The Philosophy of Atheism - Emma Goldman 1916
First published: in February 1916 in the Mother Earth journal.

To give an adequate exposition of the Philosophy of Atheism, it would be necessary to go into the historical changes of the belief in a Deity, from its earliest beginning to the present day. But that is not within the scope of the present paper. However, it is not out of place to mention, in passing, that the concept God, Supernatural Power, Spirit, Deity, or in whatever other term the essence of Theism may have found expression, has become more indefinite and obscure in the course of time and progress. In other words, the God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events.

God, today, no longer represents the same forces as in the beginning of His existence; neither does He direct human destiny with the same Iron hand as of yore. Rather does the God idea express a sort of spiritualistic stimulus to satisfy the fads and fancies of every shade of human weakness. In the course of human development the God idea has been forced to adapt itself to every phase of human affairs, which is perfectly consistent with the origin of the idea itself.
The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.

Very aptly, the world-renowned atheist and anarchist, Michael Bakunin, says in his great work God and the State: "All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but the mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovered his own image, but enlarged and reversed - that is divinised. The history of religions, of the birth, grandeur, and the decline of the gods who had succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind. As fast as they discovered, in the course of their historically progressive advance, either in themselves or in external nature, a quality, or even any great defect whatever, they attributed it to their gods, after having exaggerated and enlarged it beyond measure, after the manner of children, by an act of their religious fancy. . . . With all due respect, then, to the metaphysicians and religious idealists, philosophers, politicians or poets: the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice."

Thus the God idea, revived, readjusted, and enlarged or narrowed, according to the necessity of the time, has dominated humanity and will continue to do so until man will raise his head to the sunlit day, unafraid and with an awakened will to himself. In proportion as man learns to realize himself and mold his own destiny theism becomes superfluous. How far man will be able to find his relation to his fellows will depend entirely upon how much he can outgrow his dependence upon God.

Already there are indications that theism, which is the theory of speculation, is being replaced by Atheism, the science of demonstration; the one hangs in the metaphysical clouds of the Beyond, while the other has its roots firmly in the soil. It is the earth, not heaven, which man must rescue
if he is truly to be saved.

The decline of theism is a most interesting spectacle, especially as manifested in the anxiety of the theists, what- ever their particular brand. They realize, much to their distress, that the masses are growing daily more atheistic, more anti-religious; that they are quite willing to leave the Great Beyond and its heavenly domain to the angels and sparrows; because more and more the masses are becoming engrossed in the problems of their immediate existence.

How to bring the masses back to the God idea, the spirit, the First Cause, etc. - that is the most pressing question to all theists. Metaphysical as all these questions seem to be, they yet have a very marked physical background. Inasmuch as religion, "Divine Truth," rewards and punishments are the trade-marks of the largest, the most corrupt and pernicious, the most powerful and lucrative industry in the world, not excepting the industry of manufacturing guns and munitions. It is the industry of befogging the human mind and stifling the human heart.

Necessity knows no law; hence the majority of theists are compelled to take up every subject, even if it has no bearing upon a deity or revelation or the Great Beyond. Perhaps they sense the fact that humanity is growing weary of the hundred and one brands of God.

How to raise this dead level of theistic belief is really a matter of life and death for all denominations. Therefore their tolerance; but it is a tolerance not of understanding; but of weakness. Perhaps that explains the efforts fostered in all religious publications to combine variegated religious philosophies and conflicting theistic theories into one denominational trust. More and more, the various concepts "of the only tree God, the only pure spirit, -the only true religion" are tolerantly glossed over in the frantic effort to establish a common ground to rescue the modern mass from the "pernicious" influence of atheistic ideas.

It is characteristic of theistic "tolerance" that no one really cares what the people believe in, just so they believe or pretend to believe. To accomplish this end, the crudest and vulgarest methods are being used. Religious endeavor meetings and revivals with Billy Sunday as their champion -methods which must outrage every refined sense, and which in their effect upon the ignorant and curious often tend to create a mild state of insanity not infrequently coupled with erotomania. All these frantic efforts find approval and support from the earthly powers; from the Russian despot to the American President; from Rockefeller and Wanamaker down to the pettiest business man. They blow that capital invested in Billy Sunday, the Y.M.C.A., Christian Science, and various other religious institutions will return enormous profits from the subdued, tamed, and dull masses.

Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell; reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment. The truth is that theism would have lost its footing long before this but for the combined support of Mammon and power. How thoroughly bankrupt it really is, is being demonstrated in the trenches and battlefields of Europe today.

Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preachments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race. Confucius cares not for the poverty, squalor and misery of people of China. Buddha remains undisturbed in his philosophical indifference to the famine and starvation of outraged Hindoos; Jahve continues deaf to the bitter cry of Israel; while Jesus refuses to rise from the dead against his Christians who are butchering each other.

The burden of all song and praise "unto the Highest" has been that God stands for justice and mercy. Yet injustice among men is ever on the increase; the outrages committed against the masses in this country alone would seem enough to overflow the very heavens. But where are the gods to make an end to all these horrors, these wrongs, this inhumanity to man? No, not the gods, but MAN must rise in his mighty wrath. He, deceived by all the deities, betrayed by their emissaries, he, himself, must undertake to usher in justice upon the earth.

The philosophy of Atheism expresses the expansion and growth of the human mind. The philosophy of theism, if we can call it philosophy, is static and fixed. Even the mere attempt to pierce these mysteries represents, from the theistic point of view, non-belief in the all-embracing omnipotence, and even a denial of the wisdom of the divine powers outside of man. Fortunately, however, the human mind never was, and never can be, bound by fixities. Hence it is forging ahead in its restless march towards knowledge and life. The human mind is realizing "that the universe is not the result of a creative fiat by some divine intelligence, out of nothing, producing a masterpiece chaotic in perfect operation," but that it is the product of chaotic forces operating through aeons of time, of clashes and cataclysms, of repulsion and attraction crystalizing through the principle of selection into what the theists call, "the universe guided into order and beauty." As Joseph McCabe well points out in his Existence of God: "a law of nature is not a formula drawn up by a legislator, but a mere summary of the observed facts - a 'bundle of facts.' Things do not act in a particular way because there is a law, but we state the 'law' because they act in that way."

The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.

It may seem a wild paradox, and yet it is pathetically true, that this real, visible world and our life should have been so long under the influence of metaphysical speculation, rather than of physical demonstrable forces. Under the lash of the theistic idea, this earth has served no other purpose than as a temporary station to test man's capacity for immolation to the will of God. But the moment man attempted to ascertain the nature of that will, he was told that it was utterly futile for "finite human intelligence" to get beyond the all-powerful infinite will. Under the terrific weight of this omnipotence, man has been bowed into the dust - a will-less creature, broken and sweating in the dark. The triumph of the philosophy of Atheism is to free man from the nightmare of gods; it means the dissolution of the phantoms of the beyond. Again and again the light of reason has dispelled the theistic nightmare, but poverty, misery and fear have recreated the phantoms - though whether old or new, whatever their external form, they differed little in their essence. Atheism, on the other hand, in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a super- natural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

The philosophy of Atheism has its root in the earth, in this life; its aim is the emancipation of the human race from all God-heads, be they Judaic, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhistic, Brahministic, or what not. Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder: Man must break his fetters which have chained him to the gates of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his reawakened and illumined consciousness a new world upon earth.

Only after the triumph of the Atheistic philosophy in the minds and hearts of man will freedom and beauty be real- ized. Beauty as a gift from heaven has proved useless. It will, however, become the essence and impetus of life when man learns to see in the earth the only heaven fit for man. Atheism is already helping to free man from his dependence upon punishment and reward as the heavenly bargain- counter for the poor in spirit.

Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self- righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not, conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself. To what heights the philosophy of Atheism may yet attain, no one can prophesy. But this much can already be predicted: only by its regenerating fire will human relations be purged from the horrors of the past

Thoughtful people are beginning to realize that moral precepts, imposed upon humanity through religious terror, have become stereotyped and have therefore lost all vitality. A glance at life today, at its disintegrating character, its conflicting interests with their hatreds, crimes, and greed, suffices to prove the sterility of theistic morality.

Man must get back to himself before he can learn his relation to his fellows. Prometheus chained to the Rock of Ages is doomed to remain the prey of the vultures of darkness. Unbind Prometheus, and you dispel the night and its horrors.

Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty.

THE BURNING QUESTION OF TRADES UNIONISM - Daniel DeLeon
An address delivered atthe New Auditorium Hall, Newark, N.J.,April 21, 1904

W orkingmen and Workingwomen of Newark:
That the Trades Union Question is a burning one is obvious from the space it fills in the public mind, the acrimony of the discussion and the wide divergence of opinion on the subject.
Obvious also is the conclusion that a subject that can draw upon itself so much attention, that can produce so much acrimony, and on which opinion takes so many shades”running from extreme and unqualified support through all manner of gradations across the gamut, to extreme and unqualified opposition”cannot choose but be a vital one, and certainly must have a latent something about it that will not down.

Finally, it is obvious that such a question deserves attention -- close, serious and sober”and that the solution be grappled with and found. Nor is the task impossible. Despite the widely conflicting views, the solution is not only possible but easy”but possible and easy only by either rising high enough above, or penetrating deep enough below the squabble to enable the inquirer to detect the fact that, despite their being seemingly irreconcilable, the conflicting views have important points of contact. In other words, the solution of the problem depends upon the perception of the fact that there is no real conflict; that what there is is a failure to harmonize views that are supplemental to one another; and that the failure proceeds from the blindness of each side to perceive the element of soundness in the others”a perception without which none can understand the bearings of his own position, and consequently stands stock-fast, impotent -- except for suicide.

Before entering upon the analysis of the subject, there is one thing I must request of my audience. It is this: To drop, for the present, all recollections of the corruption and dishonesty in the Trades Union Movement that surely will obtrude themselves upon your minds. Need I say that dishonesty plays an important role in the issue? It does. I shall come to that. But for the present I shall eliminate that factor. It can only confuse if taken up now. Leave it out for the present. The actual and important lines of the question being first established, the corruption element will then fall of itself into natural grooves and help to elucidate the principles. Taken now it can only becloud them.

Never forget this”dishonesty in argument is like a creeping plant that needs support; it would collapse and lie prone but for some solid truth around which to wind its tendrils for support. Let’s first ascertain the truth.

Nothing so well illustrates the general situation on the fierce discussion that is going on on Trades Unionism as a certain choice poem of our genial New York poet, the late lamented John Godfrey Saxe. Many of you may have heard it, perhaps even learned it by heart on the school benches. All of you can hear it with profit once more.

THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”

The Second feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me `tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“`Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”

The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny that fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Why? Why were they all in the wrong? Simply because none could see where the others were right, and, consequently, was unable to understand even himself.

Leaving general illustrations and stepping into the concrete, let us take two or three instances on the question itself.

Take this instance”President Eliot of Harvard says: “The scab is a hero!” President Gompers of the A. F. of L. says: “The scab is a scamp!” It may need a superhuman effort, but, I pray you exercise it. Repress the thoughts of dishonesty that the mention of these two names must inevitably conjure up to your minds. Let us examine the two utterances, regardless of who made them. They are made. That is enough for our purpose. They seem wholly irreconcilable. Are they, in fact? Let us see:

Here is a shop. What with fines, the intensity of the work demanded, and other impositions, the wages are inhumanly low. On top of that, a further reduction is inflicted upon the men, and they rebel. A strike is on. Presently men who are not starving, but who either occupy other positions in the employer’s service and wish to ingratiate themselves with their masters, or who despise labor, step into the shop and help him out. Such instances occurred in the telegraphers’ strike and a shoemakers’ strike in New York, and recently when Yale students took the places of striking car drivers in New Haven. Who will deny that the man who does such a thing is a scab and a scamp?

But now, look at this other picture. A number of breweries in this neighborhood and New York had a contract with their employees; the contract expired and the breweries wanted a new contract less favorable to the men. In order to accomplish that they needed the help of the officers of the union. They obtained it. A contract, that tied the men’s hands and left them at the employers’ mercy, is drawn up and jammed through the union partly under false pretenses and partly by brute force. Members of the rank and file rebel, and their spokesman, Valentine Wagner, demands an explanation from the officers. He is fined for “insubordination,” and fine is laid upon fine until the amount has risen to $80; as he still remains “insubordinate,” and as the officers are in league with the brewery bosses, the man is expelled, thrown out of work as “not being a member of the union,” and left to starve. These facts have all been made public and proved. Thereupon, to the threat that if he dared work in any brewery lie would be called a “scab," Valentine Wagner announced that not only would he dare, but that he would deem it an honor to be called a “scab"! Who would deny that Valentine Wagner is a hero?

Are the two utterances, “The scab is a scamp,” and “The scab is a hero,” utterly irreconcilable? Evidently not. Evidently they harmonize perfectly. And in perceiving the common ground for both, we are enlightened on what the “scab” is. The “scab” is he who by his voluntary conduct helps to lower the standard of the worker. He who for the pleasure of it, or out of currishness to the master, will help to break a strike for better conditions is a “scab” and “scamp,” and a “scamp” and “scab” is the union officer who conspires with the master against the interests of the men. They are both scabs because, by helping to down the worker, they sap the nation and introduce disease, death and the pestilence of a degraded people. That is the test of the “scab.” The scab may wear the union label as well as not.

Take this other instance”one set of people says: “The union must be a good thing because the capitalists hate it"; another set says: “The union is a bad thing because the capitalists love it.” These two utterances seem wholly irreconcilable. Are they, in fact? Let us see:

Look at what is going on in Colorado. The right of habeas corpus, the dignity of the courts, the right of free assemblage and free speech -- in short, all the great civic conquests of the past”are trampled on by the capitalist class in power in that state, and all for the purpose of smashing the Western Federation of Miners. If ever there was an instance of hatred this is one. The capitalists hate that union to the point of endangering even the privileges that their own class still stands in need of.

But now look at this other picture. Charles Corregan, a member of the Syracuse, N.Y., local of the International Typographical Union, speaking on the public stump for the Socialist Labor Party, gave facts and figures concerning an important factor in the labor movement, to wit, the manner in which the pure and simple trades union is run by its officers, and he illustrated the points with the officers of his own union. He is thereupon tried by these officers, convicted and fined in his absence without charges being presented to him; and as he refused to pay a fine imposed under such conditions, a strike was ordered in the shop against him and he was thrown out of work.

The very fact that a strike could be called against him, that the employer virtually lined up with the officers, points to the point I am reaching. Corregan sued the union for reinstatement and damages, the court threw the case out and, mark you, the capitalist press, particularly that of New York, announced the decision with flaming and jubilating headlines as a union victory.
Are the two utterances, “The capitalists hate the union” and “The capitalists love the union,” as irreconcilable as they looked at first?

What is it that discloses their reconcilability? Why, the facts, which, taken together, point to the common ground of the utterances, and thereby clarify both. That common ground tells us that capitalism justly sees in Socialism, in the Socialist Labor Party, its unquestioned foe, while with equal accuracy it perceives in the union an organism of various possibilities”a possibility of injury to the capitalist class, and also a possibility of safety and protection; where the possibility of injury takes shape, as in Colorado, hatred is developed for the union; where the possibility of safety and protection takes shape, as in Corregan’s case, love is developed for the union.
We are making progress out of the woods. But, before proceeding further in our march, let us establish a collateral point hinted at by these facts.

The country has in recent years been twice convulsed by two economic-political issues that may be called great when we consider the millions of votes that they shared among them. And both these issues may yet spring up again. The one is the tariff, the other the silver issue.
When the tariff was the issue, the Democratic free trader declared that protection was robbery; on the other hand, the Republican protectionist pronounced free trade unpatriotic. The free trader argued that the tariff was like an artificial mountain raised at the gates of the nation and, thereby, increasing the cost of goods. “Tear down these mountains,” said he, “and prices will decline.” That is all true, but we Socialists know that if the artificial mountains of the tariff are removed, prices will go down true enough, but seeing labor is a merchandise under the capitalist system of production, its own price, wages, must go down along with that of all other merchandise. The advantage, accordingly, of lower prices is lost to the working class.

The Republican protectionist argued that it was the duty of government to promote by protecting and protect by promoting the interests of the people. “A tariff,” said the Republicans, “protects the country inasmuch as it enables it to differentiate its industries, unchecked by foreign competition.” This also is all true, but we Socialists know that if government is to be at all justified it is upon the ground of the protection it affords to the people; and we also know that, under the capitalist system, the “people” who count are not the workers, but the capitalist shirkers, and, consequently, that the advantage to be derived from the theory of protection does not extend to the workers, to the majority of the people. They are left out in the cold. The tariffs protect the capitalists against foreign competition, but not the workers. The largest infloods of foreign labor have been instigated and taken place under Republican “protection” administrations.

Accordingly, while both “free trade” and protection have an element of truth in them, that element is in both cases lost to the people under capitalist rule. It takes Socialism, the Socialist Republic, to harmonize the two opposites. Under the dome of the Socialist Republic the discord between the two principles vanishes, and only the truth remains. Under Socialism the “mountains” of tariffs may be safely removed: the decline in prices will not then drag down labor’s earnings because labor will have ceased to be merchandise and become a human factor”what it now is only in the speeches of capitalist politicians at election time, and in the sermons of the political parsons between election and election. Likewise with regard to protection. The principle of organized mutual protection through government becomes truthful and effective only under Socialism where, there being only one class, the working class, government is truly of, by, and for the people.

It is similarly with the silver question. The free coinagists denounced the gold standard men as robbers; the gold standard men denounced the free coinagists as bandits”and each was right and both were wrong. As to the free coinagists: their theory was that money is a good thing and that the more there is of a good thing the larger is the per capita thereof for the people. We know that right as the premises are, under capitalism the conclusions become wrong.

There are infinitely more hats, shoes, coats and other good things today than thirty years ago in the land; but everybody knows that the workingman’s per capita of these good things has not increased. He has remained where he was, if not even below, while the increase has gone to the Anna Goulds, the Consuelo Vanderbilts, the international capitalists in short. And we understand the reason why.

Under capitalism, the workingman being a merchandise, his price (wages) does not depend upon the quantity of good things in existence, but upon the quantity of him in the labor market. The same as, regardless of the quantity of money there may be in the money market, pork chops will fetch a smaller price if the pork chop market is overstocked, so will the merchandise labor fetch a smaller price, however much money there may be, if the labor market is overstocked. And capitalism does that very thing. Privately-owned improved machinery, and concentration of plants, ruthlessly displace labor and overstock the labor market.

Thus, capitalism renders absurd the premises above mentioned of free coinagism. On the other hand, the gold standard men proceeded from the principle that money is a merchandise and must have value, from which they concluded that the workingman would be robbed unless he was paid with what they call a l00-cent dollar. Here again, right as the premises are, capitalism renders the conclusion false. As shown above, labor being a merchandise, it matters nothing what the counter is in which it is paid. Its price depends upon its market value; and it is all one to it whether it gets paid with one 100-cent gold dollar for its day’s toil, or with two fifty-cent silver dollars.

Accordingly, while both the free coinage and the gold standard principle have an element of truth in them, under capitalism the truth is lost to the workers. It takes Socialism to harmonize the two. Under Socialism, labor no longer being a merchandise, the more good things it produces, the more it has, and the 100-cent dollar ceases to be its merchandise badge and, thereby, a fraud upon it.

These two sets of illustrations will suffice. They throw light upon what otherwise is puzzling in modern society, to wit, that correct principles work evil. Free trade and protection are both accompanied with increasing masses of pauperism; gold standard and silver standard leave nothing to choose between them for the masses. The sense in each is turned into nonsense by capitalist rule; it is Socialism that alone can redeem them.

And as the Socialist key alone can unlock the secret of this conflict of thought, it is the Socialist key alone that can unlock the secret of the conflict of thought with regard to the burning question of trades unionism. Equipped with this key, we shall be able to acquire a full grasp of the question at hand, and see the elephant in full with all his members coordinate, and not as a jumble of “rope,” “spear," “snake,” “wall,” “tree” and what other things the blind men of the story took the animal to be.

PRO- AND ANTI-UNIONIST ARGUMENTS

Let us take two types on the question”both honest”but one holding that the trades union pure and simple is all-sufficient and useful, while the other holds that the trades union is worthless; in other words, one holding the trunk of the elephant and claiming he is a snake, the other holding his tail and claiming he is a rope; bring the two together, and, both being honest, this dialogue will take place between them:

Anti-unionist”“Drop your union, it is no good. Smash it!”

Pro-unionist”“What! my union no good? I am a member of the Housesmiths’ and Bridgemen’s
Union. I know what I am talking about. Before we had a union we could barely make two dollars a day. Now that we have a union I make four and sometimes five dollars. Don’t tell me the union is no good.”

Anti-unionist”“You are hasty in your judgment. You are judging all the unions by one, and your own union by only one epoch of its existence. I grant that through your union you are now getting two dollars more. But that is only a temporary affair. Exceptional circumstances aided Sam Parks in bringing up your wages. But how long will that last? Look at the other unions, take the census of the men. Without exception, earnings are lower. The census itself admits that wages are now lower than they were ten years ago. What happened to the older unions will happen to yours. They were not able to raise earnings of the working class. Already the day is at hand when your union will be in the same fix. No, it is not true that the union can raise wages, speaking of the union in general.”

Pro-unionist”“Well, that’s so. Speaking with union men of other trades, they all say how hard it is for them to get along. Yes, the union cannot raise earnings. But it is a good thing all the same; it can keep wages from declining.”

Anti-unionist”“You are mistaken again. Look over the field. Look below the surface. You will find that, despite the union, earnings go down as a whole. Look at the savage reductions inflicted upon the steel and iron workers. A numerically strong union. Despite the union, a savage reduction was made.”

Pro-unionist”“Well, I can’t deny that (after a pause), but you must admit that if we had no union the decline would be swifter. Will you deny that the union acts as a brake upon the decline? Would we not be down to the coolie stage today if it were not for the union?”
Anti-unionist”“You have admitted that the union cannot raise wages; you have admitted that it cannot keep wages where they are; and you have admitted that it cannot prevent their reduction. Your last ditch is that it keeps wages from going down as fast as they would otherwise go. I’ll now drive you out of that ditch. If your theory means anything it means that the union will last, at least, as a brake. Now you know that periodically men are laid off by the thousands, and hundreds of thousands. These laid-off men want to live; they will offer themselves for a lower price. If your union strikes it goes to smash, if it does not strike it melts to smash, so that, even as a brake, the day is at hand when your unions will exist no more.

Pro-unionist”“You have hit me hard. Perhaps you think you have knocked me out. But you have not. As sure as a man will raise his hand by mere instinct, to shield himself against a blow, so surely will workingmen, instinctively, periodically gather into unions. The union is the arm that labor instinctively throws up to screen its head.”

Unquestionably both the pure and simple pro-unionist and the anti-unionist are knocked out.
They have knocked out each other.

The pro-unionist’s last statement is a knockout blow to the man who imagines that the union is a smashable thing.

On the other hand, the anti-unionist’s argumentation, whereby he brings out the fact that the union’s claims of potential triumph are false, and that, driven from defeat to defeat, the union can gather for the next defeat only, knocks out the pro-unionist. That is to say, the pure and simple pro-unionist.

In their mutual trituration the materials are gathered with which Socialism can build the four-jointed truth. Let us now take the “tail" and “trunk” and “legs” and “ears” and “body” of the elephant as furnished us by these two typical disputants, and construct the animal. The disputants’ positions will be found to be, not inherently irreconcilable, but fully reconcilable.
Starting from the principle, an undeniable one, that the spirit of union formation is an instinctive one, the question immediately presents itself: Is there no way by which the instinctive motion of self-defense can be rendered effective? Does it follow that because the man who raises his hand to protect his head from the threatened blow with a crowbar, has both his arm and his skull crushed, that therefore the instinctive motion of self-defense might as well be given up? The question suggests the immediate answer. The answer is no, it does not follow. And the question, furthermore, indicates what does follow. It follows that the arm which periodically is thrown up in self-defense, must arm itself with a weapon strong enough to resist”at least to break the blow.
Naval warfare did not end when guns of stronger power were contrived. What followed was that stronger armor plate was contrived for the battleships; nor did naval warfare end there; when battleships became so impregnable, contact mines were invented which sink these as if by magic.
And so it can be done here.

Pro-unionists always talk about the union being a “natural condition." But they forget that so are hair and nails. No sensible man will pull hairs and nails out by the root; but neither would any sensible man say that because hair and nails are natural they must be allowed to grow untrimmed and untended. Pro-unionists always talk about the condition under which the union was born. So are babes born under puny condition. No sensible man would kill the babe because so born; but neither will any sensible man propose to keep the babe forever in the condition under which it was born. That it is a natural growth is an important fact to recognize, but how to improve it is equally important, and that can be done by bringing the above pro- and anti-unionist arguments together.

The last anti-unionist argument condenses in itself all the previous ones. It correctly points out that the large displacements of labor render the union futile. It implies unionism in general, but that is a mistake. It is true if applied to unionism as it is today, that is to say, in the babe form under which it was born.

My point will be made clear if we suggest to both the pro-unionist and the anti-unionist that all the members of a trade be enlisted in the union”those at work, those temporarily displaced, and those that may be considered permanently displaced. At the bare thought of such a proposition both the pro-unionist and the anti-unionist will throw up their hands; and both their gestures of hand and face indicate that neither of the two has of the union any but a babe condition notion.
Why will the pro-unionist look dismayed at the proposition? He will because he knows that his union is there to give jobs to its members; that none join it but for jobs; and, consequently, that if the applicants exceed the jobs the union would immediately go to pieces, if they are all inside. The notion of the anti-unionist is the exact reverse of the pro-unionist’s notion. And both are right from their standpoint, but their standpoint is wrong; it is as wrong as that of the blind men at the several limbs of the elephant. The thought suggested by the pro-unionist’s last argument, that the union is like the instinctive motion of the man who raises his arm to protect his head when assailed, gives us in hand the method to proceed by.

Instructed upon the nature of the weapon of assault, man will strengthen the arm that he throws up in defense of his head. But the effectiveness of that strengthening depends entirely upon the correctness of his idea on the nature of the instrument of assault.

In the babe condition under which the union is born naturally, it has no conception of the nature of the weapon that it instinctively raises up its arm in self-defense against.

In that natural and original babe condition the union does not realize that its members are merchandise in the present state of society; it does not realize the law that governs the value and price of merchandise; consequently, it does not realize the law that underlies its own value and price, that is, its wages; it does not realize the cause of its degraded merchandise status; it does not realize that its lack of the natural (land) and social (capital) opportunities keep it down; accordingly, it does not realize there is no improvement, let alone salvation, for it so long as it labors under the status of merchandise; finally, and most important of all, and as a result of all, it does not understand that it cannot improve faster than the rest of the working class.
In other words, it does not understand the import of the “solidarity of labor.”

It matters not what phrases the pure and simple trades union may use, the fact that none of them would like today to see all the members of the trade in the union, the fact that the trades not directly concerned, aye, even those directly concerned, do not rise in indignation when such other trades as the railroaders are found willing to transport militias from one end of the country to the other in order to break a strike”these facts demonstrate that the meaning of the word solidarity is a closed book to the pro-unionist.

On the other hand, the anti-unionist is utterly mistaken when he proceeds from the theory that this closed book is to remain closed; in other words that the union can never rise above its babe state of natural birth; in other words, that the union is useless.

Leaving for later on the feature of the remoter utility of the union, in fact, its real revolutionary and historic mission, let us be first clear upon the fundamental error that, odd enough to say, both the pure and simple pro-unionist and the anti-unionist stand.

The honest pro-unionist frankly admits that the best he can expect of his union is to act as a brake on the decline. In other words, he admits that the union only serves as a rear guard to a retreating army. Obviously, from that standpoint the anti-unionist’s position is impregnable when he holds that the rear guard of a retreating army, which can do nothing but retreat, is a futile thing. But equally obvious is the fact that the whole strength of the anti-unionist position lies in the babe original condition that the union has remained in.

The point need but be made and it will be accepted by every thinking man that all the reasons which the anti-unionist advances why the union is bound to go to smash through the displacement of labor will fall flat the moment the union gets out of its natural, original babe condition, realizes that it not only endangers the future but that it also loses the present by turning itself into a jobs-providing machine. Even if the union cannot grasp its great historic and revolutionary mission, it certainly must, for the sake of the immediate present, be supposed to be willing to adapt its methods, not to the babe, but the adult conditions of capitalism.
Capitalism displaces labor; capitalism needs a large army of idle and reserve labor for the periods of industrial expansion.

By constituting itself a jobs-furnishing institution, the union turns itself into a pint measure into which it is impossible for the gallon measure of labor to be received. And thus it is not only the capitalist, from in front, but labor, from behind, that triturates the union. In order to be able to contain the gallon measure of labor the union must expand to gallon size; in order to expand to gallon size it must drop its idle aspirations as a jobs”furnishing monopoly. And this can be done only if it rises to the elevation of its political mission. Then will it understand the solidarity of its class generally and of the members of its trade in particular.

Even if as many 50,000 out of a trade of 100,000 members cannot be provided for with jobs, the union could do better by taking them all in. But this sounds like a purely chimerical idea under the general babe condition notions that exist. The chimera, however, becomes possible if the members are all tutored to understand that the best the union can do for them today is to check the decline and prevent it from going as fast as it otherwise would.
Not only in the long run, but all along, would such a union fare at least as well as it fares today, besides being in a condition to actually fulfill its great revolutionary historic mission that I have all along been alluding to.

What is that great historic revolutionary mission?

It must be admitted that however philosophic, possibly even Socialist, the anti-unionist may pronounce himself, he is on this subject not a bit more enlightened than the pro-unionist.
It is to me surprising to find men who call themselves Socialists, and who reason socialistically up to a certain point, suddenly go to pieces when they touch the union question. They take certain facts into consideration, these facts correctly point to the eventual destruction of the union, and from these they conclude that the union might as well be smashed now as later. They fail to consider all the facts in the case. They are the real utopians of today who imagine the Socialist Commonwealth can be established like spring establishes itself through its balmy atmosphere, and without effort melts away the winter snows. These anti-union utopians only see the political feature of the labor movement. According to them, all that a lance would need is its iron head.

On the other hand, the pro-unionists have their noses so close to—the ground that they fail to see the political aspect of the trades union movement, and can only see what they call its industrial aspect. In other words, they virtually hold that all that a lance would need is its shaft. It goes without saying that neither he who thinks a lance is all iron head, nor he who thinks that it is all shaft has a correct idea of what a lance is, or what its uses are.

Each may have a technical, theoretic, more or less practical knowledge of each particular part of a lance, but a lance neither of them will have, nor can wield.

I shall show you that unless the political aspect of the labor movement is grasped, Socialism will never triumph; and that unless its trades union aspect is grasped the day of its triumph will be the day of its defeat.

Who of you has not heard some workingman when told that some fellow workingman of his was nominated for Mayor, or for Governor, or for Congress, sneeringly say: “What’s he? What could he do in Congress? What does he know about law? Why, he wouldn’t know how to move!” The matter is serious; it is no laughing matter. The workingman who utters himself in that way is right and he is wrong. He is absolutely right when he considers that the workingman is not a fit man to handle the laws of the land; but he is wrong when he considers that that is a disqualification. In other words, he is wrong in supposing that the political mission of labor is to dabble with or tinker upon capitalist laws.

And mark you, his blunder proceeds direct, both from the pro-unionist industrial mental attitude and from the anti-unionist’s political mental attitude. In this respect is realized into what errors the political anti-unionist drops in his own domain of politics, and into what error the industrial pro-unionist drops in his own industrial domain”due to the circumstance that both fail to realize that their various domains dovetail into each other.

Open any law book, whatever the subject be”contract, real estate, aye, even marital relations, husband and wife, father and son, guardian and ward”you will find that the picture they throw upon the mind’s canvas is that of everyone’s hands at everyone’s throat. Capitalist law reflects the material substructure of capitalism. The theory of that substructure is war, conflict, struggle. It can be no otherwise. Given the private ownership of natural and social opportunities, society is turned into a jungle of wild beasts, in which the “fittest” wild beast terrorizes the less “fit,” and these in turn imitate among themselves the “fit” qualities of the biggest brute. No nuptial veils of lace or silk can conceal this state of things on the matrimonial field; no rhetoric can hide it on any other field. The rawboned struggle is there. It is inevitable. It is a shadow cast by the angles of fact of the capitalist system.

Now, then, is it the mission of the labor or Socialist movement to continue or to uproot the material conditions that cast the shadow? Its mission is to uproot it. Consequently its mission cannot be to tinker at the laws that capitalism finds it necessary to enact. As well say that a housekeeper is unfit to clean a neglected house because she has no technical knowledge of the construction of the vermin that has been rioting in it, as to say that, because labor has no knowledge of the technique of the vermin of capitalist laws, it is unfit to take the broom handle and sweep the vermin into the ash barrel of oblivion.

Accordingly, the political aspect of the labor movement spells revolution. It points out exactly the duty of the Socialist or classconscious workingmen elected to office”no tinkering, no compromise, unqualified overthrow of existing laws. That means the dethronement of the capitalist class.

And what does that, in turn, mean with regard to the subject in hand?

Did you notice, and did you realize, all that there was in the capitalist threat of closing down the shops and stopping production if Bryan was elected in 1896? We know that Bryan was a reactionary capitalist; nevertheless, the fact was brought out in his campaign by that upper-capitalist threat that the ruling capitalists have it in their power to create a panic any time the government slips from their hands. What places that power in their hands? Now watch close, think close”What places that power in their hands is the pure and simple trades union: it is the fact that the working class is not organized. And I have shown you that the pure and simple trades union is unable to organize the working class; that it keeps the working class hopelessly divided.

The majority of the voters are workingmen. But even if this majority were to sweep the political field on a classconscious, that is, a bona fide labor or Socialist ticket, they would find the capitalist able to throw the country into the chaos of a panic and to famine unless they, the workingmen, were so well organized in the shops that they could laugh at all shut-down orders, and carry on production.

Such a complete organization is impossible under pure and simple trades union methods; being
impossible on the industrial field, the seeming unity that swept the political field would be a flash in the pan.

Political organization must necessarily partake today of capitalist conditions; accordingly, the votes cast for a Congressman, for instance, are not the votes of any one trade, but of a mixture of scores of trades.

Civilized society will know no such ridiculous thing as geographic constituencies. It will only know industrial constituencies. The parliament of civilization in America will consist, not of Congressmen from geographic districts, but of representatives of trades throughout the land, and their legislative work will not be the complicated one which a society of conflicting interests, such as capitalism, requires but the easy one which can be summed up in the statistics of the wealth needed, the wealth producible, and the work required”and that any average set of workingmen’s representatives are fully able to ascertain, infinitely better than our modern rhetoricians in Congress.

But we are not there yet, nor will we be there the day we shall have swept the political field. We shall not be there for the simple reason that in order to get there through that first political victory we shall have been compelled to travel along the lines of capitalist political demarcations; and these I have shown you are essentially non-unionist; that is to say, they ignore industrial bonds and recognize only geographic ones.

It follows that, today, the very best of political organization is wholly exclusive of industrial organization, and will have to continue so until the political victory has been won, and the trades organizations have been able to continue production in the teeth of capitalist revolt; until the nation shall have had time to reconstruct itself upon the labor”that is, the Socialist basis.
Thus we see that the head of the lance of the Socialist movement is worthless without the shaft. We see that they are not even parallel, but closely connected affairs; we see that the one needs the other, that while the head, the political movement, is essential in its way, the shaft of the lance, the industrial movement, is requisite to give it steadiness. The labor movement that has not a well-pointed political lance-head can never rise above the babe condition in which the union is originally born; on the other hand, unhappy the political movement of labor that has not the shaft of the trades union organization to steady it. It will inevitably become a freak affair. The head of the lance may “get there,” but unless it drags in its wake the strong shaft of the trades union it will have “got there” to no purpose.

Accordingly, the trades union question is indeed a burning one. On it is pivoted the success of the Socialist movement. And for the reason I have indicated, the confusion on the subject is inevitable.

Seeing that a thing called a union may act as a drag upon the Socialist movement, the temptation is strong upon the part of anti-unionists to drop it. I have shown you how fatal such dropping would be. The political and the industrial movement are one; he who separates them dislocates the Socialist movement.

I should not close without some concreter advice. Should we join unions? Should we not join them? It seems to me these concrete questions stand answered by what I have said before. Nevertheless, he in whose mind such a question still arises is led thereto by the thought of the corrupt practices that exist in unions. I shall take up that point summarily. It now can be handled without giving it undue proportions. It now may even be handled to advantage and help to clinch previous points.

There is no difference between what is called the corruption in the unions and what is noticed in shipwrecks when men become cannibals. I cannot now think of any of the numerous corrupt labor leaders, whom we all know of, who did not start honest enough. But coupled to his honesty was ignorance. He knew not the kind of a weapon that labor instinctively raises its arm to ward off when it shapes itself into unions. He failed, of course. He then imputed the failure to inevitableness. The capitalist helped him along. He lost all hope in the working class. He then decided to feather his own nest. Friendly relations between him and capitalist thought followed inevitably, and he became what Mark Hanna so well called him”the labor lieutenant of the capitalist class.

In that capacity we have seen him engineer strikes in favor of one competing capitalist’ against another. In that capacity we have seen him act as an agent of the stock exchange, starting strikes to lower stock, or keeping up strikes to favor competing concerns.
Of course, he could not do this if the rank and file of the union were enlightened. For this reason it was in his interest, and in the interest of the class whose lieutenant he is, to keep enlightenment from the masses.

Frequently, also, his position enables him to compel the workingmen of his trade to accept his yoke before they can get work.

He who says remedy this evil by any one means holds silly language. The evil must be attacked by as many means as seem available.

Shall we then “join unions"? The Socialist Labor Party has answered the question by endorsing the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, and by waging unflagging war against the Gompers pack; and the answer that the party gave is justified by the light of the analysis that I have submitted to you.

That analysis shows you that trades organizations are essential; they are essential to break the force of the onslaught of the capitalist, but this advantage is fruitful of good only in the measure that the organization prepares itself for the day of final victory.

Accordingly, it must be every Socialist’s endeavor to organize his trade. If there is an organization of his trade in existence that is not in the hand of a labor lieutenant of capital, he should join it and wheel it into line with the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.

If, however, the organization is entirely in the hands of such a labor lieutenant of capital; if its membership is grown so fast to him and he to them, that the one cannot be shaken from the other; if, accordingly, the organization, obedient to the spirit of capitalism, insists upon dividing the working class by barriers more or less high and chicanery against the admission of all the members of the trade who apply for admission; if his grip of mental corruption upon it is such as to cause a majority of its members to applaud and second his endeavors to keep that majority at work at the sacrifice of the minority within and of the large majority of the trade without”in that and in all such cases, such an organization is not a limb of the labor movement, it is a limb of capitalism; it is a guild; it is a degeneration back to the old starting point of the bourgeois or capitalist class; and though it decks itself with the name of “labor” it is but a caricature, because a belated reproduction, of the old guild system.

Such a bizarre resuscitation of pristine bourgeois organizations may mask itself all it likes with the mask of “labor,” but it does so only to the injury of the working class, of the proletariat, and it deserves no quarter at the Socialist’s hands.

Such an organization is no more a labor organization than is the army of the czar of Russia, which, though composed wholly of workingmen, is officered by the exploiting class. In such a case the Socialist must endeavor to set up a bona fide labor trades union and to do what he can to smash the fraud. The labor cannon that one day will surely decimate the czar’s army, and defeat it, will bring redemption even to the workingmen in that army, although many of them may be killed by it.

Let me sum up, starting with where I closed.

In the first place, the trades union has a supreme mission. That mission is nothing short of organizing by uniting, and uniting by organizing, the whole working class industrially”not merely those for whom there are jobs, accordingly, not only those who can pay dues. This unification or organization is essential in order to save the eventual and possible victory from bankruptcy, by enabling the working class to assume and conduct production the moment the guns of the public powers fall into its hands”or before, if need be, if capitalist political chicanery pollutes the ballot box. The mission is important also in that the industrial organization forecasts the future constituencies of the parliaments of the Socialist Republic.

In the second place, the trades union has an immediate mission. The supreme mission of trades unionism is ultimate. That day is not yet. The road thither may be long or short, but it is arduous. At any rate, we are not yet there.

Steps in the right direction, so-called “immediate demands,” are among the most precarious. They are precarious because they are subject and prone to the lure of the “sop” or the “palliative” that the foes of labor’s redemption are ever ready to dangle before the eyes of the working class, and at which, aided by the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, the unwary are apt to snap”and be hooked.

But there is a test by which the bait can be distinguished from the sound step, by which the trap can be detected and avoided, and yet the right step forward taken. That test is this: Does the contemplated step square with the ultimate aim? If it does, then the step is sound and safe; if it does not, then the step is a trap and disastrous.

The “immediate step” that acts like a brake on the decline of wages belongs to the former category, provided only the nature of the brake is not such that it inevitably invites a future decline, that requires a further brake and which brake only invites some later decline, and so on, towards a catastrophe or towards final cooliedom.

We have seen that the pure and simple trades union belongs to the latter category, the category of “traps,” and we have seen the reason why”it is merely a jobs-securing machine; consequently, it inevitably rends the working class in twain and, on the whole, has the love and affection of the capitalist exploiter.

In the third place, and finally, the union formation, with its possibility for good, being a natural, an instinctive move, is bound to appear, and reappear, and keep on reappearing, forever offering to the intelligent, serious and honest men in the labor or Socialist movement the opportunity to utilize that instinctive move by equipping it with the proper knowledge, the proper weapon, that shall save it from switching off into the pure and simple quagmire so beloved, and develop into the new trades union so hated of capitalism.

This is the theoretical part of the burning question of trades unionism. Its practical part implies struggle, dauntless struggle against, and war to the knife with that combination of ignoramuses, ripened into reprobates”the labor faker who seeks to coin the helplessness of the proletariat into cash for himself, and the “intellectual” (God save the mark!) who has so superficial a knowledge of things that the mission of unionism is a closed book to him; who believes the union will “fritter out of existence"; who, consequently, is actually against the union, all his pretenses of love for it notwithstanding; and who meantime imagines he can promote Socialism by howling with pure and simple wolves that keep the working class divided and, consequently, bar the path for the triumph of Socialism, or, as the capitalist Wall Street Journal well expressed it, “constitute the bulwark of modern society against Socialism.”

The trades union question is, accordingly, not only a burning one, it presents the most trying aspect of the Socialist movement. It brings home to us the fact that not theory only is needed but manly fortitude -- that fortitude which the Socialist Labor Party gathers, builds and tests, and without which the Socialist or labor movement becomes ridiculous or infamous.

QUESTIONS

WILLIAM WALKER: I desire to ask the speaker whether he considers it wise for a political party to identify itself with a trades union organization if such identification causes the political party to be kept back?

ANSWER: This question is a begging of the question. It proceeds from assuming as settled the very premises that are under discussion. It proceeds from the assumption which I denied, that a party of Socialism can ignore the trades union. I shall nevertheless answer it. It enables me to take up the question by entering through another gate.

Some eight months ago, when I last delivered an address here in Newark, a gentleman who is now associated with the questioner in setting up here in Newark a so-called Essex County Independent Socialist Club, Mr. Harry Carless, spoke after me and said in substance”the gentleman who just asked the question was present, he will admit that I quote my critic of that day correctly. My critic said: “The Socialist Labor Party should have nothing to do with the trades unions. Affiliation with trades unions keeps the party back. A political party wants to take in as many people as possible. It wants to be as large as possible. A union does not. I am a member of a union, the Silver Polishers’, and I am also a Socialist. My union had a meeting this afternoon; all that they want is to get higher wages and to keep all others of the trade out. They adopted a resolution along this line, and I voted with them in the interest of the organization. Now, their position, like that of all unions, is purely selfish. What has the Socialist Labor Party to do with such things? It should keep its hands off. If it does not it will suffer.”

