VI. The class struggle theory

• • Prefaces
  • I. Introduction
  • II. Robert Owen and the Utopian Spirit
  • III. The "Communist manifesto" and the scientific spirit
  • IV. The materialistic conception of history
  • V. Capitalism and the law of concentration
  • VI. The class struggle theory
  • VII. Karl marx and the economics of socialism
  • VIII. Outlines of socialist economic theory
  • IX. Outlines of the socialist state
  • X. The means of realization

Add another subpage

Read the help page for usage.

 

I

No part of the theory of modern Socialism has called forth so much criticism and opposition as the doctrine of the class struggle. Many who are otherwise sympathetic to Socialism denounce this doctrine as narrow, brutal, and productive of antisocialistic feelings of class hatred. Upon all hands the doctrine is condemned as an un-American appeal to passion and a wicked exaggeration of social conditions. When President Roosevelt attacks the preachers of the doctrine, and wrathfully condemns class-consciousness as "a foul thing," he doubtless expresses the views of a majority of American citizens. The insistence of Socialists upon this aspect of their propaganda is undoubtedly responsible for keeping a great many outside of their movement who otherwise would be identified with it. If the Socialists would repudiate the doctrine that Socialism is a class movement, and make their appeal to the intelligence and conscience of all classes, instead of to the interests of a special class, they could probably double their numerical strength at once. To many, therefore, it seems a fatuous and quixotic policy to preach such a doctrine, and it is very often charitably ascribed to the peculiar intellectual and moral myopia of fanaticism.

Before accepting this conclusion, and before indorsing the Rooseveltian verdict, the reader is bound as a matter of common fairness, and of intellectual integrity, to consider the Socialist side of the argument. There is no greater fanaticism than that which condemns what it does not take the trouble to understand. The Socialists claim that the doctrine is misrepresented; that it does not produce class hatred; and that it is a vital and pivotal point of Socialist philosophy. The class struggle, says the Socialist, is a law of social development. We only recognize the law, and are no more responsible for its existence than for the law of gravitation. The name of Marx is associated with the law in just the same manner as the name of Newton is associated with the law of gravitation, but Marx is no more responsible for the social law he discovered than was Newton for the physical law he discovered. There were class struggles thousands of years before there was a Socialist movement, thousands of years before Marx was born, and it is therefore absurd to charge us with the creation of the class struggle, or class hatred. We realize perfectly well that if we ignored this law in our propaganda, making our appeal to a universal sense of abstract justice and truth, many who now hold aloof from us would join our movement. But we should not gain strength as a result of their accession to our ranks. We should be obliged to emasculate Socialism, to dilute it, in order to win a support of questionable value. History teems with examples of the disaster which inevitably attends such a course. We should be quixotic and fatuous indeed if we attempted anything of the kind. Such, briefly stated, are the main outlines of the reply which the average Socialist gives to the criticism of the class struggle doctrine described.

The class struggle theory is part of the economic interpretation of history. Since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, the modes of economic production and exchange have inevitably grouped men into economic classes. The theory is thus admirably stated by Engels in the Introduction to the Communist Manifesto:—

"In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; and, consequently, the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the bourgeoise—without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions, and class struggles."

In this classic statement of the theory, there are several fundamental propositions. First, that class divisions and class struggles arise out of the economic life of society. Second, that since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, which was communistic in character, mankind has been divided into economic groups or classes, and all its history has been a history of struggles between these classes, ruling and ruled, exploiting and exploited, being forever at war with each other. Third, that the different epochs in human history, stages in the evolution of society, have been characterized by the interests of the ruling class. Fourth, that a stage has now been reached in the evolution of society where the struggle assumes a form which makes it impossible for class distinctions and class struggles to continue if the exploited and oppressed class, the proletariat, succeeds in emancipating itself. In other words, the cycle of class struggles which began with the dissolution of rude, tribal communism, and the rise of private property, ends with the passing of private property in the means of social existence and the rise of Socialism. The proletariat in emancipating itself destroys all the conditions of class rule.

II

As we have already seen, slavery is historically the first system of class division which presents itself. Some ingenious writers have endeavored to trace the origin of slavery to the institution of the family, the children being the first slaves. It is fairly certain, however, that slavery originated in conquest. When a tribe was conquered and enslaved by some more powerful tribe, all the members of the vanquished tribe sunk to one common level of servility and degradation. Their exploitation as laborers was the principal object of their enslavement, and their labor admitted of little gradation. It is easy to see the fundamental class antagonisms which characterized slavery. Has there been no uprisings of the slaves, no active and conscious struggle against their masters, the antagonism of interests between them and their masters would be none the less apparent. But the overthrow of slavery was not the result of the rebellions and struggles of the slaves. While these undoubtedly helped, the principal factors in the overthrow of chattel slavery as the economic foundation of society were the disintegration of the system to the point of bankruptcy, and the rise of a new, and sometimes, as in the case of Rome, alien ruling class.

The class divisions of feudal society are not less obvious than those of chattel slavery. The main division, the widest gulf, divided the feudal lord and the serf. Often as brutally ill-treated as their slave-forefathers had been, the feudal serfs from time to time made abortive struggles. The class distinctions of feudalism were constant, but the struggles between the lords and the serfs were sporadic, and of comparatively little moment, just as the risings of their slave forefathers had been. But alongside of the feudal estate there existed another class, the free handicraftsmen and peasants, the former organized into powerful guilds. It was this class, and not the serf class, which was destined to challenge the rule of the feudal nobility, and wage war upon it. As the feudal class was a landed class, so the class represented by the guilds became a moneyed and commercial class, the pioneers of our modern capitalist class. As Mr. Brooks Adams has shown very clearly, it was this moneyed, commercial class, which gave to the king the instrument for weakening and finally overthrowing feudalism. It was this class which built up the cities and towns from which was drawn the revenue for the maintenance of a standing army, thus liberating the king from his dependence upon the feudal lords. The capitalist class triumphed over the feudal nobility, and its interests became in their turn the dominant interests in society. Capitalism in its development effectually destroyed all those institutions of feudalism which obstructed its progress, leaving only those which were innocuous and safely to be ignored.

