Parasites never voluntarily let go their grasp on the source of their lives, never voluntarily let go the living things from which they suck their livings. And the parasitic capitalist class will stick to the means of production, as private owners, till they are legally dislodged—shorn from the means of production. What is here written concerning social parasites should not be misunderstood as malicious reflection on the ancient slave owner or the ancient feudal landlord or the modern capitalist. In the course of human evolution the appearance and activity of social parasites has been—and is now—as natural as the appearance and activity of parasites in the lower animal world and in the vegetable world. And the effort to dislodge human parasites from society should be, as far as is humanly possible, _free from personal malice_.[321] However, on the farm, in the care of plants and animals no matter how small or helpless or innocent or beautiful parasites may be which interfere with the wheat crop or the flock of sheep, the parasites must be dislodged—rigorously and promptly. And, in society, no matter how handsome, polite, pious, learned, philanthropic, or ancestrally distinguished and blue-blooded a human parasite may be who lives on the labor of the workers, that parasite, old or young, male or female, must dismount promptly, must be forced from the shoulders of the working class. Those who, at the time of social reconstruction, endeavor to defend themselves by polishing their family coat-of-arms and climbing their ancestral trees in search of credentials, will simply be making monkeys of themselves. They will be even more ridiculous than the Royalists in the American Revolution. Those of “gentle breeding” will have to learn the gentle art of getting a living by _producing_ a living; that awful saying, “If he will not work, neither shall he eat,” will mean more and more. The working class must, then, legally, do whatever is necessary to protect themselves from the strangling clutches of the capitalist class. And here is what is necessary: