The Class Struggle

The second point, on which it is absolutely necessary that you be clear, is the nature of your relation, as working people, to the capitalist in this capitalist system of production. This point is an inevitable consequence of the first.

You have seen that the wages you live on and the profits the capitalist riots in are the two parts into which is divided the wealth that you produce. The workingman wants a larger and larger share. So does the capitalist. A thing cannot be divided into two shares so as to increase the share of each.

If the workingman produces, say, $4 worth of wealth a day, and the capitalist keeps 2, there are only 2 left for the workingman. If the capitalist keeps 3, there is only 1 left for the workingman. If the capitalist keeps 3 1/2, there is only 1/2 left for the workingman. Inversely, if the workingman pushes up his share from 1/2 to 1, there are only 3 left to the capitalist. If the workingman secures 2, the capitalist will be reduced to 2. If the workingman push still onward and keep 3, the capitalist will have to put up with 1.

And if the workingman makes up his mind to enjoy all that he produces, and keep all the 4, the capitalist will have to go to work.

These plain figures upset the theory about the workingman and the capitalist being brothers.

Capital—meaning the capitalist class—and labor have been portrayed by capitalist illustrated papers as Chang and Eng. This, I remember, was done notably by Harper’s Weekly, the property of one of the precious “Seeley Diners”—you remember that “dinner.” The Siamese Twins were held together by a piece of flesh. Wherever Chang went, Eng was sure to go. If Chang was happy, Eng’s pulse throbbed harder. If Chang caught cold, Eng sneezed in chorus with him. When Chang died, Eng followed suit within five minutes.

Do we find that to be the relation of the workingman and the capitalist? Do you find that the fatter the capitalist, the fatter also grows the workingmen? Is not your experience rather that the wealthier the capitalist, the poorer are the workingmen? That the more magnificent and prouder the residences of the capitalist, the dingier and humbler become those of the workingmen? That the happier the life of the capitalist’s wife, the greater the opportunities of his children for enjoyment and education, the heavier becomes the cross borne by the workingmen’s wives, while their children are crowded more and more from the schools and deprived of the pleasures of childhood? Is that your experience, or is it not?

The pregnant point that underlies these pregnant facts is that:

Between the working class and the capitalist class, there is an irrepressible conflict, a class struggle for life. No glib-tongued politician can vault over it, no capitalist professor or official statistician can argue it away; no capitalist parson can veil it; no labor faker can straddle it; no “reform” architect can bridge it over. It crops up in all manner of ways, like in this strike, in ways that disconcert all the plans and all the schemes of those who would deny or ignore it. It is a struggle that will not down, and must be ended, only by either the total subjugation of the working class, or the abolition of the capitalist class.

Thus you perceive that the theory on which your “pure and simple” trade organizations are grounded, and on which you went into this strike, is false. There being no “common interests,” but only hostile interests, between the capitalist class and the working class, the battle you are waging to establish “safe relations” between the two is a hopeless one.

Put to the touchstone of these undeniable principles the theory upon which your “pure and simple” trade organizations are built, and you will find it to be false; examined by the light of these undeniable principles the road that your false theory makes you travel and the failures that have marked your career must strike you as its inevitable result. How are we to organize and proceed? you may ask. Before answering the question, let me take up another branch of the subject. Its presentation will sweep aside another series of illusions that beset the mind of the working class, and will, with what has been said, give us a sufficient sweep over the ground to lead us to the right answer.