In capitalist society, the main class division is that which separates the employing, wage-paying class from the employed, wage-receiving class. Notwithstanding all the elaborate arguments made to prove the contrary, the frequently heard myth that the interests of Capital and Labor are identical, and the existence of pacificatory associations based upon that myth, there is no fact in the whole range of social phenomena more self-evident than the existence of an inherent, fundamental antagonism in the relationship of employer and employee. As individuals, in all other relations, they may have a commonality of interests, but as employer and employee they are fundamentally and necessarily opposed. They may belong to the same church, and so have religious interests in common; they may have common racial interests, as, for instance, if negroes, in protecting themselves against the attacks made in a book like The Clansman, or, if Jews, in opposing anti-Semitic movements; as citizens they may have the same civic interests, be equally opposed to graft in the city government, or equally interested in the adoption of wise sanitary precautions against epidemics. They may even have a common industrial interest in the general sense that they may be equally interested in the development of the industry in which they are engaged, and fear, equally, the results of a depression in trade. But their special interests as employer and employee are antithetical.

It cannot be denied that, in certain circumstances, these other interests may become so accentuated that the class antagonisms are momentarily lost sight of, or completely dwarfed in importance; nor is such a denial implied in the Socialist theory. It is not difficult to see that in the case of a general uprising against the members of their race, in which their lives are imperiled, Jewish employers and employees may forget their class interests and remember only that they are Jews. So with negroes and other oppressed races. The economic interests of the class may be engulfed in the solidarity of the race. It is not difficult, either, to see that in the presence of some great common danger or calamity, class interests may likewise be completely subordinated. An admirable example of this occurred at the time of the San Francisco earthquake and fire. The enormous demand for labor occasioned by that disaster practically enabled the artisans, most of whom were organized into unions, to demand and obtain almost fabulous wages. But there was no thought of taking advantage of the calamity. On the contrary, the unions immediately announced that they would make no attempt to do so. Not only that, but they voluntarily waived rules which in normal times they would have insisted upon with all their powers. The temporary overshadowing of the economic interests of classes by other special interests which have been thrust into special prominence, is not, however, evidence that these class interests do not prevail in normal times. Recognition of this fact effectually destroys much criticism of the theory.

The interest of the wage-worker, as wage-worker, is to receive the largest wage possible for the least number of hours spent in labor. The interest of the employer, as employer, on the other hand, is to secure from the worker as many hours of service, as much labor power, as possible for the lowest wage which the worker can be induced to accept. The workers employed in a factory may be divided by a hundred different forces. They may be divided by racial differences, for instance; but while preserving these differences in a large measure, they will tend to unite upon the basis of their economic interests. Some of the great labor unions, notably the United Mine Workers, afford remarkable illustrations of this fact. If the difference of religious interests leads to division, the same unanimity of economic interests will sooner or later be developed. No impartial investigator who studies the influence of a great labor union which includes in its membership workers of various nationalities and adherents of various religious creeds, can fail to observe the fact that the community of economic interests which unites them is a powerful factor making for their amalgamation into a harmonious civic whole.

With the employers it is the same. They, too, may be divided by a hundred forces; the competition among them may be keen and fierce, but common economic interests will tend to unite them against the organizations of the workers they employ. Racial, religious, social, and other divisions and distinctions, may be maintained, but they will, in general, unite for the protection and furtherance of their common economic interests.

So much, indeed, belongs to the very primer stage of economic theory. Adam Smith is rather out of fashion nowadays, but there is still much in "The Wealth of Nations" which will repay our attention. No Socialist writer, not even Marx, has stated the fundamental principle of the antagonism between the employing and employed classes more clearly, as witness the following:—

"The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labor.... Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals.... Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labor.... These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution.... Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of labor. Their usual pretenses are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profits which the masters make by their work. But whether these combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamor, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the extravagance and folly of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, laborers, and journeymen."

Thus Adam Smith. Were it essential to our present purpose, it would be easy to quote from all the great economists in support of the Socialist claim that the interests of the capitalist and those of the laborer are irreconcilably opposed. That individual workers and employers will be found who do not recognize their class interests is true, but that fact by no means invalidates the contention that, in general, men will recognize and unite upon a basis of common class interests. In both classes are to be found individuals who attach greater importance to the preservation of racial, religious, or social, than to economic, interests. But because the economic interest is fundamental, involving the very basis of life, the question of food, clothing, shelter, and comfort, these individuals are and must be exceptions to the general rule. Workers sink their racial and religious differences and unite to secure better wages, a reduction of their hours of labor, and better conditions in general. Employers, similarly, unite to oppose whatever may threaten their class interests, without regard to other relationships. The Gentile who is himself an anti-Semite has no qualms of conscience about employing Jewish workmen, at low wages, to compete with Gentile workers; he does not object to joining with Jewish employers in an Employers' Association, if thereby his economic interests may be safeguarded. And the Jewish employer, likewise, has no objection to joining with the Gentile employer for mutual protection, or to the employment of Gentile workers to fill the places of his employees, members of his own race, who have gone out on strike for higher wages.

