Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

to live,

is the club which compels him to sell his strength to those who utilize it for their own ends. Thus he has performed

the function of the bee that labors ceaselessly only to have all taken from it except what will keep it alive.

ive.„l

Their conviction on this point is strengthened by the many living-wage investigations made recently before framers of awards hand down their decisions. They ask themselves, "Why should decisions be based upon the bare cost of necessities? Why has the working class never received anything more than a bare living for its services? If we are to get only a living wage, why be in haste to increase production? Why not change the profit system first?"

2

Industrial unions, with the possible exception of the United Mine Workers and the Auto Workers, also accept the Marxian doctrine of an inevitable Class Struggle between Labor and Capital.

"Modern industrial society." says the One Big Union of Canada, "is divided into two classes, those who possess and do not produce, and those who produce and do not possess....From this fact arises the inevitable class struggle.'

„,3

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Amalgamated Textile Workers agree on this declaration: "The economic organization of Labor has been called into existence by the capitalist system of production, under which the division between the ruling class and the ruled class is based upon the ownership

of the means of production.

The class owning those means is

1. Industrial Union News, Jan. 31, 1920. 2. Ibid, June 14, 1919.

3. Constitution, Preamble.

the one that is ruling, the class that possesses nothing but its labor power, which is always on the market as a commodity, is the one that is being ruled. A constant and unceasing 1 struggle is being waged between these two classes."

The Ladies' Garment Workers assert, "That the only way

to secure our rights as producers and to bring about a system of society wherein the workers shall receive the full value of their product, is to organize industrially into a class-conscious labor union politically represented on the various legislative bodies by representatives of a political party

whose aim is the abolition of the capitalist system......„2

The Hotel Workers' Federation comes to this conclusion: "The workers must organize and combine industrially on 1,3 the principle of the Class Struggle. Their object is "the complete Emancipation of Labor."

The Brewery Workers begin their constitution with this assertion: "In our society of today there are two classes whose interests are directly opposed to each other......The self-conscious power of capital, with all its camp-followers, is confronted with the self-conscious power of labor. There is no power on earth strong enough to thwart the will of such a majority conscious of itself. It will irresistibly tend 4 This goal is "the emancipation of the

toward its goal."

working people."

1. Constitutions of both Amalgamated Clothing Workers and
Amalgamated Textile Workers, Preamble of each.

2. Constitution of Ladies' Garment Workers, Preamble.
3. Constitution of International Federation of Workers in

the Hotel, Restaurant, Lunchroom, Club and Catering Industry, Preamble.

4. Constitution of United Brewery & Soft Drink Workers, 13-4.

Both the I. W. W. and the W. I. I. U. begin their constitutions with the statement: "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. Between these two classes a struggle must go on...." until capitalism is abolished.

The I. W. W. "defy the learned doctors of decorated persiflage to enter any Wobbly sanctum sanctorum and there not find a student of Marx.

[ocr errors]

1

In a pamphlet of the W. I. I. U. intended to impress upon working men the idea that the proletariat has a "historic mission" to fulfill, the author says: "....History...becomes a vital, interesting narrative, depicting the unceasing struggle of the classes through the ages; a struggle that finds its culmination in the furious class war raging between Capital and Labor today, and that will be definitely concluded with the abolition of class prerogatives in property and the establishment of the Industrial Republic."

.2

Such a goal, the W. I. I. U. believes, not only voices the specific class interests of the proletariat, but is also in accord with the tendencies and dictates of social evolution. "The working class, as an agent of social evolution, and the capitalist class, as an obstacle in the path of economic progress have, therefore, nothing in common. This fundamental difference of interests, functions, and historic destinies breeds the class antagonism and the struggle for power.

3

The original division of society into classes was a necessary evil because of the slight development of man's

1. The One Big Union Monthly, July, 1919, p. 49. 2. Karl Dannenberg, "The Road to Power. 4.

3. Ibid, 7-8.

[ocr errors]
« НазадПродовжити »