created laws
of inheritance. Just so the children of capitalists become capitalists
through neither virtue nor vice of theirs—they become capitalists
through politically created laws of inheritance.
The legal right to own privately the industrial foundations of society
must be destroyed, legally. _If the capitalists should become anarchists
and illegally resist legal methods they could not reasonably object to
having their own laws against anarchists applied to themselves
vigorously._
Of course it is true that the capitalists fleece the workers of surplus
value all the time, and many of the capitalists are malignant and cruel
toward the workers and by a thousand persecutions invite their own
personal destruction. Some of the capitalists have destroyed themselves,
have committed suicide, to escape the disgrace of their crimes. Some
capitalists are now in the penitentiary; many more capitalists should be
in the penitentiary—as many of their own class confess; a far larger
number of capitalists, if the laws were enforced, would promptly leave
the country to keep out of the penitentiary—some have done so; and a
large number of capitalists are also bribing juries and prosecuting
attorneys in order to avoid the penitentiary; many prominent business
men, trust magnates, have had the anti-trust law changed to enable them
to more easily avoid the penitentiary—so President Taft said in
Columbus, Ohio, August 19, 1907.[318]
And the capitalist class outrage the working class in a thousand ways.
This is all true. The multitude of capitalist outrages are sufficient to
provoke revenge. But we do not seek revenge. Revenge is not fine.
Revenge is not noble. Moreover we cannot escape war by means of revenge,
and, still more important, rich men and women are not a _form_ of
society. They are _members_ of society and they behave _naturally—under
the circumstances_; that is, being a ruling class in a _class-form_
society, they behave as masters.
Capitalism as a form of society must be destroyed.
Is it meant that we shall destroy the means of production—the mills,
mines, forests, railroads and such things?
Certainly not. The means of production are material, mechanical things.
They are not a form of society.
What then? Are we to “destroy society”? Are we to turn society upside
down, inside out and “other end to,”—suddenly—“some dark night,” so to
speak?
Not at all.
Here is what we must do:—Rapidly, just as rapidly as possible we must
destroy the present class-labor form of society called capitalism,—and
to do this we must _strike at and strike out_ the foundation of the
capitalist _form_ of society.
But what is the foundation of this capitalist _class_-labor form of
society?
As already pointed out, the foundation of capitalism is the institution
of _private_ property _in the means of production_.
The capitalists, the employers, the ruling class, stand legally between
the means of production and the users of the means of production; thus a
_legal obstruction_ is raised between the workers and the things they
work with in getting a living.
The capitalist class legally _control the conditions under which the
workers may use the means of production_.
The capitalist class are in a legalized _parasitic relation_ or
connection _to the means of production_.
This _relation_ is the key-stone in the arch of capitalism; this
relation is the prime element in the present form of society.
This parasitic relation enables the capitalists to rule, rob and ruin
the working class all the time everywhere.
This relation must be destroyed; this despotic, parasitic relation must
be cut.
The capitalist class must be legally pared off, legally pushed off,
legally shorn from, the chief material means of production—as PRIVATE
owners.
Yes, this robbery, this organized, legalized robbery called
capitalism—must be destroyed.
“The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations
of capital, which have marked the development of our industrial
system, create _new conditions and necessitate a change_ from the
old attitude of the state and nation _toward property_.”[319]
The case, the circumstances, require _unflinching social surgery_.
You believe in surgery, don’t you. Of course you do. Surgery is
recognized the world over as a rational and necessary means of saving
life, the life of the individual.
Well, _extend the application of the principle and practice of surgery
to society_—to the _social_ body.[320]
Parasites never voluntarily let go their grasp on the source of their
lives, never voluntarily let go the living things from which they suck
their livings. And the parasitic capitalist class will stick to the
means of production, as private owners, till they are legally
dislodged—shorn from the means of production. What is here written
concerning social parasites should not be misunderstood as malicious
reflection on the ancient slave owner or the ancient feudal landlord or
the modern capitalist. In the course of human evolution the appearance
and activity of social parasites has been—and is now—as natural as the
appearance and activity of parasites in the lower animal world and in
the vegetable world. And the effort to dislodge human parasites from
society should be, as far as is humanly possible, _free from personal
malice_.[321]
However, on the farm, in the care of plants and animals no matter how
small or helpless or innocent or beautiful parasites may be which
interfere with the wheat crop or the flock of sheep, the parasites must
be dislodged—rigorously and promptly. And, in society, no matter how
handsome, polite, pious, learned, philanthropic, or ancestrally
distinguished and blue-blooded a human parasite may be who lives on the
labor of the workers, that parasite, old or young, male or female, must
dismount promptly, must be forced from the shoulders of the working
class. Those who, at the time of social reconstruction, endeavor to
defend themselves by polishing their family coat-of-arms and climbing
their ancestral trees in search of credentials, will simply be making
monkeys of themselves. They will be even more ridiculous than the
Royalists in the American Revolution. Those of “gentle breeding” will
have to learn the gentle art of getting a living by _producing_ a
living; that awful saying, “If he will not work, neither shall he eat,”
will mean more and more.