III

The class struggle, therefore, presents itself in the present stage of social development, in capitalist countries, as a conflict between the wage-paying and the wage-paid classes. That is the dominating and all-absorbing conflict of the industrial age in which we live. True, there are other class interests more or less involved. This is especially true in the United States with its enormous agricultural industry, to which the description of the industrial conflict cannot be applied. There are the indefinite, inchoate, vague, and uncertain interests of that large, so-called middle class, composed of farmers, retailers, professional workers, and so on. The interests of this large class are not, and cannot be, as definitely defined. They vacillate, conforming now to the interest of the wage-workers, now to the interest of the employers. Thus the farmer may oppose an increase in the wages of farm laborers, because that touches him directly as an employer. His relation to the farm laborer is substantially that of the capitalist to the city worker, and his attitude upon that question is the attitude of the capitalist class as a whole. At the same time, he may heartily favor an increase of wages for miners, carpenters, bricklayers, shoemakers, printers, painters, factory workers, and non-agricultural laborers in general, for the reason that while a general rise of wages, resulting in a general rise of prices, will affect him slightly as a consumer, and compel him to pay more for what he buys, it will benefit him much more as a seller of the products of his farm. In short, consciously very often, but unconsciously oftener still, personal or class interests control our thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and actions.

It is impossible with the data at our disposal at present to make such an analysis of our population as will enable us to determine the particular class interests of the various groups. Of the twenty-four million men and boys engaged in industry there are some six million farmers and tenants; three million seven hundred and fifty thousand farm laborers; eleven million mechanics, laborers, clerks, and servants; one million five hundred thousand professional workers, agents, and the like; and about two million employers, large and small. Accurately to place each of these groups is out of the question until such time as we have a much more detailed study of our economic life than has yet been attempted. We may, however, roughly relate some of the groups.

First: It is evident that the interests of the eleven million wage-earners are, as a whole, opposed to those of the employing class. There may be exceptions, as in the case of those whose very occupation as confidential agents of the capitalists, overseers, and the like, places them outside of the sphere of working-class interests. They may not receive a salary much above the wage of the mechanic, yet their function is such as to place them psychologically with the capitalists rather than with the workers. It is also evident that, while their interests may be demonstrably antagonistic to those of the employers, not all of the wage-earners will be conscious of that fact. The consciousness of class interests develops slowly among rural and isolated workers, especially as between the small employer and his employee. And even when there is the consciousness of antagonistic interests among these workers it is very difficult for them actively to express it. Hence they cannot play an important part in the actual conflict of classes.

Second: We may safely place the three million seven hundred and fifty thousand farm laborers, as regards their economic interests, with the general mass of wage-workers, with one important qualification. So far as they are in the actual relation of wage-paid laborers, hired by the month, week, or day, and bearing no other relation to their employers, they belong, in their economic interests, to the proletariat. But there are many farm laborers included in our enumeration who do not hold that relation to their employers. They are the sons of the farmers themselves, expecting to assume their fathers' positions, and their position as wage-paid laborers is largely nominal and fictitious. How many such there are it is impossible to ascertain with anything like certainty, and we can only say, therefore, that the position of the class, as such, must be determined without including these. But while this class has economic interests similar to those of the industrial proletariat, because of their isolation and scattered position, and because of the personal relations which they bear to their employers—farmer and laborer often working side by side, equally hard, and not infrequently having approximately the same standards of living—these cannot, to any very great extent, become an active factor in the class conflict in the same sense as the industrial wage-workers can, by engaging in strikes, boycotts, and other manifestations of the class war. Still, they may, and in fact do, play an important rôle in the political aspects of the struggle. Let a political movement of the proletariat arise and it will be found that these agricultural laborers will join it not less enthusiastically than their fellows from the factories in the cities. It would probably surprise most thoughtful Americans if they could see the organization maps in the offices of the Socialist Party of the United States, dotted with little red-capped pins denoting local organizations of the party. These are quite as common in the agricultural states as in the industrial states. So, too, in Germany. The movement is politically nearly as strong in the agrarian districts as elsewhere. This is a fact of vital significance, one which must not be lost sight of in studying the progress of Socialism in America.

Third: Of the exact position of the remaining groups it is very difficult to speak with anything like assurance. In an earlier chapter we have noticed the persistence of the small farm in America, and the fact that a class of small farmers forms a very important part of our population. As already observed, the economic condition of the small farmer is very often little, if any, superior to that of the laborers he employs. Elsewhere, I have shown that the the one sphere where such unity of action is possible, the sphere of political action.

This is also true, in some degree at least, of a considerable fraction of the one million five hundred thousand workers included in the professional and agent classes, and of the two million employers, the small dealers and manufacturers being included in this enumeration. That there is such a considerable fraction of each of these two classes whose interests lead them to make common cause with the proletariat is not at all a matter of theory or speculation, but of experience. These classes are represented very largely in the membership of the Socialist parties of this country and of Europe.

IV

Although it is sometimes so interpreted, the theory that classes are based upon commonality of interests does not imply that men are never actuated by other than selfish motives; that a sordid materialism is the only motive force at work in the world. Marx and Engels carefully avoided the use of the word interests in such manner as to suggest that material interests control the course of history. They invariably used the term economic conditions, and the careful reader will not fail to perceive that although economic conditions produce interests which form the basis of class divisions, it is not unusual for men to act contrary to their personal interests as a result of existing conditions. In general, class interests and personal interests coincide, but there are certainly occasions when they conflict. Many an employer, having no quarrel with his employees and confident that he will be the loser thereby, joins in a fight upon labor unions because he is conscious that the interests of his class are involved. In a similar way, workingmen enter upon sympathetic strikes, consciously, at an immediate loss to themselves, because they place class loyalty before personal gain. It is significant of class feeling and temper that when employers act in this manner, and lock out employees with whom they have no trouble, simply to help other employers to win their battles, they are lauded by the very newspapers which denounce the workers when they adopt a like policy.

