Robert Rives La Monte

“ The wage system necessarily implies this surplus labor or unpaid labor. So long as there are wages, workingmen, you will never get the full product of your labor. Let no reformer beguile you into a struggle which simply aims to secure a modification of the wage system! Nothing short of the annihilation of the wage system will give you justice and give you the full product of your labor.
But while wages necessarily imply surplus-labor, the reverse is not true. You can have surplus-labor without wages. Surplus-labor is not an invention of modern capitalists. ”

“ Will the workers create, in the language of economics, an effective demand for Socialism? Two eminent Utopians have voiced this doubt in the recent past. Their names are George D. Herron and Daniel DeLeon. Both alike forget that the desires, ideals, and motives of the proletariat cannot but be in harmony with their economic environment, and I do not think that either of them would deny that, as we near the downfall of Capitalism, the economic environment will more and more imperatively drive men to Socialism as the only avenue of escape from chaos and pessimism. ”

“ The end and object of bourgeois society is the formation and accumulation of surplus-value, or in other words, the systematic robbery of the producing class. Now when we say robbery, we do not mean to accuse employers of conscious dishonesty. They are the creatures of a system just as the workers are, but it is a system which makes their interests diametrically opposed to the interests of their employees. The only way the capitalists can increase their relative share of the product of their employees' labor is by decreasing the relative share of the latter. ”

“ The Law of Surplus-Value has shown us that there is a deep-seated, ineradicable conflict between the direct class interest of the proletariat which coincides with the true interests of the human race, and the direct, conscious guiding interest of the class who own the means of production and distribution. There is here a direct clash between two hostile interests. This fact has been skilfully hidden from the eyes of the workers in the past, but the modern socialist movement, aided by the growing brutality of the capitalist class, is making it impossible to fool them in this way much longer. ”

“ Without ideals they cannot, in any worthy sense, live. The only possible ideal, that even the keen eyes of so shrewd an observer as Mr. Street can perceive, is the ideal of Socialism. But they cannot accept this ideal without abandoning much, I do not say that is dear to them, but much that by habit and tradition has become part and parcel of their intellectual being. ”

“ Well, then, if he produces in three or four hours a value equal to the value of his labor-power or wages, why doesn't he stop work then, and take his coat and hat and go home and devote the rest of the day to study, reading, games, recreation and amusement? He don't because he can't. He has to agree (voluntarily, of course) to any conditions that the class who by owning his tools own him choose to impose upon him, and the lash of the competition of the unemployed, Capital's Reserve Army, as Marx called it, is ever ready to fall upon his naked back. ”

“ The totality of the unity of social life is the subject matter present to our minds. It is economics itself which dissolves in the course of one process, to reappear in as many morphological stages, in each of which it serves as a substructure for all the rest. Finally, it is not our method to extend the so-called economic factor isolated in an abstract fashion over all the rest, as our adversaries imagine, but it is, before everything else, to form an historic conception of economics, and to explain the other changes by means of its changes. ”

“ But besides pointing out this conflict of material interests, the Socialist propagandist shows the workers that it is their high destiny to accomplish a revolution far more glorious and pregnant with blessings for humanity than any of those recorded in the history of the past. This consciousness of the great part that he and his class are called to play on the world's stage is the most uplifting and ennobling influence that can enter the life of a workingman. ”

“ When we speak of the value of an object we mean the amount of human labor that is embodied or accumulated in it, that has been spent in fitting it to satisfy human needs. And we measure the amount of this human labor by its duration, by labor-time. You, if you are a skilled, highly-paid worker, receiving say four dollars a day, may say that it is absurd to say that an hour of your labor produces no more value than an hour of Tom's or Dick's or Pete's, who get only eighty cents a day apiece. ”

“ Hence, as the act of an individual in appropriating the goods of another is not likely either to help or to injure his class, he neither approves or condemns it on moral grounds; but knowing, as he does, that his class enemies, the capitalists, own not only "the goods," but also the courts and the police, he condemns theft by a workingman as suicidal folly.
The Marxist absolutely denies the freedom of the will. [4] Every human action is inevitable. "Nothing happens by chance." Every thing is because it cannot but be. How then can we consistently praise or blame any conduct? ”

“ But there is an ever-growing portion of the working class whom the ever-increasing severity of the discipline of the machine process is teaching more and more to think solely in terms of material cause and effect. To them, just as much as to the scholar who has learned by study the relativity of ethics, current morality has ceased to appeal. It is idle to talk of the will of God, or of abstract, absolute ideas of right and wrong to the sociological scholar and the proletarian of the factory alike. ”

“ Many an English and American home to-day still merits even such an offensively pretentious epithet as "Palladium." What morals our people have known and practised they have learned and been drilled in in the homes. That these morals should have been warped by a class-bias was inevitable. A home, itself the product of a society divided into classes, could not teach anything but a class-morality. A purely social morality (if morality be the proper name for the highest conduct in a classless society) is even yet impossible. ”

“ I should be greatly chagrined to be accused of irreverence in discussing religion. Irreverence is ever a sign of a narrow intellectual horizon and a limited vision. The scoffer is the product of the limited knowledge characteristic of what Engels called "metaphysical materialism." Unfortunately the mental development of many in the past has been arrested at this Ingersoll-Voltaire stage. But with the growth of Modern Socialism the tendency is for the metaphysical materialist to grow into socialist or dialectic materialism with its Hegelian watchword, "Nothing is; every thing is becoming." ”

“ I am sure that as to many things, such as valuable books, pictures, and splendor of surroundings, we shall find it better to club our means together; and I must say that often when I have been sickened by the stupidity of the mean, idiotic rabbit warrens that rich men build for themselves in Bayswater and elsewhere, I console myself with visions of the noble communal hall of the future, unsparing of materials, generous in worthy ornament, alive with the noblest thoughts of our time, and the past, embodied in the best art which a free and manly people [111] could produce ”

“ War is unreasonable to the peasant-target; it is also unreasonable to Melmount and Mr. Wells so far as they are representatives [125] of the citizens of the classless society of the future, a society based on social solidarity, on world-wide brotherhood. But to the socialist materialist, war, in a world based on private ownership of the means of production used to produce commodities, with its concomitants, the wage-system, competition—domestic and international,—and ever-recurring "over-production," is so very far from unreasonable that it is absolutely inevitable. ”

“ The doubt of the inevitability of Socialism on analysis is always found to be a doubt of the pro-socialist desires and actions of the Proletariat. No one disputes that the Capitalist system is breaking down. With the great mass of the producers receiving bare subsistence wages the impossibility of disposing of the almost miraculously stupendous product of modern machines and processes is mathematically demonstrable. The former paradox of the Socialist agitator, that the Utopian is the man who believes in the possibility of the continuance of the present system, has become a platitude. ”

“ Socialism does occasionally receive a recruit from the very highest stratum of society, but I tell you it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a member of the Middle Class to become a scientific socialist. ”

“ As the State is in its very nature a class instrument, as its existence is dependent upon the existence of distinct classes, the State in the hands of the victorious proletariat will commit suicide, by tearing down its own foundation. ”

“ When a workingman goes upon the market to sell something for money with which to buy bread and butter and other necessaries of life, what has he to offer for sale? He cannot offer a finished commodity, such as a watch, a shoe, or a book, because he owns nothing. He has neither the necessary machinery, the necessary raw material, nor even the necessary place in which to work to make these things. These all belong to another class who by owning them, in fact, own him. He cannot offer labor for sale, [41] because his labor does not yet exist. He cannot sell a thing that has no existence. ”

“ While we continue devoting our whole energies to arousing in our fellow-workers a keen and clear consciousness of the hideous class-struggle now waging in all its brutal bitterness, let us keep our courage high and our hope bright by keeping our eyes ever fixed upon the glorious future, upon the "wonderful days a-coming when all shall be better than well!" ”

“ To them I can only say that to me Socialism has always been essentially a revolutionary movement. Revolutionists, who attempt to maintain a distinction between their exoteric and their esoteric teachings, only succeed in making themselves ridiculous. But, even were the maintenance of such a distinction practicable, it would, in my judgment, be highly inexpedient. As a mere matter of policy, ever since I first entered the Socialist Movement, I have been a firm believer in the tactics admirably summed up in Danton's "De l'audace! ”

“ To say class-consciousness is not to say class hatred; though class-consciousness ofttimes develops into class hatred and does not thereby become the less effective. The Socialist recognizes in the words of Edmund Burke that "Man acts not from metaphysical considerations, but from motives relative to his interests," and hence, he regards it as his first duty [70] to show his fellow-workers that their economic interests are in direct conflict with those of the master-class. He does not create this conflict by pointing it out; he merely shows the working class "where they are at." ”

“ If we include in our definition of morality the almost universal and relatively permanent gregarious traits of men and beasts, then morality has existed longer than humanity itself, and will continue to exist under Socialism. But it cannot be denied that moral codes were not formulated until after class-divisions had arisen. Every moral code of which we have any knowledge has been moulded by the cultural discipline of a society based on class-divisions. ”

“ Socialism has two aspects. As the most vital fact of modern life it is a kinetic force. "Modern Socialism" in Engels' words "is, in its [137] essence, the direct product of the recognition on the one hand, of the class antagonisms, existing in the society of to-day, between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production." This is Socialism, the most pregnant actuality in the palpitating life all about us. But, as Engels pointed out, Socialism also has its ideological side. ”

“ In the same way, Socialist workingmen, though they know that no human act deserves either praise or blame, though they know, in the words of the wise old Frenchman, that "comprendre tout, c'est pardonner tout," or, better yet, that to understand all is to understand that there is nothing to pardon, will not be chary of their cheers to him who is able to advance their cause, nor of their curses upon him who betrays it. And in so doing they will not be inconsistent, but will be acting in strict accordance with that law of cause and effect which is the very fundament of all proletarian reasoning ”

“ The general acceptance of the idea that all things change, that property, marriage, religion, etc., are in process of evolution and are destined to take on new forms prepared the way for Socialism. A man who has read Wallace and Darwin is ready to read Marx and Engels.
Now the story of the birth of Darwinism is itself a proof of the fallacy of the Great Man theory, and a signal confirmation of the view that new ideas, theories and discoveries emanate from the material conditions. The role of the great man is still an important one. ”

“ The word "capital," cannot be applied to the machinery and means of production in any and every society. They only become capital when they are used as means to exploit (rob) a subject class of workers, and when they shall cease to be so used they will cease to be capital. The word "wages," necessarily implies the [63] extraction of surplus-value (profits) from the workers by a parasitic class; hence, that share of the social product which the workers of the future will devote to individual consumption cannot be correctly spoken of as "wages." ”

“ Why do the socialists, instead of using economic methods to solve an economic question, organize themselves into a political party? To answer this question, we must first see what the State is and what relation it holds to the economic conditions. Gabriel Deville defines the State thus: "The State is the public power of coercion created and maintained in human societies by their division into classes, a power which, being clothed with force, makes laws and levies taxes." ”

“ But, friends, nothing can postpone it long, for the industrial crises and financial panics are recurring at shorter and shorter intervals, and the process of recovery from them is slower and slower, and every panic and crisis forces thousands of educated, intelligent members of the middle class off their narrow and precarious foothold down into the ranks of the proletariat, where the hard logic of the facts will convert them to class-conscious Socialism. ”