The working class must, then, legally, do whatever is necessary to
protect themselves from the strangling clutches of the capitalist class.
And here is what is necessary:
The working class must themselves become _organized political
authority_, must seize the powers of government—and thus secure legal
control of sovereign political power which carries with it the _legal
right_[322] to control, or revise, or abolish, or reorganize industrial
institutions; must thus secure the legal right (and power) to construct
and inaugurate that industrial form of society which will destroy
capitalism with its organized, legalized opportunity for class robbery,
and which will, at the same time, substitute organized, legalized
opportunity for every member of society to make a living without being
robbed, opportunity to live without wasting and vulgarizing his life in
a struggle against his fellow men. _And this destruction of unsocial
capitalism and the construction, at the same time, in place of
capitalism, the necessary social substitute, can be accomplished by the
industrial reorganization of society on the following plan_—
The Plan of Rational Mutualism:
(=1=) The SOCIAL ownership of _the means of production_.
(=2=) The SOCIAL control of _the means of production_.
(=3=) Equality of OPPORTUNITY TO USE _the means of production_, under
regulations made _by the workers themselves_.
(=4=) The production of goods primarily for SOCIAL SERVICE OF
ALL,—instead of primarily for PROFITS FOR A PART OF SOCIETY.
(=5=) The SELF-EMPLOYMENT of all who are willing to do useful work,—by
virtue of the fact of their joint ownership and joint control of the
things the workers must collectively use in production, the reward of
each to be undiminished by rent, interest or profits.
(=6=) THE POSSESSION AND CONTROL OF THE POWERS OF GOVERNMENT BY AND IN
BEHALF OF THOSE WHO SEEK THE FREEDOM OF THE WORKING CLASS, BY THOSE WHO
SEEK TO DESTROY THE TYRANNICAL CAPITALIST WAGE-SYSTEM AND THUS SECURE
INDUSTRIAL LIBERTY.
This plan connects every life with the source of life.
This plan plants firmly the feet of all members of society upon the
industrial foundations of society.
Safe.
Unafraid.
Free.
This mutualism in industry will not interfere with such private affairs
as religious life, family life and social life,—any more than the mutual
ownership of the public library now interferes with such private
affairs.
Thus we must, in short, SOCIALIZE SOCIETY,—by socializing the
_ownership_, socializing the _control_, socializing the _management_,
and socializing the _purpose_ of the industrial foundations of society.
This would be the destruction of that class-labor system called
capitalism which now rests on the institution of private property in the
means of production; and this would, _at the same time_, also constitute
a rational substitute—social in its nature.
MUTUALISM would thus be in the STRUCTURE of society.
The purpose of this form of society would be a fundamentally social
purpose, namely, the welfare of all the willing-to-be-industrious
members of society.
The capitalist class, as such, would cease to exist.
The working class, as such, would cease to exist.
All—all the people would be in full, vital, unhindered, unrobbed
connection with the industrial foundations of society, the chief
material means of production. All people of proper age and condition of
health would become workers. Industrial class lines would disappear.
Industrial mastery would disappear. Industrial dependence would
disappear.
This would be the foundation of industrial democracy.
This would be reorganization.
This would be revolution.
A revolution is a rapid, fundamental change in a _fundamental_
institution.
The rapid _reorganization_ of industry into the form called the _trust_
is a revolution—now in process.
The trust magnates are revolutionists—_so far as it suits their economic
interests_.
Revolutions are neither noisy nor bloody, _unless there is violent
effort to prevent the growth of society_.
As to the matter of being afraid of revolutions: Why should we clap our
hands in praise of the American Revolutionists (who employed sword,
rifle, bayonet and cannon in their revolution) and then harshly condemn
the peaceful Socialists who stand for peace in all parts of the world
and always urge the orderly methods of procedure in accomplishing the
revolution (the fundamental change) they seek to effect.
Don’t be afraid.
_Fortunately millions of American school boys and girls are required to
commit to memory the following words of splendid defiance and
self-respect_:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: ... That governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed; that whenever _any form_ of government becomes destructive of
these ends (the inalienable rights ... life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness) _it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it_, and
to _institute_ a NEW government, laying its foundation on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to _them_ shall
seem MOST LIKELY to effect their safety and happiness.... _When a long
train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under an absolute despotism, it is
their_ RIGHT, _it is their_ DUTY, _to_ THROW OFF SUCH GOVERNMENT _and to
provide_ NEW _guards for their future security_.”—American Declaration
of Independence.
Don’t be afraid.
“The State must from time to time readjust the relation of
government to liberty.... As the people of the State advance in
civilization, the domain of liberty must be widened.”—Professor John
W. Burgess, Head of Department of Political Science, Columbia
University.[323]
Don’t be afraid.
The time has come for the workers to use their _political_ liberty to
secure _industrial_ liberty—to “widen the domain of liberty,” to secure
a fair race, to secure equality of opportunity.
Equality? Yes,—equality of opportunity. Certainly. Why not?
“A race that is fair requires an equal start.... The state must aim
at perpetual renewal of the opportunities of life in every man and
class of men.”—Dr. John Bascom, Ex-President of the University of
Wisconsin.[324]
Don’t be afraid.
There will be no noise, no bloodshed; all will be orderly, legal and
sociable—unless the capitalists anarchistically refuse to obey the law.
In that case, of course, the roused, proud and powerful working class
will do _whatever is made necessary_ by the anarchistic capitalists.
BE IT REMEMBERED—DISTINCTLY:
THE ROUSED WORKING CLASS, ROUSED TO SELF-RESPECT, ROUSED TO CLEARNESS OF
VISION BY THE STUDY OF THE FACTS, ROUSED TO REALIZE THE WRONGS THRUST
INTO THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS PAST AND PRESENT, ROUSED TO SEE THEIR
RIGHTS AND REALIZE THEIR POWER AS A CLASS,—SUCH A WORKING CLASS WILL BE
A WHOLLY DIFFERENT CLASS FROM THE PRESENT MEEK, WEAK, CHEATED GRATEFUL
SLAVES.
Don’t be afraid.
We are weary of Antagonism.
We seek Mutualism.
The American Revolutionists said plainly in their Declaration that it is
a DUTY to reorganize society, under certain circumstances.
We recognize our duty.
We make no cheap and noisy boast of insulting defiance.
We see our goal—Peace and Freedom.
We shall build Peace and Freedom into the Structure of Society.
We scorn any wheedler who would betray us from the correct, direct path
to our goal.
We accept any challenge from those who would by force defeat us.
_Social reconstruction_—that is our plain duty.
Thus we of the working class must, to this extent, unify,—that is,
mutualize, socialize,—society.
The class aggression of the capitalist class would cease with the
disappearance of the capitalist class in the reconstructed society. And
the class resistance by the working class would cease with the
disappearance of the robbing of the workers in the reconstructed
society.
Thus would disappear the unsocial clashing of class interests—the class
struggle. And thus also would disappear the dominant motives for
“foreign” wars and “civil” wars.
Thus the working class could remove war—both from the shop and from the
battlefield.
Thus we would inaugurate peace simply by removing the cause of war.
_Is a political party of the working class necessary for this political
work of the working class?_
To accomplish the work of industrial reconstruction we must first secure
the political powers of government and thus secure the right, the legal
right, and legal power to do this work.
A POLITICAL PARTY IS SIMPLY A LEGITIMATED ORGANIZATION WITH WHICH TO
SEIZE AND USE SOVEREIGN POWER—TO BECOME AUTHORITY. (See page 280.)
The political power and privilege necessary to accomplish this
industrial reconstruction of society—this political power and
privilege—can be secured only by means of a political party; and that
party must, of course, be a party _wholly committed_ to this industrial
_reconstruction_ of society.[325]
Only a political party _of the working class_ can be SINCERELY committed
to this work of industrial reconstruction _for the working class_.