It is also true that there are individuals in both classes who never become conscious of their class interests, and steadfastly refuse to join with the members of their class. The workingman who refuses to join a union, or who "scabs" when his fellow-workers go out on strike, may act from ignorance or from sheer self-interest and greed. His action may be due to his placing personal interest before the larger interest of his class, or from being too shortsighted to see that ultimately his own interests and those of his class must merge. Many an employer, likewise, may refuse to join in any concerted action of his class for either of these reasons, or he may even rise superior to his class and personal interests and support the workers because he believes in the justness of their cause, realizing perfectly well that their gain means loss to him or to his class. This ought to be a sufficient answer to those shallow critics who think that they dispose of the class struggle theory of modern Socialism by enumerating those of its leading exponents who do not belong to the proletariat.

The influence of class environment upon men's beliefs and ideals is a subject which our most voluminous ethicists have scarcely touched upon as yet. It is a commonplace saying that each age has its own standards of right and wrong, but little effort has been made, if we except the Socialists, to trace this fact to its source, to the economic conditions prevailing in the different ages. Still less effort has been made to account for the different standards held by the different social classes at the same time, and by which each class judges the others. In our own day the idea of slavery is generally held in abhorrence. There was a time, however, when it was almost universally looked upon as a divine institution, alike by slaveholder and slave. It is simply impossible to account for this complete revolution of feeling upon any other hypothesis than that slave-labor then seemed absolutely essential to the life of the world. The slave lords of antiquity, and, more recently, the Southern slaveholders in our own country, all believed that slavery was eternally right. When the slaves took an opposite view and rebelled, they were believed to be in rebellion against God and nature. The Church represented the same view just as vigorously as it now opposes it. The slave owners who held slavery to be a divine institution, and the priests and ministers who supported them, were just as honest and sincere in their belief as we are in holding antagonistic beliefs to-day.

What was accounted a virtue in the slave was accounted a vice in the slaveholder. Cowardice and a cringing humility were not regarded as faults in a slave. On the contrary, they were the stock virtues of the pattern slave and added to the estimation in which he was held, just as similar traits are valued in personal servants—butlers, waiters, valets, footmen, and other flunkies—in our own day. But similar traits in the slaveholder, or the "gentleman" of to-day, would be regarded as terrible faults. As Mr. Algernon Lee very tersely puts it, "The slave was not a slave because of his slavish ideals and beliefs; the slave was slavish in his ideals and beliefs because he lived the life of a slave."

In the industrial world of to-day we find a similar divergence of ethical standards. What the laborers regard as wrong, the employers regard as absolutely and immutably right. The actions of the workers in forming unions and compelling unwilling members of their own class to join them, even resorting to the bitter expedient of striking against them with a view to starving them into submission, seem terribly unjust to the employers and the class to which the employers belong. To the workers themselves, on the other hand, such actions have all the sanctions of conscience. Similarly, many actions of the employers, in which they themselves see no wrong, seem almost incomprehensibly wicked to the workers.

Leaving aside the wholesale fraud of our ordinary commercial advertisements, the shameful adulteration of goods, and a multitude of other such nefarious practices, it is at once interesting and instructive to compare the employers' denunciations of "the outrageous infringement of personal liberty," when the "oppressor" is a labor union, with some of their everyday practices. The same employers who loudly, and, let it be said, quite sincerely, condemn the members of a union who endeavor to bring about the discharge of a fellow-worker because he declines to join their organization, have no scruples of conscience about discharging a worker simply because he belongs to a union, and so effectually "blacklisting" him that it becomes almost or quite impossible for him to obtain employment at his trade elsewhere. They do not hesitate to do this secretly, conspiring against the very life of the worker. While loudly declaiming against the "conspiracy" of the workers to raise wages, they see no wrong in an "agreement" of manufacturers or mine owners to reduce wages. If the members of a labor union should break the law, especially if they should commit an act of violence during a strike, the organs of capitalist opinion teem with denunciation, but there is no breath of condemnation for the outrages committed by employers or their agents against union men and their families.

During the great anthracite coal strike of 1903, and again during the disturbances in Colorado in 1904, it was evident to every fair-minded observer that the mine owners were at least quite as lawless as the strikers. But there was hardly a scintilla of adverse comment upon the mine owners' lawlessness in the organs of capitalist opinion, while they poured forth torrents of righteous indignation at the lawlessness of the miners. When labor leaders, like the late Sam Parks, for example, are accused of extortion and receiving bribes, the employers and their retainers, through pulpit, press, and every other avenue of public opinion, denounce the culprit, the bribe taker, in unmeasured terms—but the bribe giver is excused, or, at worst, only lightly criticised. These are but a few common illustrations of class conscience. Any careful observer will be able to add almost indefinitely to the number.

It would be easy to compile a catalogue of such examples as these from the history of the past few years sufficient to convince the most skeptical that class interests do produce a class conscience. Mr. Ghent aptly expresses a profound truth when he says: "There is a spiritual alchemy which transmutes the base metal of self-interest into the gold of conscience; the transmutation is real, and the resulting frame of mind is not hypocrisy, but conscience. It is a class conscience, and therefore partial and imperfect, having little to do with absolute ethics. But partial and imperfect as it is, it is generally sincere." No better test of the truth of this can be made than by reading carefully for a few weeks the comments of half a dozen representative capitalist newspapers, and of an equal number of representative labor papers, upon current events. The antithetical nature of their judgments of men and events demonstrates the existence of a distinct class conscience. It cannot be interpreted in any other way.

V

A great many people, while admitting the important rôle class struggles have played in the history of the race, strenuously deny the existence of classes in the United States. They freely admit the class divisions and struggles of the Old World, but deny that a similar class antagonism exists in this country; they fondly believe the United States to be a glorious exception to the rule, and regard the claim that classes exist here as falsehood and treason. The Socialists are forever being accused of seeking to apply to American life judgments based upon European facts and conditions. It is easy to visualize the class divisions of monarchical countries, where there are hereditary ruling classes—even though these are only nominally the ruling classes in most cases—fixed by law. But it is not so easy to recognize the fact that, even in these countries, the power is held by the financial and industrial lords, and not by the kings and their titular nobility. The absence of a hereditary, titular ruling class serves to hide from many people the real class divisions existing in this country.

Nevertheless, there is a perceptible growth of uneasiness and unrest; a widening and deepening conviction that while we may retain the outward forms of democracy, and shout its shibboleths with patriotic fervor, its essentials are lacking. The feeling spreads, even in the most conservative circles, that we are developing, or have already developed, a distinct ruling class. The anomaly of a ruling class without legal sanction or titular prestige has seized upon the popular mind; titles have been created for our great "untitled nobility"—mock titles which have speedily assumed a serious import and meaning. Our financial "Kings," industrial "Lords," "Barons," and so on, have received their crowns and patents of nobility from the populace. President Roosevelt gives expression to the serious thought of our most conservative citizenry when he says: "In the past, the most direful among the influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the class spirit.... If such a spirit grows up in this republic, it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it has proven fatal to every community in which it has become dominant."

With the exception of the chattel slaves, we have had no hereditary class in this country with a legally fixed status. But

"Man is more than constitutions," and there are other laws than those formulated in senates and recorded in statute books. The vast concentration of industry and wealth, resulting in immense fortunes on the one hand, and terrible poverty on the other, has separated the two classes by a chasm as deep and wide as ever yawned between czar and moujik, kaiser and vagrant, prince and pauper, feudal baron and serf. The immensity of the power and wealth thus concentrated into the hands of the few, to be inherited by their sons and daughters, tends to establish this class division hereditarily. Heretofore, passage from the lower class to the class above has been comparatively easy, and it has blinded people to the existing class antagonisms, though, as Mr. Ghent justly observes, it should no more be taken to disprove the existence of classes than the fact that so many thousands of Germans come to this country to settle is taken to disprove the existence of the German Empire. The stereotyping of classes is undeniable. That a few men pass from one class to another is no disproof of this. The classes exist and the tendency is for them to remain permanently fixed, as a whole, in our social life.

But passage from the lower class to the upper tends to become, if not absolutely impossible and unthinkable, at least practically impossible, and as difficult and rare as the transition from pauperism to princedom in the Old World is. A romantic European princess may marry a penurious coachman, and so provide the world with a nine days' sensation, but such cases are no rarer in the royal courts of Europe than in our own plutoaristocratic court circles. Has there ever been a king in modern times with anything like the power of Mr. Rockefeller? Is any feature of royal recognition withheld from Mr. Morgan when he goes abroad in state, an uncrowned king, fraternizing with crowned but envious fellow-kings? The existence of classes in America to-day is as evident as the existence of America itself.

VI

Antagonisms of class interests have existed from the very beginning of civilization, though not always recognized. It is only the consciousness of their existence, and the struggle which results from that consciousness, that are new. As we suddenly become aware of the pain and ravages of disease, when we have not felt or heeded its premonitory symptoms, so, having neglected the fundamental class division of society, the bitterness of the strife resulting therefrom shocks and alarms us. So long as it is possible for the stronger and more ambitious members of an inferior class to rise out of that class and join the ranks of a superior class, so long will the struggle which ensues as the natural outgrowth of opposing interests be postponed.

Until quite recently, in the United States, this has been possible. Transition from the status of wage-worker to that of capitalist has been easy. But with the era of concentration and the immense capitals required for industrial enterprise, and the exhaustion of our supply of free land, these transitions become fewer and more difficult, and class lines tend to become permanently fixed. The stronger and more ambitious members of the lower class, finding it impossible to rise into the class above, thus become impressed with a consciousness of their class status. The average worker no longer dreams of himself becoming an employer after a few years of industry and thrift. The ambitious and aggressive few no longer look with the contempt of the strong for the weak upon their less aggressive fellow-workers, but become leaders, preachers of a significant and admittedly dangerous gospel of class consciousness.

President Roosevelt has assailed the preachers of class consciousness with all the energy of a confirmed moralizer. It is evident, however, that he has never taken the trouble to study either the preachers or their gospel. Never in his utterances has there been any hint given of a recognition of the fact that there could be no preaching of class consciousness had there been no classes. Never has he manifested the faintest recognition of the existence of conditions which develop classes, out of which the class consciousness of the propagandists springs naturally. He does not see that there is danger only when the preachers are not wise enough, nor sufficiently educated to see their position in its historical perspective; when in blind revolt they engender class hatred, personal hatred of the capitalist by the worker. But when there is the historical perspective, wisdom to see that economic conditions develop slowly, and that the capitalist is no more responsible for conditions than the worker, there is not only no personal hatred for the capitalist engendered, but, more important still, the workers get a new view of the relationship of the classes, and their efforts are directed to the bringing about of peaceful change.

The Socialists, accused as they are of seeking to stir up hatred and strife, by placing the class struggle in its proper light, as one of the great social dynamic forces, have done and are doing more to allay hatred and bitterness of feeling, and to save the world from the red curse of anarchistic vengeance, than all the Rooseveltian preaching in which thousands of venders of moral platitudes are engaged. The Socialist movement is vastly more powerful as a force against Anarchism, in its violent manifestations, than any other agency in the world. Wherever, as in Germany, the Socialist movement is strong, Anarchism is impotent and weak. The reason for this is the very obvious one here given. Class divisions are not created by Socialists, but developed in the womb of economic conditions. Class consciousness is not something which Socialism has developed. Before there was a Socialist movement, in the days of Luddite attacks upon machinery, and Captain Swing's rick-burners, there was class consciousness expressed in class revolt. Modern Socialism simply takes the class consciousness of the worker and educates it to see the futility of machine-destroying, or other foolish and abortive attacks upon capitalists and their property, and organizes it into a political movement for the peaceful transformation of society.

VII

Nowhere in the world, at any time in its history, has the antagonism of classes been more evident than in the United States at the present time. With an average of over a thousand strikes a year, some of them involving, directly, tens of thousands of producers, a few capitalists, and millions of noncombatants, consumers; with strikes like this, boycotts, lockouts, injunctions, and all the other incidents of organized class strife reported daily by the newspapers, denials of the existence of classes, or of the struggle between them, are manifestly absurd. We have, on the one hand, organizations of workers, labor unions, with a membership of something over two million in the United States; one organization alone, the American Federation of Labor, having an affiliated membership of one million seven hundred thousand. On the other hand, we have organizations of employers, formed for the expressed purpose of fighting the labor unions, of which the National Association of Manufacturers is the most perfect type yet evolved.

While the leaders on both sides frequently deny that their organizations betoken the existence of a far-reaching fundamental class conflict, and, through ostensibly pacificatory organizations like the National Civic Federation, proclaim the "essential identity of interests between capital and labor"; while an intelligent and earnest labor leader like Mr. John Mitchell joins with an astute capitalist leader like the late Senator Marcus A. Hanna in declaring that "there is no necessary hostility between labor and capital," that there is no "necessary, fundamental antagonism between the laborer and the capitalist," a brief study of the constitutions of these class organizations, and their published reports, in conjunction with the history of the labor struggle in the United States, in which the names of Homestead, Hazelton, Cœur d'Alene and Cripple Creek appear in bloody letters, will show these denials to be the offspring of hypocrisy or delusion. If this much-talked-of unity of interests is anything but a stupid fiction, the great and ever increasing strife is only a matter of mutual misunderstanding. All that is necessary to secure permanent peace is to remove that misunderstanding. If we believe this, it is a sad commentary upon human limitations, upon man's failure to understand his own life, that not a single person on either side has arisen with sufficient intelligence and breadth of vision to state the relations of the two classes with clarity and force enough to accomplish that end, to make them understand each other.

Let us get down to fundamental principles. Why do men organize into unions? Why was the first union started? Why do men pay out of their hard-earned wages to support unions now? The first union was not started because the men who started it did not understand their employers, or because they were misunderstood by their employers. The explanation involves a deeper insight into things than that. When the individual workingman, feeling that from the labor of himself and his fellows came the wealth and luxury of his employer, demanded higher wages, a reduction of the hours of labor, or better conditions in general, he was met with a reply from the employer—who understood the workingman's position very well, much better, in fact, than the workingman himself did—something like this, "If you don't like this job, and my terms, there are plenty of others outside ready to take your place." The workingman and the employer, then, understood each other perfectly. The employer understood the position of the worker, that he was dependent upon him, the employer, for opportunity to earn his bread. The worker understood that so long as the employer could discharge him and fill his place with another, he was powerless. The combat between the workers and the masters of their bread has from the first been an unequal one.

Nothing remained for the individual workingman but to join with his fellows in a collective and united effort. So organizations of workers appeared, and the employers could not treat the demands for higher wages or other improvements in conditions as lightly as before. The workers, when they organized, could take advantage of the fact that there were no organizations of the employers. Every strike added to the ordinary terrors of the competitive struggle for the employers. The manufacturer whose men threatened to strike often surrendered because he feared most of all that his trade, in the event of a suspension of work, would be snatched by his rival in business. So, by playing upon the inherent weakness of the competitive system as it affected the employers, the workers gained many substantial advantages. There is no doubt whatsoever that under these conditions the wage-workers got better wages, better working conditions, and a reduction in the hours of labor. It was in many ways the golden age of trade unionism. But there was an important limitation of the workers' power—the unions could not absorb the man outside; they could not provide all the workers with employment. That is an essential condition of capitalist industry, there is always the "reserve army of the unemployed," to use the expressive phrase of Friederich Engels. Rare indeed are the times when all the available workers in any industry are employed, and the time has probably never yet been when all the available workers in all industries were employed.

Notwithstanding this important limitation of power, it is incontrovertible that the workers were benefited by their organization. But only for a time. There came a time when the employers began to organize unions also. That they called their organizations by other and high-sounding names does not alter the fact that they were in reality unions formed to combat the unions of the workers. Every employers' association is, in reality, a union of the men who employ labor against the unions of the men they employ. When the organized workers went to individual, unorganized employers, who feared their rivals more than they feared the workers, or, rather, who feared the workers most of all because rivals waited to snatch their trade, a strike making their employees allies with their competitors, the employers were easily defeated. The workers could play one employer against another employer with constant success. But when the employers also organized, it was different. Then the individual employer, freed from his worst terrors, could say, "Do your worst. I, too, am in an organization." Then it became a battle betwixt organized capital and organized labor. When the workers went out on strike in one shop or factory, depending upon their brother unionists employed in other shops or factories, the employers of these latter locked them out, thus cutting off the financial support of the strikers. In other cases, when the workers in one place went out on strike, the employer got his work done through other employers, by the very fellow-members upon whom the strikers were depending for support. Thus the workers were compelled to face this dilemma, either to withdraw these men, thus cutting off their financial supplies, or to be beaten by their own members.

Under these changed conditions, the workers were beaten time after time. It was a case of the worker's cupboard against the master's warehouse, purse against bank account, poverty against wealth. The workers' chances are slight in such a combat! A strike means that the employers on one side, and the workers on the other, seek to force each other to surrender by waiting patiently to see who first feels the pinch of hardship and poverty. Employers and employees determine to play the waiting game. Each waits patiently in the hope that the other will weaken. At last one—most often the workers'—side weakens and gives up the struggle. When the workers are thus beaten in a strike, they are not convinced that their demands are unreasonable or unjust; they are simply beaten because their resources are too small to enable them to stand the struggle.

When the master class, the masters of jobs and bread, organized their forces, they set narrow and sharp boundaries to the power of labor organizations. Henceforth the chances of victory were overwhelmingly on the side of the employers. The workers learned by bitter and costly experience that they could not play the interests of individual employers against other employers' interests. Meantime, too, they have learned that they are not only exploited as producers, but also as buyers, as consumers. For long, dominated by economic theories, the Socialists refused to recognize this aspect of the labor struggle, though the workers felt it strongly enough. They set their fine-spun theories against the facts of life. Their contention was that wages being determined by the cost of living, it mattered nothing how much or how little the workers got in wages, the cost of living and wages adjusted themselves to each other. But in actual experience the workers found that when prices fall, wages are quick to follow, whereas when prices soar high, wages are slow to follow. Wages climb with leaden feet when prices soar with eagle wings. Because the workers are consumers, almost to the last penny of their incomes, having to spend practically every penny earned, that form of exploitation becomes a serious matter.

But against this exploitation the unions have ever been absolutely powerless. Workingmen have never made any very serious attempt to protect the purchasing capacity of their wages, notwithstanding its tremendous importance. The result has been that not a few of the "victories" so dearly won by trade union action have turned out to be hollow mockeries. When better wages have been secured, prices have often gone up, most often, in fact, so that the net result has been little to the advantage of the workers. In many cases, where the advance in wages applied only to a restricted number of trades, the advance in prices becoming general, the total result has been against the working class as a whole, and little or nothing to the advantage of the few who received the advance in immediate wages. At this point, the need is felt of a social revolution, not a violent revolution, be it understood, but a comprehensive social change which will give to the workers the control of the implements of labor, and also of the product of their labor. In other words, the demand arises for independent, working-class action, aiming at the socialization of the means of production and the product.

VIII

A line of cleavage thus presents itself between those, on the one hand, who would continue the old methods of economic warfare, together with the advocates of physical force, and, on the other hand, the advocates of united political action by the working class, consciously directed toward the socialization of industry and its products. The measure of the crystallization of this latter force is represented by the strength of the political Socialist movement. Whoever has studied the labor movement during the past few years must have realized that there is a tremendous drift of sentiment in favor of that policy in the labor unions of the country. The clamor for political action in the labor unions presages an enormous advance of the political Socialist movement during the next few years.

The struggle between the capitalist and working classes must become a political issue, the supreme political issue. This must result, not only because the collective ownership of property can best be brought about by political methods, but also because the capitalists themselves have taken the industrial struggle into the political arena to suit themselves; and when the workers realize the issue and accept it, the capitalists will not be able to resist them. One is reminded of the saying of Marx that capitalism produces its own gravediggers. In taking the industrial issue into the political sphere, to suit their own immediate advantages, the capitalists were destined to reveal to the workers, sooner or later, their power and opportunity.

Realizing that all the forces of government are on their side, the legislative, judicial, and executive powers being controlled by their own class, the employers have made the fight against labor political as well as economic in its character. When the workers have gone on strike and the employers have not cared to play the "waiting game," choosing rather to avail themselves of the great reserve army of unemployed workers outside, the natural resentment of the strikers, finding themselves in danger of being beaten by members of their own class, has led to violence which has been remorselessly suppressed by all the police and military forces at the command of the government. In many instances, the employers have purposely provoked striking workers to violence, and then called upon the government to crush the revolt thus made. Workers have been shot down at the shambles in almost every state, no matter which political party has been in power. Nor have these forces of our class government been used merely to punish lawless union men and women on strike, to uphold the "sacred majesty of the law," as the hypocritical phrase goes. They have been also used to deny strikers the rights which belonged to them, and to protect capitalists and their agents in breaking the laws. No one can read with anything like an impartial spirit the records of the miners' strike in the Cœur d'Alene mine, Idaho, or the labor disturbances in the state of Colorado from 1880 to 1905 and dispute this assertion.

Most important of all has been the powerful opposition of the makers and interpreters of the law. A body of class legislation, in the interests of the employing class, has been created, while the workers have begged in vain for protective legislation. In no country of the world have the interests of the workers been so neglected as in the United States. There is practically no such thing as employers' liability for accidents to workers; no legislation worthy of mention relating to occupations which have been classified as "dangerous" in most industrial countries; women workers are sadly neglected. Whenever a law of distinct advantage to the workers in their struggle has been passed, a servile judiciary has been ready to render it null and void by declaring it to be unconstitutional. No more powerful blows have ever been directed against the workers than by the judiciary. Injunctions have been issued, robbing the workers of the most elemental rights of manhood and citizenship. They have forbidden things which no law forbids, and even things which the Constitution and statute law declare to be legal.

Mr. John Mitchell refers to this subject, in strong but not too strong terms. "No weapon," he says, "has been used with such disastrous effect against trade unions as the injunction in labor disputes. By means of it, trade unionists have been prohibited under severe penalties from doing what they had a legal right to do, and have been specifically directed to do what they had a legal right not to do. It is difficult to speak in measured tones or moderate language of the savagery and venom with which unions have been assailed by the injunction, and to the working classes, as to all fair-minded men, it seems little less than a crime to condone or tolerate it." This is strong language, but who shall say that it is too strong when we remember the many injunctions which have been hurled at organized labor since the famous Debs case brought this weapon into general use?

In this celebrated case, which grew out of the Pullman strike, in 1894, Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, was arrested and arraigned on indictments of obstructing the mails and interstate commerce. Although arraigned, he was not tried, the case being abandoned, despite his demands for a trial. President Cleveland's strike commission subsequently declared, "There is no evidence before the commission that the officers of the American Railway Union at any time participated in or advised intimidation, violence, or destruction of property." Realizing that it had no sort of evidence upon which a jury might be hoped to convict, a new way was found. Debs and his officers were enjoined in a famous "blanket" injunction directed against Debs and all other officials of the union, and "all persons whomsoever." For an alleged violation of that injunction, Judge Woods, without trial by jury, sentenced Debs to six months' imprisonment and his associates to three months'. The animus and class bias of the whole proceeding may be judged from the fact that President Cleveland selected to represent the United States Government, at Chicago, Mr. Edwin Walker, general counsel at that very time for the General Managers' Association, representing the twenty-four railroads centering or terminating in Chicago. And these railroads were operating in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law at the time.

In 1899 an injunction was issued out of the United States Circuit Court of West Virginia against "John Smith and others," without naming the "others," in the interest of the Wheeling Railway Company. Two men, neither of them being John Smith, nor found to be the agent of "John Smith and others," were jailed for contempt of court! In 1900 members of the International Cigarmakers' Union, in New York City, were enjoined by Justice Freeman, in the Supreme Court, from even approaching their former employers for the purpose of attempting to arrange a peaceable settlement! The cigarmakers were further enjoined from publishing their grievances, or in any manner making their case known to the public, if the tendency of that should be to vex the plaintiffs or make them uneasy; from trying, even in a peaceful way, in any place in the city, even in the privacy of a man's own home, to persuade a new employee that he ought to sympathize with the union cause sufficiently to refuse to work for unjust employers; and, finally, the union was forbidden to pay money to its striking members to support them and their families. In the great steel strike of 1901, the members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers were enjoined from peaceably discussing the merits of their claim with the men who were at work, even though the or its customers as employees or otherwise."

These are only a few examples of the abuse of the injunction in labor disputes, hundreds of which have been granted, many of them equally subversive of all sound principles of popular government. There is probably not another civilized country in which such judicial tyranny would be tolerated. It is not without significance that in West Virginia, where, as a result of an outcry against a number of particularly glaring abuses of the power to issue injunctions, the legislature passed a law limiting the right to issue injunctions, the Supreme Court decided that the law was unconstitutional, upon the ground that the legislature had no right to attempt to restrain the courts which were coördinate with itself.

Even more dangerous to organized labor than the injunction is what is popularly known by union men as "Taff Vale law." Our judges have not been slow to follow the example set by the English judges in the famous case of the Taff Vale Railway Company against the officers of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, a powerful labor organization. The decision in that case was most revolutionary. It compelled the workers to pay damages, to the extent of $115,000, to the railroad company for losses sustained by the company through a strike of its employees, members of the defendant union. That decision struck terror into the hearts of British trade unionists. At last they had to face a mode of attack even more dangerous than the injunction which their transatlantic brethren had so long been contending against. Taff Vale law could not long be confined to England. Very soon, our American courts followed the English example. A suit was instituted against the members of a lodge of the Machinists' Union in Rutland, Vermont, and the defendants were ordered to pay $2500. A writ was served upon each member and the property of every one of them attached. Since that time, numerous other decisions of a like nature have been rendered in various parts of the country. Thus the unions have been assailed in a vital place, their treasuries. It is manifestly foolish and quite useless for the members of a union to strike against an employer for any purpose whatever, if the employer is to be able to recover damages from the union. Taff Vale judge-made law renders the labor union hors de combat at a stroke.

IX

The immediate effect of the revolutionary judicial decision in England was to arouse the workers to the necessity for class-conscious political action. The cry went up that the unions must adopt a policy of independent political action. There is no doubt whatever that the tremendous advance of the Socialist movement in England during the past few years began as a result of the attack made upon the funds of the labor unions. From the moment of the Taff Vale decision the Socialist movement in England took rapid strides. A similar process is going on in this country, gathering momentum with every injunction against organized labor, every hostile enactment of legislatures, and every use of the judicial and executive powers to defeat the workers in their struggle against capitalism. The workers are being educated to political Socialism by the stern experiences resulting from capitalist rule. Underneath the thin veneer of party differences, the worker sees the class identity of the great political parties, and cries out, "A plague on both your houses!" The Socialist argument comes to him with a twofold force: not only does it show him how he is enslaved and exploited as a producer, but it convinces him that as a citizen he has it in his power to control the government and make it what he will. He can put an end to government by injunctions, to the use of police, state, and federal troops to break strikes, and to the sequestration of union funds by hostile judges. He can, if he so decides, own and control the government, and, through the government, own and control the essentials of life: be master of his own labor, his own bread, his own life.

If we take for granted that the universal increase of Socialist sentiment, and the growth of political Socialism, as measured by its rapidly increasing vote, presage this great triumph of the working class; that the heretofore despised and oppressed proletariat is, in a not far distant future, to rule instead of being ruled, the question arises, will the last state be better than the first? Will society be bettered by the change of masters?

The very form of the question must be denied. It is not a movement for a change of masters. To regard this struggle of the classes as one of revenge, of exploited masses ready to overturn the social structure that they may become exploiters instead of exploited, is to misread the whole movement. The political and economic conquest of society by the working class means the end of class divisions once and forever. A social democracy, a society in which all things essential to the common life and well-being are owned and controlled by the people in common, democratically organized, precludes the existence of class divisions in our present-day economic and political sense. Profit, through human exploitation, alone has made class divisions possible, and the Socialist régime will abolish profit. The working class, in emancipating itself, at the same time makes liberty possible for the whole race of man, and destroys the conditions of class rule.