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.)
With the triumph of the workers the mode of production and distribution
will be completely revolutionized.
Private ownership and production for profit will be supplanted by social
ownership and production for use.
The economic interests of the workers will be mutual. They will work
together in harmony instead of being arrayed against each other in
competitive warfare.
The collective workers will own the machinery of production, and there
will be work for all and all will receive their socially due share of
the product of their co-operative labor.
It is for this great work that the workers and their sympathizers must
organize and educate and agitate.
The Socialist movement is of the working class itself; it is from the
injustice perpetrated upon, and the misery suffered by this class that
the movement sprang, and it is to this class it makes its appeal. It is
the voice of awakened labor arousing itself to action.
As we look abroad and see things as they are, the capitalists intrenched
and fortified and the workers impoverished, ignorant and in bondage, we
are apt to be overawed by the magnitude of the task that lies before the
Socialist movement, but as we become grounded in the Socialist
philosophy, as we understand the process of economic determinism and
grasp the principles of industrial and social evolution the magnitude of
the undertaking, far from daunting the Socialist spirit, appeals to each
comrade to enlist in the struggle because of the very greatness of the
conflict and the immeasurable good that lies beyond it, and as he girds
himself and touches elbows with his comrades his own latent resources
are developed and his blood thrills with new life as he feels himself
rising to the majesty of a man.
Now he has found his true place, and though he be reviled against and
ostracized, traduced and denounced, though he be reduced to rags, and
tormented with hunger pangs, he will bear it all and more, for he is
battling for a principle, he has been consecrated to a cause and he
cannot turn back.
To reach the workers that are still in darkness and to open their eyes,
that is the task, and to this we must give ourselves with all the
strength we have, with patience that never fails and an abiding faith in
the ultimate victory.
The moment a worker sees himself in his true light he severs his
relations with the capitalist parties, for he realizes at once that he
no more belongs there than Rockefeller belongs in the Socialist party.
What is the actual status of the workingman in the capitalist society of
today?
Is he in any true sense a citizen?
Has he any basis for the claim that he is a free man?
First of all, he cannot work unless some capitalist finds it to his
interest to employ him.
Why not? Because he has no tools and man cannot work without them.
Why has he no tools? Because tools in these days are, as a rule, great
machines and very costly, and in the capitalist system are the private
property of the capitalists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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