My answer was this: “The gentleman furnishes me with the very facts that overthrow him. He is a member of a trades union that wishes to keep out applicants. What would be his fix in a Socialist party? Say his Socialist organization is in session in the evening, and the men whom he, along with the other members of his trades union, refused admission in the afternoon, knock at the door applying for membership. What will he do? He correctly stated that a political party needs numbers. He will have to admit them into his Socialist party organization. And what will happen when those men come in and hear him making a grandiloquent speech on the `solidarity of labor,’ on the `necessity of workingmen to unite,’ on the `brotherhood of the wage slave,’ and on all those things that a Socialist, a good Socialist, as the gentleman says he is, is bound to emphasize? What do you think will happen, when the men whom he has just voted to keep out of his union hear him thus glibly declaiming? Why, they’ll say he is a hypocrite; they’ll denounce him roundly for preaching one thing and practicing another. They will even bring charges against him. And, if his organization is really a Socialist organization, he will be expelled and justly so. But even if it does not come so far, he will have discovered that a Socialist party cannot play ostrich on the economic or trades union question. If it is a party of Socialism, it is a party of labor. In a party of Socialism the trades union is latent. It cannot be ignored. It will not ignore you.”

“But suppose,” I went on to say, “that, feeling a presentiment of what is in store for him if he votes to admit them into his party organization, he votes to keep them out. What will he have done then? He will have impressed upon his political organization, which wants large numbers, the characteristics of the backward pure and simple union with which he blandly floats along”another evidence that the trades union question is bound to assert itself.”
Was not that the answer I gave your friend? With what face can you, then, come here tonight and ask the question that you did?

There is no such thing as a political party of labor “having nothing to do with the unions.” It must have. It must either inspire the union with the broad, political purpose, and thus dominate it by warring on the labor faker and on the old guild notions that hamstring the labor movement, or it is itself dragged down to the selfish trade interests of the economic movement, and finally drawn down into the latter’s subservience to the capitalist interests that ever fasten themselves to the selfish trade interests on which the labor faker, or labor lieutenant of the capitalist class, thrives.
The notion implied in the words of our friend who asked the question, the notion that numbers is the important thing and not soundness, often leads to bizarre results. A recent instance is striking.

At the late annual convention of Gompers’ A. F. of L., Max Hayes, of the said so-called Socialist party, introduced a Socialist resolution. The resolution was snowed under by a veritable avalanche of something like 11,000 votes. About a month later, the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance held its annual convention. The S.T. and L.A. is a trades union built strictly upon the Socialist lines of the resolution which Max Hayes introduced in Boston. But the S.T. and L.A. is a very much smaller body. At its annual convention it numbered barely twenty delegates. Now, then, what do we find Mr. Max Hayes saying about the S.T. and L.A. convention? He ridiculed it on account of its numbers. He, who had just been flattened out like a pancake by a huge anti-Socialist convention, seemed proud of having been in a big crowd, and peeping from under the numerous heels that trampled upon him, had jeers only for the smallness of the body that nevertheless upheld the principles which, in his hand, lay flattened out beside him, flattened out by a numerous body.

Such are the fruits, the mental somersaults, of a chase after numbers. It is nothing short of idiocy. The head of the lance that rushes forward shaftless, rushes forward uselessly. It should move no faster than its shaft.

The “Socialist” party that dances to the fiddle of labor-dividing pure and simpledom, may for a while get more votes than the Socialist Labor Party; but it never will “get there"; a miss is as good as a mile on the “get there” run.

Moreover, the slowlier going S.L.P., that is not a flypaper concern, and never sacrifices sense for votes, is a real educator. When the time for votes shall have ripened, that party will have them”will have the votes, plus the requisite knowledge”while the S. P. will have melted away, seeing it only had votes, and could not possibly, in view of its contradictory and flypaper conduct, have men back of its vote.

JOHN J. KINNEALLY: We see what is going on in Colorado today. Pure and simple unionism is said to have over 2,000,000 members. I wish to ask the speaker if he thinks such outrages would be possible if those 2,000,000 were in the S.T. and L.A.?

ANSWER: Two millions of S.T. and L. A. men would mean 2,000,000 men swayed by S.L.P. sense, vigor, manliness and determination. It would mean 2,000,000 men moving, because they felt as one man, and, consequently, feeling and moving right. Large masses cannot feel and move as one if they are in error. Error is manifold; it scatters. Truth only is onefold, it alone unites. Such a number as 2,000,000 S.L.P. men in the land would produce such a sentiment and resulting actions that capitalism would melt like wax. The thing, then, is to build up S.L.P. men. Let that be all serious men’s endeavor.

Wages of Labour

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 - Karl Marx

Wages are determined through the antagonistic struggle between capitalist and worker. Victory goes necessarily to the capitalist. The capitalist can live longer without the worker than can the worker without the capitalist. Combination among the capitalists is customary and effective; workers’ combination is prohibited and painful in its consequences for them. Besides, the landowner and the capitalist can make use of industrial advantages to augment their revenues; the worker has neither rent nor interest on capital to supplement his industrial income. Hence the intensity of the competition among the workers. Thus only for the workers is the separation of capital, landed property, and labour an inevitable, essential and detrimental separation. Capital and landed property need not remain fixed in this abstraction, as must the labour of the workers.

The separation of capital, rent, and labour is thus fatal for the worker.
The lowest and the only necessary wage rate is that providing for the subsistence of the worker for the duration of his work and as much more as is necessary for him to support a family and for the race of labourers not to die out. The ordinary wage, according to Smith, is the lowest compatible with common humanity [6], that is, with cattle-like existence.

The demand for men necessarily governs the production of men, as of every other commodity. Should supply greatly exceed demand, a section of the workers sinks into beggary or starvation. The worker’s existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every other commodity. The worker has become a commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer. And the demand on which the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalists. Should supply exceed demand, then one of the constituent parts of the price — profit, rent or wages — is paid below its rate, [a part of these] factors is therefore withdrawn from this application, and thus the market price gravitates [towards the] natural price as the centre-point. But (1) where there is considerable division of labour it is most difficult for the worker to direct his labour into other channels; (2) because of his subordinate relation to the capitalist, he is the first to suffer.

Thus in the gravitation of market price to natural price it is the worker who loses most of all and necessarily. And it is just the capacity of the capitalist to direct his capital into another channel which either renders the worker, who is restricted to some particular branch of labour, destitute, or forces him to submit to every demand of this capitalist.
The accidental and sudden fluctuations in market price hit rent less than they do that part of the price which is resolved into profit and wages; but they hit profit less than they do wages. In most cases, for every wage that rises, one remains stationary and one falls.
The worker need not necessarily gain when the capitalist does, but he necessarily loses when the latter loses. Thus, the worker does not gain if the capitalist keeps the market price above the natural price by virtue of some manufacturing or trading secret, or by virtue of monopoly or the favourable situation of his land.

Furthermore, the prices of labour are much more constant than the prices of provisions. Often they stand in inverse proportion. In a dear year wages fall on account of the decrease in demand, but rise on account of the increase in the prices of provisions — and thus balance. In any case, a number of workers are left without bread. In cheap years wages rise on account of the rise in demand, but decrease on account of the fall in the prices of provisions — and thus balance.

Another respect in which the worker is at a disadvantage:

The labour prices of the various kinds of workers show much wider differences than the profits in the various branches in which capital is applied. In labour all the natural, spiritual, and social variety of individual activity is manifested and is variously rewarded, whilst dead capital always keeps the same pace and is indifferent to real individual activity.

In general we should observe that in those cases where worker and capitalist equally suffer, the worker suffers in his very existence, the capitalist in the profit on his dead mammon.
The worker has to struggle not only for his physical means of subsistence; he has to struggle to get work, i.e., the possibility, the means, to perform his activity.

Let us take the three chief conditions in which society can find itself and consider the situation of the worker in them:

(1) If the wealth of society declines the worker suffers most of all, and for the following reason: although the working class cannot gain so much as can the class of property owners in a prosperous state of society, no one suffers so cruelly from its decline as the working class.

(2) Let us now take a society in which wealth is increasing. This condition is the only one favourable to the worker. Here competition between the capitalists sets in. The demand for workers exceeds their supply. But:

In the first place, the raising of wages gives rise to overwork among the workers. The more they wish to earn, the more must they sacrifice their time and carry out slave-labour, completely losing all their freedom, in the service of greed. Thereby they shorten their lives. This shortening of their life-span is a favourable circumstance for the working class as a whole, for as a result of it an ever-fresh supply of labour becomes necessary. This class has always to sacrifice a part of itself in order not to be wholly destroyed.

