This perhaps will make it somewhat easier to understand the _present intellectual condition of the working class_. It thus becomes easier to understand why the workers were taught (and are taught now) to be “satisfied with their lot,” taught the “identity and harmony of interests of capital and labor.” This explains the meekness of the multitude, the docility of the majority, and their _political modesty_. Sheepish meekness, self-contempt and prideless obedience long ago took the place of defiant and splendid rebellious self-respect—in the _character_ and the _thinking_ of the working class. In every possible way the shackles have been riveted to the wrists and brains of the working class—what for?—_in order to perpetuate the class-labor system_. Under slavery, under serfdom and under capitalism, laws, constitutions, customs, religious teachings, secular teachings, and all the social institutions have been _shrewdly conformed or adjusted to_ THE PREVAILING METHOD OF PRODUCTION for the PROTECTION of that method of production _in order thus to_ SUPPORT THE CLASS _who, in the struggle for existence, have had_ GROSSLY UNFAIR ADVANTAGE BY MEANS OF THAT METHOD OF PRODUCTION.[336] Ferocious _wrongs_ were studiously developed into vast _institutions_. For example, man-stealing and slave-breeding became the chief business of the mightiest of the ancient pagan societies, the Roman Empire, and was also a flourishing enterprise under the most highly developed modern Christian societies, the British Empire and the American Republic. Christian Queen Anne, of England, unrebuked by her “spiritual adviser,” was a pious stockholder in a slave-hunting corporation composed of prominent and pious Christian ladies and gentlemen.[337] The Christian churches, colleges, newspapers, of the United States not long ago, North and South, were almost unanimous in their eloquent and pious defense of human slavery.[338] The business was eminently respectable, the business of legally (and piously) sucking the industrial blood out of one’s fellowmen—living like a parasite,—the business of producing nothing and living upon the results of the worker’s labor-power. Thus keep in mind:[339] (1) The origin of the working class, (2) The origin of the first class-labor system, (3) The origin of the class struggle, (4) The origin of the social degradation, the socially “down-and-out” condition, the loss of social standing—of the working class people, (5) The origin and growth of the humility of the working class, of the sheepish meekness of the working class, the meekness which today shows itself in the politics of most working men—always suspecting and despising their own working-class political party, always in our day tagging along after some smooth, well-dressed crook candidates on capitalist class party tickets. (6) The perpetuation of ignorance—in the working class. (7) The origin of the intellectual prostitute, the moral emasculate.