Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches, with a Department of AppreciationsDebs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
History
Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches, with a Department of Appreciations
Debs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
Socialism -- United States; Socialist Party (U.S.)
Both sides are organized in this class struggle, the capitalists,
however, far more thoroughly than the workers. In the first place the
capitalists are, comparatively, few in number, while the workers number
many millions. Next, the capitalists are men of financial means and
resources, and can buy the best brains and command the highest order of
ability the market affords. Then again, they own the earth, and the
mills and mines and locomotives and ships and stores and the jobs that
are attached to them, and this not only gives them tremendous advantage
in the struggle, but makes them for the time the absolute masters of the
situation.
The workers, on the other hand, are poor as a rule, and ignorant as a
class, _but they are in an overwhelming majority_. In a word, they have
the power, but are not conscious of it. This then is the supreme demand;
to make them conscious of the power of their class, or class-conscious
workingmen.
The working class alone does the world’s work, has created its capital,
produced its wealth, constructed its mills and factories, dug its
canals, made its roadbeds, laid its rails and operates its trains,
spanned the rivers with bridges and tunnelled the mountains, delved for
the precious stones that glitter upon the bosom of vulgar idleness and
reared the majestic palaces that shelter insolent parasites.
The working class alone—and by the working class I mean all useful
workers, all who by the labor of their hands or the effort of their
brains, or both in alliance, as they ought universally to be, increase
the knowledge and add to the wealth of society—the working class alone
is essential to society and therefore the only class that can survive in
the world-wide struggle for freedom.
We have said that both classes, the capitalist class and the working
class are organized for the class struggle, but the organization,
especially that of the workers, is far from complete; indeed, it would
be nearer exact to say that it has but just fairly begun.
On the economic field of the class struggle the capitalists have their
Manufacturers’ Association, Citizens’ Alliance, Corporations’ Auxiliary,
and—we must add—Civic Federation, while on the political field they have
the Republican party and the Democratic party, the former for large
capitalists and the latter for small capitalists, but both of them for
capitalists and both against the workers.
Standing face to face with the above named economic and political forces
of the capitalists the workingmen have on the economic field their
trades-unions, and on the political field their working class Socialist
party.
In the class struggle the workers must unite and fight together as one
on both economic and political fields.
The Socialist party is to the workingman politically what the
trades-union is to him industrially; the former is the party of his
class, while the latter is the union of his trade.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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