Jean Jaurès

“ Thus the personality of the proletarian is lessened as well as his substance.
But this is not all. The capitalist and owning class is only a class apart when considered in relation to the wage earners. It is itself divided and torn by the bitterest competition. It has never been able to organise itself, and in so doing to control production and regulate it according to the variable needs of society. In this state of anarchical disorder, capital is only warned of its mistakes through crises, the terrible consequences of which often fall upon the proletariat. ”

“ If, then, we invoke the nation, we do so in order to insure the rights of the individual in the fullest and most universal sense. Not a single human being for a single moment of time should be excluded from the sphere of rights. ”

“ The oppressed class must be enfranchised, and with it the whole of society. All difference of class must be abolished by transferring to the whole body of citizens, the organised community, the ownership of the means of production and of life which to-day, in the hands of a single class, is a power of exploitation and oppression. The universal co-operation of all citizens must be substituted for the disorderly and abusive rule of the minority. This is the only method by which the individual can be enfranchised. ”

“ He can neither work nor eat, clothe nor shelter himself, without paying a sort of ransom to the owning and capitalist class.
And not only his life but his very liberty suffers by this system. If labour is to be really free, all the workers should be called upon to take part in the management of the work. They should have a share in the economic government of the shop, just as universal suffrage gives them a share in the political government of the city. Now, in the capitalist organisation of labour, the labourers play a passive rôle. ”

“ One of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat, is obliged to pay to the other, the capitalist, a sort of tax, in order to be able to live at all, and exercise its faculties to any degree. Here is a multitude of human beings, citizens; they possess nothing, they can live only by their work. But in order to work they need an expensive equipment which they have not got, and raw materials and capital which they have not got. Another class owns the means of production, the land, the factories, the machines, the raw materials, and accumulated capital in the form of money. ”

“ They are the "hands" of the capitalist system, only required to put into execution the schemes that capital alone has decided on. And the proletariat accomplishes these enterprises planned and willed by capital under the direction of chiefs selected by capital. So that the workers neither co-operate in determining the object of the work nor in regulating the mechanism of authority under which the work is performed. In other words, labour is doubly enslaved, since it is directed towards ends which it has not willed by means which it has not chosen. ”

“ But there is only one universal association than can guarantee the rights of all individuals without exception, not only the rights of the living, but of those who are yet unborn, and who will take their places in the generations to come. ”

“ And that is why the essential aim of Socialism, whether Collectivist or Communist, is to transform capitalist property into social property.
In the present state of humanity, where our only organisation is on the basis of nationality, social property will take the form of national property. ”

“ Now this universal and imperishable association which includes all the individuals on a particular portion of the planet, and which extends its action and its thought to successive generations, is the nation. ”

“ The first class is, then, forced to put itself into the hands of the second, and naturally this capitalist and possessing class, taking advantage of its power, makes the working and non-owning class pay a large forfeit. ”

“ The first condition of success for Socialism is that its essential characteristics should be explained clearly, so that every one can understand them. There are many misunderstandings created by our adversaries, and some created by ourselves. ”

“ The nation, and the nation alone, can enfranchise all citizens. Only the nation can furnish the means of free development to all. Private associations, temporary and limited in character, can protect limited groups of individuals only for a time. ”

“ He has hardly left the factory, the mine, or the yard, where part of his effort has been expended in the creation of dividends and profits for the benefit of capital, he has hardly gone back to the poor tenement where his family is huddled together, when he is face to face with another tax, other dues in the shape of rent. ”

“ They neither decide, nor do they help in deciding, what work shall be done nor in what direction available energies shall be employed. Without their consent, and often even without their knowledge, the capital which they have created undertakes or abandons this or that enterprise. ”

“ It levies in addition every year and indefinitely a considerable tax on the product of the workman and farmer in the form of rent for farms, ground rent, rent of land in the cities, taxes for the payment of the public debt, industrial profit, commercial profit, and interest on stocks and bonds. ”