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.)
This is the capitalist system in its effect upon the working class. They
have no tools, but must work to live. They throng the labor market,
especially when times are hard and work is scarce, and eagerly,
anxiously look for some one willing to use their labor power and bid
them in at the market price.
To speak of liberty in such a system is a mockery; to surrender is a
crime.
The workers of the nation and the world must be aroused.
In the capitalist system “night has drawn her sable curtain down and
pinned it with a star,” and the great majority grope in darkness. The
pin must be removed from the curtain, even though it be a star.
But the darkness, after all, is but imaginary. The sun is marching to
meridian glory and the world is flooded with light.
Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the inspired evangel of the coming
civilization, says:
“We close our eyes and call it night,
And grope and fall in seas of light,
Would we but understand!”
Not for a moment do we despair of the future. The greatest educational
propaganda ever known is spreading over the earth.
The working class will both see and understand. They have the inherent
power of self-development. They are but just beginning to come into
consciousness of their power, and with the first glimmerings of this
consciousness the capitalist system is doomed. It may hold on for a
time, for even a long time, but its doom is sealed.
Even now the coming consciousness of this world-wide working class power
is shaking the foundations of all governments and all civilizations.
The capitalist system has had its day and, like other systems that have
gone before, it must pass away when it has fulfilled its mission and
made room for another system more in harmony with the forces of progress
and with the onward march of civilization.
The centralization of capital, the concentration of industry and the
co-operation of workingmen mark the beginning of the end. Competition is
no longer “the life of trade.” Only they are clamoring for “competition”
who have been worsted in the struggle and would like to have another
deal.
The small class who won out in the game of competition and own the
trusts want no more of it. They know what it is, and have had enough.
Mr. John D. Rockefeller needs no competition to give life to his trade,
and his pious son does not expatiate upon the beauties of competition in
his class at Sunday school.
No successful capitalist wants competition—for himself—he only wants it
for the working class, so that he can buy his labor power at the lowest
competitive price in the labor market.
The simple truth is, that competition in industrial life belongs to the
past, and is practically outgrown. The time is approaching when it will
be no longer possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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