INDEED, NO POLITICAL PARTY STANDING FOR ANY FORM OF CAPITALISM WILL
PERMIT ITSELF TO BE SINCERELY COMMITTED TO THIS PROMPT, THOROUGH
INDUSTRIAL RECONSTRUCTION.
Therefore, banded together in a political party of the working class the
workers
must seize the political powers to make laws,
must seize the political powers to interpret laws,
must seize the political powers to enforce laws.
Then and then only shall we _be in position by legally possessing the
power_ to defend ourselves, our class.
Then and then only shall we be _in position_ to destroy the parasitic
class aggression, the class robbery, out of which grows the class
struggle—the civil war in the shop, and the war, the civil war, of the
toil-stained brothers of the working class on the battlefield.
Then, and then only, shall we be in best position to declare war against
war.
Then we shall cease forever to foolishly wet the earth with our blood
and tears and cease to be robbed in the shop and factory; and then we
shall claim our own, a greater life.
The only safety therefore for the working people in all lands is to
organize themselves into a political party, an international political
party, of the working class, _and patiently build their party big
enough_ for each national group of workers to seize the political powers
of government in their own country—always, everywhere, loudly declaring
war against war.
There is but one working class political party on all the earth. That
party sincerely proclaims: “Freedom for the working class! No more war!”
And loudly and patiently that party sounds an immortal call of
brotherhood to all the workers on all the blood-stained
earth:—“Workingmen of all countries, unite. You have nothing to lose but
your chains; you have a world to gain.”
That working-class party is the Socialist Party.
Already this working class party, loudly calling, “Freedom in the shop
and freedom from the battlefield”—already this party is beginning to
save the blood and tears and homes and joys of the working class.
Every working man and woman should learn—and teach the children to
recite at school—the following page of history, four historic events:
FIRST EVENT: In 1847 two men, geniuses, wrote a very small, but powerful
book.[326] The book was published in 1848. Kings, emperors, tsars and
presidents have turned pale when their common people began to understand
that small book. The first proposition in that astonishing book is: “The
[recorded] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles.” That is a great fact. Pack it into your mind. That
sentence has opened wide the mental windows of millions of working
men—and women. The last sentence of that book of social lightning is
this:—“Workingmen of all countries, unite. You have nothing to lose but
your chains, you have a world to gain!” That is a sublime call. That
call has thrilled millions of weary working-class people. Every year it
thrills millions more. _Some day that call will enter your soul._ Then
you will know the meaning of this next event.
SECOND EVENT: In 1870 two distinguished crowned assassins sent hundreds
of thousands of working men to the boundary between France and Germany
to butcher and be butchered.[327] Even then—forty years ago—the
_shrewdest_ workers in Germany, France and other European countries
realized what war meant for the _working_ class. These men were banded
together in the International Working-Men’s Association. These keen,
studious toilers warned the working class against the war. In 1870 they
sent out this general announcement: “They (the members of the
International Working-Men’s Association) feel deeply convinced that
whatever turn the impending horrid war may take, the alliance of the
working classes of all countries will ultimately kill war.” The Paris
branch of the International issued an address saying: “French, German,
Spanish working men! Let our voices unite in a cry of reprobation
against war.... Working men of all countries! Whatever may be the result
of our common efforts, we members of the International Association of
Working-Men, who know no frontiers, we send you, as a pledge of
indissoluble solidarity, the good wishes and the salutation of the
workingmen of France.” The Berlin section of the International finely
responded: “We join with you heart and hand in protestation.... Solemnly
we promise you that neither the noise of drums nor the thunder of
cannon, neither victory nor defeat, shall turn us aside from our work
for the union of the workingmen of all countries.” German delegates at
Chemnitz, Saxony, representing fifty thousand workingmen also made noble
reply: “We are happy to grasp the fraternal hand stretched out to us by
the workingmen of France.... We shall never forget that the workingmen
of all countries are our friends, and the despots of all countries our
enemies.”
The grand old International has become the Socialist Party of our day.
The Socialist Party is indeed the political party of the working class.