Furthermore: When does a society find itself in a condition of advancing wealth? When the capitals and the revenues of a country are growing. But this is only possible:

(a) As the result of the accumulation of much labour, capital being accumulated labour; as the result, therefore, of the fact that more and more of his products are being taken away from the worker, that to an increasing extent his own labour confronts him as another man’s property and that the means of his existence and his activity are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the capitalist.

(b) The accumulation of capital increases the division of labour, and the division of labour increases the number of workers. Conversely, the number of workers increases the division of labour, just as the division of labour increases the accumulation of capital. With this division of labour on the one hand and the accumulation of capital on the other, the worker becomes ever more exclusively dependent on labour, and on a particular, very one-sided, machine-like labour at that. just as he is thus depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine and from being a man becomes an abstract activity and a belly, so he also becomes ever more dependent on every fluctuation in market price, on the application of capital, and on the whim of the rich. Equally, the increase in the class of people wholly dependent on work intensifies competition among the workers, thus lowering their price. In the factory system this situation of the worker reaches its climax.

(c) In an increasingly prosperous society only the richest of the rich can continue to live on money interest. Everyone else has to carry on a business with his capital, or venture it in trade. As a result, the competition between the capitalists becomes more intense. The concentration of capital increases, the big capitalists ruin the small, and a section of the erstwhile capitalists sinks into the working class, which as a result of this supply again suffers to some extent a depression of wages and passes into a still greater dependence on the few big capitalists. The number of capitalists having been diminished, their competition with respect to the workers scarcely exists any longer; and the number of workers having been increased, their competition among themselves has become all the more intense, unnatural, and violent. Consequently, a section of the working class falls into beggary or starvation just as necessarily as a section of the middle capitalists falls into the working class.

Hence even in the condition of society most favourable to the worker, the inevitable result for the worker is overwork and premature death, decline to a mere machine, a bond servant of capital, which piles up dangerously over and against him, more competition, and starvation or beggary for a section of the workers.

The raising of wages excites in the worker the capitalist’s mania to get rich, which he, however, can only satisfy by the sacrifice of his mind and body. The raising of wages presupposes and entails the accumulation of capital, and thus sets the product of labour against the worker as something ever more alien to him. Similarly, the division of labour renders him ever more one-sided and dependent, bringing with it the competition not only of men but also of machines. Since the worker has sunk to the level of a machine, he can be confronted by the machine as a competitor. Finally; as the amassing of capital increases the amount of industry and therefore the number of workers, it causes the same amount of industry to manufacture a larger amount of products, which leads to over-production and thus either ends by throwing a large section of workers out of work or by reducing their wages to the most miserable minimum.
Such are the consequences of a state of society most favourable to the worker — namely, of a state of growing, advancing wealth.

Eventually, however, this state of growth must sooner or later reach its peak. What is the worker’s position now?

3) “In a country which had acquired that full complement of riches both the wages of labour and the profits of stock would probably be very low the competition for employment would necessarily be so great as to reduce the wages of labour to what was barely sufficient to keep up the number of labourers, and, the country being already fully peopled, that number could never be augmented.” [Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. I, p. 84.]
The surplus would have to die.

Thus in a declining state of society — increasing misery of the worker; in an advancing state — misery with complications; and in a fully developed state of society — static misery.
Since, however, according to Smith, a society is not happy, of which the greater part suffers — yet even the wealthiest state of society leads to this suffering of the majority — and since the economic system [7] (and in general a society based on private interest) leads to this wealthiest condition, it follows that the goal of the economic system is the unhappiness of society.
Concerning the relationship between worker and capitalist we should add that the capitalist is more than compensated for rising wages by the reduction in the amount of labour time, and that rising wages and rising interest on capital operate on the price of commodities like simple and compound interest respectively.

Let us put ourselves now wholly at the standpoint of the political economist, and follow him in comparing the theoretical and practical claims of the workers.

He tells us that originally and in theory the whole product of labour belongs to the worker. But at the same time he tells us that in actual fact what the worker gets is the smallest and utterly indispensable part of the product — as much, only, as is necessary for his existence, not as a human being, but as a worker, and for the propagation, not of humanity, but of the slave class of workers.

The political economist tells us that everything is bought with labour and that capital is nothing but accumulated labour; but at the same time he tells us that the worker, far from being able to buy everything, must sell himself and his humanity.

Whilst the rent of the idle landowner usually amounts to a third of the product of the soil, and the profit of the busy capitalist to as much as twice the interest on money, the “something more” which the worker himself earns at the best of times amounts to so little that of four children of his, two must starve and die.

Whilst according to the political economists it is solely through labour that man enhances the value of the products of nature, whilst labour is man’s active possession, according to this same political economy the landowner and the capitalist, who qua landowner and capitalist are merely privileged and idle gods, are everywhere superior to the worker and lay down the law to him.
Whilst according to the political economists labour is the sole unchanging price of things, there is nothing more fortuitous than the price of labour, nothing exposed to greater fluctuations.
Whilst the division of labour raises the productive power of labour and increases the wealth and refinement of society, it impoverishes the worker and reduces him to a machine. Whilst labour brings about the accumulation of capital and with this the increasing prosperity of society, it renders the worker ever more dependent on the capitalist, leads him into competition of a new intensity, and drives him into the headlong rush of overproduction, with its subsequent corresponding slump.

Whilst the interest of the worker, according to the political economists, never stands opposed to the interest of society, society always and necessarily stands opposed to the interest of the worker.

According to the political economists, the interest of the worker is never opposed to that of society: (1) because the rising wages are more than compensated by the reduction in the amount of labour time, together with the other consequences set forth above; and (2) because in relation to society the whole gross product is the net product, and only in relation to the private individual has the net product any significance.
But that labour itself, not merely in present conditions but insofar as its purpose in general is the mere increase of wealth — that labour itself, I say, is harmful and pernicious — follows from the political economist’s line of argument, without his being aware of it.

In theory, rent of land and profit on capital are deductions suffered by wages. In actual fact, however, wages are a deduction which land and capital allow to go to the worker, a concession from the product of labour to the workers, to labour.

When society is in a state of decline, the worker suffers most severely. The specific severity of his burden he owes to his position as a worker, but the burden as such to the position of society.
But when society is in a state of progress, the ruin and impoverishment of the worker is the product of his labour and of the wealth produced by him. The misery results, therefore, from the essence of present-day labour itself.

Society in a state of maximum wealth — an ideal, but one which is approximately attained, and which at least is the aim of political economy as of civil society — means for the workers static misery.

It goes without saying that the proletarian, i.e., the man who, being without capital and rent, lives purely by labour, and by a one-sided, abstract labour, is considered by political economy only as a worker. Political economy can therefore advance the proposition that the proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is not working, as a human being; but leaves such consideration to criminal law, to doctors, to religion, to the statistical tables, to politics and to the poor-house overseer.
Let us now rise above the level of political economy and try to answer two questions on the basis of the above exposition, which has been presented almost in the words of the political economists:

(1) What in the evolution of mankind is the meaning of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labour?

(2) What are the mistakes committed by the piecemeal reformers. who either want to raise wages and in this way to improve the situation of the working class, or regard equality of wages (as Proudhon does) as the goal of social revolution?

In political economy labour occurs only in the form of activity as a source of livelihood.
“It can be asserted that those occupations which presuppose specific talents or longer training have become on the whole more lucrative; whilst the proportionate reward for mechanically monotonous activity in which one person can be trained as easily and quickly as another has fallen with growing competition, and was inevitably bound to fall. And it is just this sort of work which in the present state of the organisation of labour is still by far the commonest. If therefore a worker in the first category now earns seven times as much as he did, say, fifty years ago, whilst the earnings of another in the second category have remained unchanged, then of course both are earning on the average four times as much. But if the first category comprises only a thousand workers in a particular country, and the second a million, then 999,000 are no better off than fifty years ago — and they are worse off if at the same time the prices of the necessaries of life have risen. With such superficial calculation of averages people try to deceive themselves about the most numerous class of the population. Moreover, the size of the wage is only one factor in the estimation of the workers income, because it is essential for the measurement of the latter to take into account the certainty of its duration — which is obviously out of the question in the anarchy of so-called free competition, with its ever-recurring fluctuations and periods of stagnation. Finally, the hours of work customary formerly and now have to be considered. And for the English cotton-workers these have been increased, as a result of the entrepreneurs’ mania for profit. IIIX, 11 to between twelve and sixteen hours a day during the past twenty-five years or so — that is to say, precisely during the period of the introduction of labour-saving machines; and this increase in one country and in one branch of industry inevitably asserted itself elsewhere to a greater or lesser degree, for the right of the unlimited exploitation of the poor by the rich is still universally recognised.” (Wilhelm Schulz, Die Bewegung der Production.)

“But even it were as true as it is false that the average income of every class of society has increased, the income-differences and relative income-distances may nevertheless have become greater and the contrasts between wealth and poverty accordingly stand out more sharply. For just became total production rises — and in the same measure as it rises — needs, desires and claims also multiply and thus relative poverty can increase whilst absolute poverty diminishes. The Samoyed living on fish oil and rancid fish is not poor because in his secluded society all have the same needs. But in a state that is forging ahead, which in the course of a decade, say, increased by a third its total production in proportion to the population, the worker who is getting as much at the end of ten years as at the beginning has not remained as well off, but has become poorer by a third.” (op. cit.)

