African Americans; United States -- Race relations
Now, under the present system, exploiting the wage-slave is
respectable. I have already shown you that wherever the worker is
exploited he is despised. So you will see that despising the
wage-slave is quite fashionable. You may recall the name of the great
capitalist who said, "the public be damned." He was only a little more
outspoken than the rest of his class. As long as the present system
continues, the workers will be despised; as long as the workers are
despised, the black men will be despised, robbed and murdered, because
they are least able to defend themselves. Now ask yourself whether you
haven't a very special interest in changing the present system.
Of course, you will ask: "But haven't white working people
race-prejudice too?" Sure, they have. Do you know why?
It pays the capitalist to keep the workers divided. So he creates and
keeps alive these prejudices. He gets them to believe that their
interests are different. Then he uses one half of them to club the
other half with. In Russia when the workingmen demand reform the
capitalists sic them on the Jews. In America they sic them on the
Negroes. That makes them forget their own condition: as long as they
can be made to look down upon another class. "But, then", you will
say, the average wage-slave must be a chump." Sure, he is. That's what
the capitalist counts on. And Socialism is working to educate the
workers to see this and to unite them in doing away with the present
system.
Socialism stands for the emancipation of the wage-slaves. Are you a
wage-slave? Do you want to be emancipated? Then join hands with the
Socialists. Hear what they have to say. Read some of their literature.
Get a Socialist leaflet, a pamphlet, or, better still, a book. You
will be convinced of two things: that Socialism is right, and that it
is inevitable. It is right because any order of things in which those
who work have least while those who work them have most, is wrong. It
is inevitable because a system under which the wealth produced by the
labor of human hands amounts to more than two hundred and twenty
billions a year while many millions live on the verge of starvation,
is bound to break down. Therefore, if you wish to join with the other
class—conscious, intelligent wage-earners—in putting an end to such a
system; if you want to better living conditions for black men as well
as for white men; to make this woful world of ours a little better for
your children and your children's children, study Socialism—and think
and work your way out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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