In recent years election returns show in one country, the best educated
country in Europe, this political party of the working class, the
Socialist Party, with over three million four hundred thousand serious,
loyal workingmen banded together voting solidly together. Every year a
larger and larger number of them _take their seats in the world’s
leading legislatures_. In ten countries in Europe this party has from
one to eighty members of the working class in the national legislatures
in legal position to defend the working class. And right vigorously
these brave working-class comrades have defended the working class in
every possible way they could. With the increasing election victories of
this working-class party, the working class have increasing power to
defend themselves. And everywhere this party is down on war. The
influence of this party has already been effectively exerted against
war. The vast influence of this party against war is admitted by the
most bitter and powerful enemies of the working class.
THIRD EVENT: In 1905–6 the Norwegian and the Swedish armies (working
men, of course) were ordered to the front to butcher one another. They
were assembled at the national boundary. Tens of thousands of homes were
desolate. Fear was an agony in the hearts of a multitude of women and
children. Reporters were present from all parts of the world to flash
the news of the butchery around the earth. The capitalist coffin trust
was exceedingly glad, business was about to pick up. Gilt-braided
buccaneer commanders were about to shout: “Form! Fire! Charge!
Slaughter!”
“Everything was ready”—it seemed.
Then something happened—something sublime and new in the sad and “somber
march of mankind.”
No sword was drawn.
No cannon roared.
No Gatling gun mowed down thousands.
No wild cavalry charged.
No hospital became a hell of cursing, groaning, screaming, mangled men.
Yet “everything was ready”—ready to defend the sacred honor of “royal”
and “noble” coward parasites.
Everything was ready _except one thing_—the consent of the working
class.
The conscripted _Socialist_ soldiers in both armies and the _Socialists_
everywhere throughout both countries had _passed the sign of
working-class brotherhood_ all through _both armies_ and through _both
countries_: “We working class men are brothers. Let us not slit the
veins of our own class simply to satisfy the vicious pride of snobbish
masters. Let us save our own blood and tears.”
This international brothers’ cry was like a splendid flash of lightning
at midnight. Brothers saw brothers, working-class brothers, in the
night, the midnight of capitalism. The soul of the working class in both
these countries flashed response: “Brothers! Brothers! We understand!”
The human race seemed to smile. The Swedish and the Norwegian soldiers
mingled. These armed workers fraternized. Armed men embraced armed men.
They shouted and wept—for joy.
They sneered at the frowns of their commanders. Proudly and promptly
they refused to butcher and be butchered.[328]
That settled it. There was no war.
There can not be war unless the working class agree to it.
No working men were butchered, and the international misunderstanding
had to be settled without opening the blood vessels of the toilers. For
of course you know, reader, that the broadclothed capitalist snobs of
these countries were too cowardly to fight the war themselves.
And now there are many more happy homes, happy wives, happy mothers and
happy children in Norway and Sweden than there would have been if the
humble working people of these two countries had permitted a precious
lot of gilt-edged cowards to excite them and confuse them and then “sic”
them at one another’s throats.
FOURTH EVENT: Very recently, in 1906–7, the Socialist Party in Germany
and France prevented war between Germany and France over the “Morocco
affair.” This is admitted even by distinguished European enemies of the
Socialist Party. This threatened war might easily have cost five hundred
thousand lives—working-class lives—and five billions of treasure and
desolated hundreds of thousands of homes and darkened both countries
with an international hatred lasting half a century.
But the Socialists blocked the game.
Again and again in their International Congresses the Socialists have
protested against war and militarism as being, for the working class,
nothing but a burden and a curse.[329]
Political masters and industrial masters on all the earth—_these_
recognize the Socialist Party as the Working-Class Political Party.[330]
You, my brother, should also recognize the Socialist Party as your own
Working-Class Political Party.
Reread propositions numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, p. 300.
The outline of industrial reconstruction there given in the six
propositions is the outline of the constructive platform and program of
the working-class political party, the Socialist Party, everywhere.[331]
Because the Socialist Party recognizes and points out the clash of class
interests in the present class-labor system;
Because the Socialist Party proposes industrial freedom for the working
class;
Because the Socialist Party proposes the destruction of the class-labor
system called capitalism;
Because the Socialist Party proposes that every person who renders
useful social service shall have the value of his service—undiminished
by the modern legalized forms of filching, namely, rent, interest and
profits;
Because the Socialist Party proposes that the working class band
together and save themselves;
For such reasons the Socialist Party is the Political Party of the
Working Class.
The Socialists urge:
That no longer shall the workers whimper for the protecting wings of
that strange political bird, that large male angel, called a “good man”;
That no longer shall the workers childishly accept the treacherous
advice from political stalking horses, called “political reformers,” and
“political saviors”;
That no longer shall the workers rest in dull dependence upon the advice
of eager-to-be-elevated capitalist “leaders of the people”;
That no longer shall the workers go gullibly chasing after still-fed
“statesmen” on election day;
That no longer shall the workers in stupid expectation meekly linger at
the back door of legislative halls, teasing smooth, stall-fed capitalist
“statesmen” for labor legislation;
That the workers band together and emancipate themselves from war, from
the wholesale robbery, tyranny and blood-letting of Capitalism.
With heads and hearts and hopes together the working class should read
together, study together, reason together, band together, struggle
together, and altogether in a political party of the working class stand
together and vote together and capture the power of government for the
freedom and protection of the working class.
Let us respect our own working class.
Let us have faith in our own working class.
Let us protect ourselves.
“Let us get up off our knees—and our masters won’t seem so tall.”
Down with industrial despotism and its wars!
Up with industrial democracy and its peace!
* * * * *
(Before reading the following paragraphs examine last four Pages of
Chapter Six, paragraph headed: “A Special Warning to the Working Class
of the United States.”)
One more word here:
Brothers, beware!
With pride and defiance hold up your heads—and think.
Prepare to say: “WE REFUSE.”
Beware. Another war is brewing.
“Another war is necessary!”—your betrayers will presently tell you.
True! From the capitalist’s point of view another war will, indeed,
presently be necessary; another war becomes more and more imperatively
necessary—and for a new and increasing reason.
The much plundered working people are beginning to think. Thought is
revolutionary. A thought is a file, a keen saw, with which a soul may
escape from the gloomy dungeon of prejudice. Thought is intellectual
nitroglycerine for blasting the flinty mountains of prejudice. Thought
utterly destroys mental rubbish. Thought kills what ought to die.
Thinking slaves promptly become defiant and dare to do for freedom.
Thought kills—kills slavery.
Thought, however, can still be prevented. Even the splendid thought of
peace and freedom can still be strangled in a wild delirium called
“patriotic” war. Hence every purchasable educated human thing with
influence must play its prostitute part in resurrecting and perpetuating
the ferocious thirst for war.
For capitalist purposes another war is necessary.
Therefore strangle brotherliness.
Therefore stifle man’s grand sweet dream of peace.
A fat living of domineering idleness for industrial pirates and their
pampered pets and shameless hangers-on is not much longer possible,
unless the masters as usual can set the working people clutching at one
another’s throats, draining one another’s sweat and blood in a hateful
spasm of international epilepsy called “patriotic” war.
Therefore drug the working people.
Therefore read again to the weary multitude the goriest pages of
history, and declare to them that an act must be soaked in a brother’s
blood before it is magnificent. The people must lust again for another
savage storm of stupid wrath called war.
Therefore we see the war-flag of capitalism shrewdly waved before the
bulging, easily inflamed eyes of the multitude: “Good fighters—war”;
“young men not only willing, but anxious to fight—war”; “heroes,
heroes—war”; “glory, military glory—war”; “noble, noble soldiers—war”;
“ours the most improved arms in the world—war”; “greatest navy on
earth—war”; “splendid victories—war”; “better militia—larger army—war”;
“our national honor—war”; “we never surrender—war”; “America in the
Orient—war”; “we must defend our foreign markets—war”; “see the brave
boys behind the guns—war”; “send the fleets around the earth and dare
the world to war”; “we are all ready for war, war, war”;—over and over
this oratorical flag, this Christless vocabulary of blood-spilling
cruelty, on and on, year after year—till these disgusting phrases steam
in memory with the spurting blood of the long-mourned slain.
Another war is necessary.
Therefore fill the trenches with the carcasses of citizens and with
fixed bayonets march on—on—on to noisy glory, on to the red madness of
the brutal battlefield. This is the pagan text of literary and
oratorical hirelings before a nation of Christians and peaceful Jews;
this is the loveless refrain bellowed before blushing school girls; this
is the Alexandrian slogan before excitable, impressible boys; this is
the gore-stained banner to be gallantly flaunted on holidays before the
tear-wet eyes of the sad old widows and the hobbling cripples of the
Civil War; this is the race-cursing call to ninety millions of people
sick of stupidly disputing with sword and cannon, longing to embrace one
another in caressing fraternalism. Hideous echoes of the cruel voice of
Caesar, savage whoop from the tomb of Napoleon, the assassin of France,
barbarous yell from the war-cursed plains of the long, long
ago—this—yes, this is the sublime height reached by the average orthodox
teacher and preacher of patriotism.
