Therefore, Congress in 1907-08, legislating, as usual, in the service of the capitalist class, logically, naturally, obediently, still further developed the armed guard-the militia, the army and the navy-the fighting machine, the fist of the capitalist class. In March, 1908, the United States Government suddenly opened up many extra recruiting stations in New York Cityin the open air in the public parks, where tens of thousands of jobless, discouraged, hungry men were to be found. The recruiting officers' chief argument was "plenty of good food and clothing and not much to do."* Capitalists want working class militiamen and soldiers, in order also to keep them so flattered and excited about "protecting property" that they won't notice the fact that the armed defenders of property have no property of their own to protect. It is so simple and easy. Capitalists do indeed want war and military servantsbut the capitalists are too shrewd, too self-respecting, too proud to expose their own well-fed glossy bodies to the modern butchering machinery. In time of war or "labor troubles" these "prominent citizens" stay at home, eat fine food, wear good clothes, sleep in warm dreamy beds-and secretly laugh at the poor hoodwinked fellows on the firing line eating "hard-tack"; they stay at home and plan for more profitsever more profits from the increasing surplus. Capitalists band together and stand together. Capitalists are CLASS loyal. The capitalist class even hire working-class men to defend the capitalist class with rifles; shrewdly the employers confuse and hire the working class to get "behind the gun" to murder the working class in front of the gun. (B)—THE POLITICIANS DECLARE WAR: Because the capitalists want war. The politicians are either capitalists themselves or the political lackeys of the capitalists; and these ignoble flunkies take their pay in offices and opportunities to get graft. The * See Index: “Recruiting." capitalists pay the campaign expenses of their political flunkies, and, of course, whenever the capitalists want war their political flunkey prostitutes declare war.* After the war, on great public occasions, the politicians serve up some oratorically noisy nonsense to the widows and orphans and the poor old broken-down veterans about the "glory" of the warabout the grandeur of slaughtering and being slaughtered. Right here is where the fun comes in for the politicians, and sometimes for some ministers,-in seeing an opera-houseful or a groveful of working men clap their hands together and yell when the politicians, or some ministers, sometimes, whoop and yawp and tell the working class all about the glory and grandeur of war. No wonder the politicians secretly laugh. How stupidly ridiculous! The glory of brothers butchering and being butchered-by themselves! To "declare war" makes statesmen and rulers popular. In our own country "war" presidents, "war" governors, "war" congressmen, are almost invariably re-elected. "The temptations of party politicians are of many kinds. . . The worst is the temptation to war. . . . Many wars have been begun or have been prolonged in order to consolidate a dynasty or a party; in order to give it popularity or at least to save it from unpopularity; in order to divert the minds of men from internal questions which have become embarrassing, or to efface the memory of past quarrels, mistakes or crimes. Experience unfortunately shows only too clearly how the combative passion can be aroused and how much popularity can be gained from a successful war."† Politicians do not join the militia and the army for actual service on the firing line-oh, no! No, thank you. They pass laws "to make the service attractive"-but they are so very careful not to let the attractions attract them. The fact is, my friend, the "cold shoulder" from superior officers, and cold victuals, cold tents, cold lead, cold steel, and a puny fifteen or twenty dollars per month for murdering and being murdered-and the cold, cold ground for their * For excellent example, see Chapter VI: "Tricked to the Trenches-Then Snubbed," Fifth Illustration. † W. E. Lecky: The Map of Life, pp. 153-54. own cold corpses-with infinite heartache, sighs, sobs, tears, and loneliness for their own dear ones-these things have no attraction for the shrewd men who profit by war and the crafty men who declare war. Capitalist statesmen-that is, small men with big manners -politicians of the capitalist class, politicians financed by and for the capitalist class-these all band together, stand together. The capitalist "reformer" always stands for CAPITALISM--tho' he is willing to spray it heavily with perThese are CLASS loyal. They manipulate all the powers of government-including the department of war-in defence of the capitalist CLASS. They even hire working men --with rifles. fume. (C)—THE WORKING MEN FIGHT THE WAR: Because they are meek and modest and humble and docile, and are always gullibly ready to obediently do whatever their crafty political and industrial masters order them to do. So, whenever the capitalists want war and the politicians declare war, the flimflammed, bamboozled working man straps on a knapsack, shoulders a rifle (or takes a policeman's club), kisses his wife and children good-bye, and marches away to fight a war he didn't want, a war he didn't declare, a war that belittles and wrongs him by injuring his class, and marches away to butcher other working men whom he doesn't know and against whom he has no quarrel. He yells, kills, and slaughters— because-simply because-because-some crafty crooks, called "prominent people," tell him to do so. He screams and gets slain, he yells and gets slaughtered-simply because he does not understand the sly, devilish trick that is thus being played upon him and his class. Young working men are shrewdly flattered into joining the militia and the army in order to help the capitalist class force the working class to keep still and starve; or accept cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap shelter and cheap furniture as all of their share for all their work for all their lives. Suppose the working man has a son in the local militia. company, and suppose Mr. Workingman goes out on strike for two or three more nickels per day with which to buy bette food for the young militiaman's own mother and his little brothers and sisters. This young man in the militia company can be ordered to shoot or bayonet his own father who, on strike, is struggling for a few cents more with which to buy better food for the humble mother and hungry little brothers and sisters-if the father on strike doesn't keep quiet and remain locile while the local industrial masters starve him back to his old job at his old wages. The capitalist holds the whip of hunger over the working class father's back, and the working class son holds a rifle at his own father's breast. The father must surrender. Thus the young militiaman wrongs his own class, outrages his own father, helps humble his own little brothers and sisters, and spits in his own. mother's face. The war is the class war. The militiamen and policemen are local soldiers ready for orders to shoot their neighbors, friends and relatives in the struggle for existence. In the industrial civil war the capitalist class starve, seduce and bribe the working class to fight BOTH SIDES OF THE BATTLES. The rulers rule. They think-and win BY THINKING. Think it over, young man. Be loyal to your own father and mother and your own brothers and sisters—and your own class. Be class loyal. The working class themselves must save the working class. NOTE: It is of the greatest importance that the working class reader should learn what his employer does not wish to have him learn concerning value, surplus value, rate of surplus value, profit. rate of profit, profit to capitalist class, profit to individual capitalist employer, division of the spoils of exploitation among capitalists, etc., etc. Mr. Joseph E. Cohen's small book, Socialism for Students, is a model of clearness for the reader who is too busy to read big books and yet wishes to inform himself accurately on the secrets of this legalized robbery. This book (published by Charles H. Kerr and Company, Chicago) is just what a busy worker needs in making a beginning in those economic and sociological studies which will give him a large outlook upon the world and a deep inlook into the mainsprings of human society. |