But political economy knows the worker only as a working animal — as a beast reduced to the strictest bodily needs.

“To develop in greater spiritual freedom, a people must break their bondage to their bodily needs — they must cease to be the slaves of the body. They must, above all, have time at their disposal for spiritual creative activity and spiritual enjoyment. The developments in the labour organism gain this time. Indeed, with new motive forces and improved machinery, a single worker in the cotton mills now often performs the work formerly requiring a hundred, or even 250 to 350 workers. Similar results can be observed in alf branches of production, because external natural forces are being compelled to participate to an ever-greater degree in human labour. If the satisfaction of a given amount of material needs formerly required a certain expenditure of time and human effort which has later been reduced by half, then without any loss of material comfort the scope for spiritual activity and enjoyment has been. simultaneously extended by as much.... But again the way in which !he booty, that we win from old Cronus himself in his most private domain, is shared out is still decided by the dice-throw of blind, unjust Chance. In France it has been calculated that at the present stage in the development of production an average working period of five hours a day by every person capable of work could suffice for the satisfaction of all the material interests of society.... Notwithstanding the time saved by the perfecting of machinery. the duration of the slave-labour performed by a large population in the factories has only increased.” (Schulz, op. cit., pp. 67, 68.)

“The transition from compound manual labour rests on a break-down of the latter into its simple operations. At first, however, only some of the uniformly-recurring operations will devolve on machines, while some will devolve on men. From the nature of things, and from confirmatory experience, it is clear that unendingly monotonous activity of this kind is as harmful to the mind as to the body; thus this combination of machinery with mere division of labour among a greater number of hands must inevitably show all the disadvantages of the latter. These disadvantages appear, among other things, in the greater mortality of factory workers.... Consideration has not been given ... to this big distinction as to how far men work through machines or how far as machines.” (op. cit.)

“In the future life of the peoples, however, the inanimate forces of nature working in machines will be our slaves and serfs.” (op. cit.)

“The English spinning mills employ 196,818 women and only 158,818 men. For every 100 male workers in the cotton mills of Lancashire there are 103 female workers, and in Scotland as many as 209. In the English flax mills of Leeds, for every 100 male workers there were found to be 147 female workers. In Dundee and on the east coast of Scotland as many as 280. In the English silk mills ... many female workers; male workers predominate in the woollen mills where the work requires greater physical strength. In 1833, no fewer than 38,927 women were employed alongside 18,593 men in the North American cotton mills. As a result of the changes in the labour organism, a wider sphere of gainful employment has thus fallen to the share of the female sex.... Women now occupying an economically more independent position ... the two sexes are drawn closer together in their social conditions.” (op. cit.)

“Working in the English steam- and water-driven spinning mills in 1835 were: 20,558 children between the ages of eight and twelve; 35,867 between the ages of twelve and thirteen; and, lastly, 108,208 children between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.... Admittedly, further advances in mechanisation, by more and more removing all monotonous work from human hands, are operating in the direction of a gradual IIXII, Ii elimination of this evil. But standing in the way of these more rapid advances is the very circumstance that the capitalists can, in the easiest and cheapest fashion, appropriate the energies of the lower classes down to the children. to be used instead of mechanical devices.” (op. cit.)

“Lord Brougham’s call to the workers — ‘Become capitalists’. ... This is the evil that millions are able to earn a bare subsistence for themselves only by strenuous labour which shatters the body and cripples them morally and intellectually; that they are even obliged to consider the misfortune of finding such work a piece of good fortune.” (op. cit.)

“In order to live, then, the non-owners are obliged to place themselves, directly or indirectly, at the service of the owners — to put themselves, that is to say, into a position of dependence upon them.” (Pecqueur, Théorie nouvelle d’économie soc., etc..)

Servants — pay: workers — wages; employees — salary or emoluments. (loc. cit.)
“To hire out one’s labour”, “to lend one’s labour at interest”, “to work in another’s place”
“To hire out the materials of labour”, “to lend the materials of labour at interest”, “to make others work in one’s place”. (op. cit.)


“Such an economic order condemns men to occupations so mean, to a degradation so devastating and bitter, that by comparison savagery seems like a kingly condition.... (op. cit.) “Prostitution of the non-owning class in all its forms.” (op. cit.) Ragmen.

Charles Loudon in the book Solution du probleme de la population, etc., Paris, 1842[8], declares the number of prostitutes in England to be between sixty and seventy thousand. The number of women of doubtful virtue is said to be equally large (p. 228).

“The average life of these unfortunate creatures on the streets, after they have embarked on their career of vice, is about six or seven years. To maintain the number of sixty to seventy thousand prostitutes, there must be in the three kingdoms at least eight to nine thousand women who commit themselves to this abject profession each year, or about twenty-four new victims each day — an average of one per hour; and it follows that if the same proportion holds good over the whole surface of the globe, there must constantly be in existence one and a half million unfortunate women of this kind”. (op. cit.)

“The numbers of the poverty-stricken grow with their poverty, and at the extreme limit of destitution human beings are crowded together in the greatest numbers contending with each other for the right to suffer.... In 1821 the population of Ireland was 6,801,827. In 1831 it had risen to 7,764,010 — an increase of 14 per cent in ten years. In Leinster, the wealthiest province, the population increased by only 8 per cent; whilst in Connaught, the most poverty-stricken province, the increase reached 21 per cent. (Extract from the Enquiries Published in England on Ireland, Vienna, 1840.)” (Buret, De la misère, etc.)

Political economy considers labour in the abstract as a thing; labour is a commodity. If the price is high, then the commodity is in great demand; if the price is low, then the commodity is in great supply: the price of labour as a commodity must fall lower and lower. (Buret, op. cit.) This is made inevitable partly by the competition between capitalist and worker, partly by the competition amongst the workers.

“The working population, the seller of labour, is necessarily reduced to accepting the most meagre part of the product.... Is the theory of labour as a commodity anything other than a theory of disguised bondage?,, a (op. cit) “Why then has nothing but an exchange-value been seen in labour?” (op. cit.)

The large workshops prefer to buy the labour of women and children, because this costs less than that of men. (op. cit.)

“The worker is not at all in the position of a free seller vis-à-vis the one who employs him.... The capitalist is always free to employ labour, and the worker is always forced to sell it. The value of labour is completely destroyed if it is not sold every instant. Labour can neither be accumulated nor even be saved, unlike true [commodities].

“Labour is life, and if life is not each day exchanged for food, it suffers and soon perishes. To claim that human life is a commodity, one must, therefore, admit slavery.” (op. cit.)

If then labour is a commodity it is a commodity with the most unfortunate attributes. But even by the principles of political economy it is no commodity, for it is not the “free result of a free transaction”. [op. cit.] The present economic regime
“simultaneously lowers the price and the remuneration of labour; it perfects the worker and degrades the man”. d (op. cit.) “Industry has become a war, and commerce a gamble.” (op. cit.)

“The cotton-working machines” (in England) alone represent 84,000,000 manual workers. [op. cit.].

Up to the present, industry has been in a state of war, a war of conquest:
“It has squandered the lives of the men who made up its army with the same indifference as the great conquerors. Its aim was the possession of wealth, not the happiness of men.” (Buret, op. cit.) “These interests” (that is, economic interests), “freely left to themselves ... must necessarily come into conflict; they have no other arbiter but war, and the decisions of war assign defeat and death to some, in order to give victory to the others.... It is in the conflict of opposed forces that science seeks order and equilibrium: perpetual war, according to it, is the sole means of obtaining peace; that war is called competition.” (op. cit.)

“The industrial war, to be conducted with success, demands large armies which it can amass on one spot and profusely decimate. And it is neither from devotion nor from duty that the soldiers of this army bear the exertions imposed on them, but only to escape the hard necessity of hunger. They feel neither attachment nor gratitude towards their bosses, nor are these bound to their subordinates by any feeling of benevolence. They do not know them as men, but only as instruments of production which have to yield as much as possible with as little cost as possible. These populations of workers, ever more crowded together, have not even the assurance of always being employed. Industry, which has called them together, only lets them live while it needs them, and as soon as it can get rid of them it abandons them without the slightest scruple; and the workers are compelled to offer their persons and their powers for whatever price they can get. The longer, more painful and more disgusting the work they are given, the less they are paid. There are those who, with sixteen hours’ work a day and unremitting exertion, scarcely buy the right not to die.” (op. cit.)

“We are convinced ... as are the commissioners charged with the inquiry into the condition of the hand-loom weavers, that the large industrial towns would in a short time lose their population of workers if they were not all the time receiving from the neighbouring rural areas constant recruitments of healthy men, a constant flow of fresh blood.” (op. cit.)