And from all parts of this thinly veiled despotism of foxy, industrial
tsars, _comes enthusiastic approval of all such teaching_;—approval from
the profit-stuffed leeches whose pouting lips suck and tug at the veins
of the toiling multitude; approval from the supercilious snobs at Palm
Beach, Newport and Monte Carlo; approval from the editorial intellectual
prostitutes of a subsidized press; approval from the “leading citizens”
that roll contemptuously along carefully smoothed streets in
rubber-tired carriages and from those who sneer through the palace car
windows at the common “hired hands” who man the trains and keep the
track in repair; approval from the masters who own the mills and mines
and stick out their tongues in scorn at the hundreds of thousands out of
work or on strike for a few cents more a day; approval from the “great
business men” who search the earth for markets for goods produced by the
sweating wage-slaves shrewdly kept too poor to buy what their own weary
minds and their puffed and blistered hands create; and, saddest of all,
approval from the millions of shame-faced wage-earners viciously seduced
with ironically empty “prosperity” phrases, chloroformed with pompous
military rhetoric, stupefied with the proud strut and cheap swagger of
“prominent” and “cultivated” vulgarians—yes, approval also from these
modest modern slaves through whose veins seems to slip the inherited
taint of long, low-bowing servitude.
Another war is “necessary.”
Therefore from Mississippi to Minnesota and from Florida to Oregon there
is a wide-grinning chuckle of lip-smacking satisfaction in the palaces
and club-houses of America’s industrial masters when the easily deceived
multitude clap their calloused palms in thoughtless approval as the
bribed orator makes fierce visaged War stalk with hypnotic fascination
across the stage before the plain deludable people. The people’s delight
in arms is thus artfully deepened;—and thus and therefore both the walls
of prejudice and the defiant fortresses of glittering steel—behind which
the gorged masters of the multitude have for ages fattened and
threatened in security—these fortresses of prejudice and force are with
increasing diligence made stronger with every possible opportunity, made
stronger by every possible means.
Another war?
Expect it and prepare for it by resolving not to go to the next war till
the bankers and statesmen have been bleeding on the firing line for at
least six weeks.
Yes—yes, it is true that the employers’ fortress of riot-guns is still
strong, defiantly strong. No doubt the rent-interest-and-profit game,
the game of gouge and grab and keep, will be played securely yet a while
by the plunder-bloated masters of our great and glorious country.
Undoubtedly millions of our thoughtless young working class men are
still ready for plutocratic Senators and Congressmen and uncrowned
cruelty in the White House to craftily yell: “Sic ’em, boys, sic ’em.”
But light breaks.
Everywhere, every day the toilers of the world listen—listen more
respectfully, listen more intelligently, listen more gratefully to the
glad new gospel of justice and peace.
The change comes and come it must. That cruel spell wrought over the
mind of the multitude by the bribed orator, by the purchased writer, by
the blood-lusting “man on horseback,” and by the far-looking masters of
industry—that spell will be, must be, broken. The iron shackles on the
wrists and ankles of the toilers have already been broken. The
wage-slaves’ shackles also must be rended, not only the industrial, but
the mental slavery of the modern workers must be destroyed.
And comes now swiftly forward that soft-toned, but all-conquering gospel
of peace and freedom—freedom for the dumb, voiceless multitude, now
deadened with the deafening roar of machinery, deadened with the
stifling dust and withering heat of the mills, deadened with the
poisonous gases in the mines, freedom for the multitude soon to be glad,
happy, loving, laughing in the commonwealth of cooperation, of
mutualism, of fraternalism—of Socialism.
Courage, courage. Put the strong shoulders of your twelve million
ballots to the “stalled world’s wheel” and push. Strike. March.
Dawn-ward toward peace.
Know this, you toil-tormented horde: That shrewd juggler’s word war—word
with which the swinishly selfish masters have for ages seduced the
gullible multitude into the ditches across which those same masters have
then rolled on sneering, snickering and safe, that spell-working word
reeking with the blood-rotting stench of centuries, that word war and
all that that word war now stands for must be stricken from the language
of brothers, struck from the affairs of mankind,—forgotten
forever—forever replaced by the sweetening peace and the sane abiding
power of warless Socialism.
