Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. DebsDebs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
History
Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs
Debs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
Labor -- United States; Socialism -- United States; Socialist Party (U.S.); Working class -- United States
Let me impress this fact upon your minds: the labor question, which is
really the question of all humanity, will never be solved until it is
solved by the working class. It will never be solved for you by the
capitalists. It will never be solved for you by the politicians. It will
remain unsolved until you yourselves solve it. As long as you can stand
and are willing to stand these conditions, these conditions will remain;
but when you unite all over the land, when you present a solid
class-conscious phalanx, economically and politically, there is no power
on this earth that can stand between you and complete emancipation.
As individuals you are helpless, but united you represent an
irresistible power.
Is there any doubt in the mind of any thinking workingman that we are in
the midst of a class struggle? Is there any doubt that the workingman
ought to own the tool he works with? You will never own the tool you
work with under the present system. This whole system is based upon the
private ownership by the capitalist of the tools and the wage-slavery of
the working class, and as long as the tools are privately owned by the
capitalists the great mass of workers will be wage-slaves.
You may, at times, temporarily better your condition within certain
limitations, but you will still remain wage-slaves, and why wage-slaves?
For just one reason and no other--you have got to work. To work you have
got to have tools, and if you have no tools you have to beg for work,
and if you have got to beg for work the man who owns the tools you use
will determine the conditions under which you shall work. As long as he
owns your tools he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the
master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to
his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not.
Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that
humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a
free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence. You will never be
free, you will never stand erect in your own manly self-reliance until
you are the master of the tools you work with, and when you are you can
freely work without the consent of any master, and when you do work you
will get all your labor produces.
As it is now the lion's share goes to the capitalist for which he does
nothing, while you get a small fraction to feed, clothe and shelter
yourself, and reproduce yourself in the form of labor power. That is
all you get out of it and all you ever will get in the capitalist
system.
Oh, my brothers, can you be satisfied with your lot? Will you insist
that life shall continue a mere struggle for existence and one prolonged
misery to which death comes as a blessed relief?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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