Brothers of the working class, wherever you are on all the earth, let us
all say, altogether:
Peace is patriotism to mankind.
_We do not want other people’s blood and we refuse to waste our own._
For thousands of years the ruling class have bled us pale. All cannon
have always been aimed at us—by us.
We did not see. Our eyes were blinded with our own blood; our minds were
paralyzed with lies.
But now we see. Now we understand. And therefore now we stand erect in
self-respect. Now in sincere fellowship we extend the right hand of
brotherhood to all the working men—and to all the women and to all the
children—of the whole world; and to all these we promise:
We will not fight.
We refuse to plunge bayonets into one another’s breasts.
We refuse to slay the fathers of tender children.
We refuse to murder the brothers and lovers of women.
We refuse to butcher the husbands of devoted wives.
We refuse to “Hurrah” over victories that break the heart and blind the
world with tears.
We refuse the cheap rôle of Armed Guard—as the salaried assassins in the
service of the plunder-bloated coward ruling class.
If the masters want blood let them cut their own throats.
-----
Footnote 301:
_Social Control_, pp. 376–79. Italics mine. G. R. K.
Footnote 302:
_General Sociology_, p. 233.
Footnote 303:
_Dynamic Sociology_, Vol. I., p. 582. Italics mine. G. R. K.
Footnote 304:
See _The Theory of the State_, Bk II., Chs. 17, 18.
Footnote 305:
_Introduction to Sociology_, pp. 132–36.
Footnote 306:
See Chapter Three, The Explanation.
Footnote 307:
“Classes differ in readiness to twist social control to their own
advantage.... In general, the more distinct, knit together, and
self-conscious the influential minority, the more likely is social
control to be colored with class selfishness.”—Professor E. A. Ross,
Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, _Social Control_, p.
86.
Footnote 308:
See Chapter Eleven for suggestions on the origin of large-scale
parasitic aggression; and on the origin and history of the working
class and of the class-labor form of society.
Footnote 309:
See _Dynamic Sociology_, Vol. I., pp. 581–97; _Psychic Factors in
Civilization_, Chapter 24.
Note carefully the quotation on methods of social parasites at the
head of the present chapter from Dr. Ross’s _Social Control_.
Professor Ross is generally recognized as one of the most profound and
brilliant writers on Sociology.
It is important to consider, too, that, as a Socialist, Dr. Franklin
H. Giddings, Head of Department of Sociology in Columbia University,
recognizes the capitalist class’s parasitic relation to society. Dr.
Giddings is recognized in all the universities of the world as having
few equals as a sociologist.
The social parasites of the world will never forgive the learned
Socialist, Dr. Thorstein Veblen, recently of the University of
Chicago, for writing his bold and astonishing book, _The Theory of the
Leisure Class_. The screaming mockeries and glittering pretensions of
the “princely-fortune” parasites of capitalism are mercilessly
explained by him.
It is noteworthy too that the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal
of Sociology, and Head of the Department of Sociology in the
University of Chicago, Dr. Albion W. Small, has for many years been
calling attention, in lectures, to the parasitic nature of _one_ of
the forms of capitalist income, thus: “There is no moral justification
for the taking of interest incomes.” In his _General Sociology_, pp.
268–69, Dr. Small says: “In the first place, capital produces nothing.
It earns nothing.” See also his suggestions on social parasites on
page 266, where he is clearly in considerable degree in agreement with
Dr. Ward.
Gustavus Myers’ _History of Great American Fortunes_ is here again
commended as an extraordinary record of remarkable social parasitism
in American history.
Footnote 310:
See _Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street_, p. 388; by Henry Clews, a
very well known banker of Wall Street.
Footnote 311:
See Chapter Three, “Explanation”—Surplus.
Footnote 312:
Andrew Carnegie is a sample of a profit-stuffed tyrant whose parasitic
industrial income is tens of millions per year without rendering
industrial service, whose legally parasitic heirs, rendering no
industrial service, will, like leeches, suck up many millions per
year. The audacity of his hypocrisy is typical of his class. In recent
international peace congresses Carnegie has been steadily grinning and
chattering in the spot light. But study this man for a moment: